2016 Jaguar XJ

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Oscar Wilde’s line seems particularly apt when applied to another great eccentric, theJaguar XJ. Because despite being both a fine luxury sedan and the conspicuously charismatic choice in a part of the market typically more conservative than Texas talk radio, the big Jag has never gained much traction against its obvious rivals.
Yet the flipside of that equation is that limited sales success has also given the XJ an exclusivity many of its competitors are lacking, especially in the parking lots of country clubs and upmarket boutiques. As we noted recently, the Mercedes-Benz S-class outsells the XJ by almost six-to-one in the United States. The loneliness of the XJ’s furrow means it still manages to look both fresh and strikingly different fully six years after it was launched.

This is a situation that a modest facelift for 2016 hasn’t done much to alter. The XJ’s front end has been given a gentle redesign around a fractionally larger grille and restyled air intakes in the front bumper. The headlamps have been re-profiled and are now powered by LEDs (standard on all models), and they feature what Jaguar calls “J blade” daytime running lamps—although as Ian Callum, the company’s long-serving design director admits, they look like J’s only on one side and L’s on the other.

Touch Me

The bigger news comes inside the cabin where the old XJ’s electronics interface, which could probably be dated to the late Paleolithic era, has been replaced by a first outing for JLR’s new InControl Touch Pro system, which is being rolled out across the Jaguar and Land Rover ranges. InControl Touch Pro boasts a new quad-core processor and a 60-gigabyte hard drive, with the main interface being an 8.0-inch central touch screen. The system works like a big smartphone. You can rearrange icons and even swipe between configurable pages, with a choice of various apps including real-time weather forecasting and a flight tracker. The new navigation system includes satellite mapping, pinch-to-zoom, and the option to put a map in the instrument display screen, as in the new Audi TT and A4. Connectivity options include an HDMI interface, allowing a Chromecast (or similar device) to beam media into the car.

For the most part, the new InControl system works well and is a vast improvement over the outgoing unit. As tends to be the case, it lacks the intuitiveness and expensively engineered slickness of an iPad or a top-flight Android tablet, but users will soon adapt to it. Despite the upgraded hardware, we found some hesitation, especially when the system was asked to swap between functions. But our praise for the new navigation is unambiguous—it’s smart, smooth-scrolling, looks good, and features a clever address-guessing trick that tries (and normally succeeds) in figuring out where you want to go before you finish typing. It also will learn regular routes, such as your commute to work, and recommend alternatives to beat traffic, in the manner of the popular Waze smartphone app.

Fleet—and Familiar

Mechanical changes are minimal, with all U.S. powerplants continuing unchanged. The only substantive alteration is the switch to electric power steering in two-wheel-drive versions—apparently the system can’t work with the front axles of the all-wheel-drive variants.

We sampled the new setup in the sporty XJR, which remains the most powerful member of the clan and quite possibly the best way to experience Jaguar’s long-serving 5.0-liter supercharged V-8, here in 550-hp tune. The electric power steering is effectively invisible, with similar weighting and response to the old hydraulic system. Jaguar clearly doesn’t want anyone still buying a hydraulically assisted XJ to feel cheated.

As before, the XJR combines the sort of effortless low-down performance that luxury-sedan buyers expect with the ability to deliver truly startling pace at very little notice. The eight-speed automatic transmission shifts intelligently: it’s unobtrusive when asked to waft and acts with appropriate aggression when required. Test-track performance is impressive enough—we ran the 2014 versionfrom zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds and from rest to 100 mph in 8.8 seconds—but real-world pace feels even stronger. The car found impressive traction even on the greasy surfaces of the English roads where we drove it. The XJR feels like a big car due to the simple fact that it is, but it also feels lighter and more responsive than all of its obvious rivals.

Little has changed, but that which has been altered has improved the XJ’s (and the XJR’s) case. This is a car that deserves to be talked about a little bit more.