2004 Jaguar Xjr Base Sedan 4-door 4.2l Supercharged With Navigation on 2040-cars

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We drove to the Grand Tour Lapland taping in a British beater

In October, it was revealed that the Great British Motoring Show That Is Not Top Gear was going to be filming an episode somewhere in Finland. I happen to be Finnish, which meant I immediately applied for audience tickets, and then waited for the phone to ring. It never did, but a friend of mine got two tickets of his own. By that time it was announced that the filming was going to take place "somewhere in Lapland", and more precisely hundreds of kilometers north from the Arctic Circle. Excellent! We knew just how to get there. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Last summer, we spent GBP1000 ($1230 as of the publishing date) on a running and driving, British Racing Green Daimler Six on eBay and drove it home to Finland the long way, via Scotland. (In America, this car is known as the Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas.) It was still a little bit road legal in early November, as we had attempted to get it through Finnish import inspection. It failed on the grounds of the rocker panel welds being a bit crusty, but the following one-month grace and repair period meant we could still drive it on temporary sticker plates. So, after buying a set of Nokian winter tires the previous week, we set off from Helsinki the day before the filming. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. There is nothing quite like driving the entire length of Finland in a right-hand-drive four-liter rebadged Jaguar in one day – still on British plates, albeit taped over. We clocked up over 1100km in the comfort of the leather interior, whisked away by the four-liter six's oomphy torque and ambient thrum; every now and then stopping for fuel, swapping drivers and wiping the headlights clean from accumulating highway muck. As we passed Rovaniemi and the Santa's Village, roads gradually got so slippery the Nokians really proved their worth. Reindeer flocked on the road, along with foxes and the single white rabbit (he did not have a pocket watch, as far as we could tell). It was not the lack of sleep doing us in, even if the hotel bed was sorely needed after finally reaching the village of Saariselka in deepest Lapland. After a celebratory beer while watching Finnish karaoke, of course. But the show! The next day we spotted the Fisker, the Boxster, and the Saab 900 driving back from taping the show's localized intro.

Jaguar solution to keyless start could save lives

UPDATED: An earlier version of this story indicated the Jaguar keyless start function was meant as a safety feature, when in fact, it is meant as a convenience one and will not work as described if automatic stop/start is not engaged. Today, The New York Times published an article about more than two dozen deaths related to drivers accidentally leaving their cars running, closing their garages and later succumbing to carbon monoxide that flooded their homes. The reason has been identified as "keyless start" features, or proximity entry and push-button start, where owners don't need to physically handle a key or fob to gain entry into the vehicle or start it. It is the latest, and deadliest, issue raised with this system after those related to security and simple inconvenience (for instance, leaving the car at a valet or car wash with the fob in your pocket). From my personal perspective, The New York Times had a rather harsh "evil carmakers" tone throughout the article. This is not a matter of a known faulty component, as with the GM ignition switch recall. This has as much to do with user error where people leave their car without pressing the "off" button and without noticing the engine is still running. About half of the cars in question are produced by Toyota and Lexus, brands that have offered keyless start longer than most. They are also brands with high rates of elderly owners, who seemingly made up a majority of reported deaths and injuries. One fire department in Florida even started a campaign alerting those in the area of the dangers of leaving your car running when it noticed a correlation between an increase in cars equipped with keyless start and calls related to carbon monoxide poisoning. I see several contributing issues at play, most of which go well beyond this particular issue. First is insufficient training of owners by dealers and/or owners not paying close enough attention during this training. Cars are complicated, but you should at least know how basic functions work. Second, woefully inadequate driver training in this country. Third, and with apologies to the AARP, insufficient testing of elderly drivers and/or insufficiently low standards for elderly drivers. If you don't know you have to shut the car off or cannot hear that an engine is running, perhaps you shouldn't be driving. Fourth, re-examining keyless start systems.

2013 Jaguar XF 2.0T

Jaguar is moving to modernize its XF engine lineup - once the exclusive territory of V8 mills - with a range including a turbo four, a supercharged six and supercharged V8s of various potencies. Personally, I'll miss the combination of this smooth looking and driving XF sedan, and the lazy power of the naturally aspirated 5.0-liter engine, even if the super six has earned some praise in other applications.
The truth is that the four, six, eight lineup for the XF makes a lot of sense, and this 2.0T version of the sedan is far better than I expected it to be. In fact, there's a legitimate argument to be made for it as the XF that works the best for the largest group of customers. Here's why:
Driving Notes