2017 Jaguar XE

WHAT WE LIKE: When cars fix themselves. Remember the noises we kept hearing from under the Jaguar’s hood, detailed in our last update? We’re not hearing them anymore. Various staffers had thought they might be coming from the supercharger, or something rattling around in the intake manifold, or maybe a pulley bearing. In our last update, the dealer replaced a pulley and both fuel pumps, and yet the gravelly noise didn’t disappear. Well, at least not right away. Because here we are, thousands of miles and months later and either we’ve developed Stockholm syndrome or the car isn’t sounding so defective now. There’s still a fair bit of supercharger whine, and you’d never confuse the XE’s intake sound with that of a Lexus—or a Porsche, for that matter—but it doesn’t sound like anything is amiss. Maybe now those of us who really like driving the XE can convince the ones who have been avoiding the car to give it another chance.

WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: Pirelli P Zeros—at least not on this car. Let’s count how many of these 20-inch tires we’ve destroyed: The first came right out of the box, when we bubbled a sidewall on the right front shortly after the XE’s arrival at our offices. Then we had the same thing happen not long after. Then in May we hit a pothole in a construction zone that flattened the right front, ripping open the sidewall, while also bubbling the right rear. One month later, both right-side tires went down again, victimized by some railroad tracks. So that’s six. Add to that the single 19-inch Sottozero winter tire that was damaged by a pothole in March and it makes seven. Lucky us.

WHAT WENT WRONG: Other than all the flat tires, the XE has not given us much trouble. We had our 16,000-mile service (oil change, pollen-filter replacement, track-rod ends retorqued) performed gratis, thanks to Jag’s complimentary scheduled-maintenance policy. Our satellite-radio subscription has been restored, which we were thankfully able to do ourselves without going to the dealer. But the infotainment system has also continued its strange behavior. One day, out of the blue, it displayed this message over the map: “Petrol stations are near.” It seemed like the car was deploying some Google Assistant–like technology to help the driver find a place to refuel, except that the car already had a full tank.

WHERE WE WENT: Not enough places. The XE’s smallish back seat makes it more suited to commuting than to road tripping. Plus, those annoying underhood noises and the Jag’s propensity to annihilate its own tires have limited our desire to take the XE on any long excursions. So it has seen northern Michigan a few times and southern Wisconsin once but hasn’t made it any farther afield than Kentucky.