Jaguar XK Convertible Review

Hi I'm Mike Hanley with cars.com. When you spend $90,000.00 on a car, you have a
right to expect a lot from it. And that’s about the starting price for the 2010 Jaguar XK.
So let’s see whether or not this model lives up to that high price tag. When a job of a
convertible has to make its driver look good, the XK definitely does that. It has a lot of
road presence and it’s quite low and sleek. It just definitely draws eyes to the car and one
of the other things though that’s nice to see is that even with the top on, that sleek profile
is carried all the way to the back. On some convertibles, they started to kind of get higher
back here. It doesn’t really do the job that well.

The XK for 20s10 has been updated a little bit on the outside and you can see it around
the lower front bumper where these side grilled intakes. But overall, the car retains the
general look of it has in previous years and that’s a good thing. When spending
$90,000.00 on a car, you should be able to expect that comes with a lot of performance
and the XK comes through in this regard. It has a new 5-liter V8 for the 2010 model here
that makes 385 horsepower. And in addition to delivering strong acceleration, the Jaguar
sights a 0 to 60 time of 5.3 seconds for the convertible. It also has a great exhaust sound
that has a really meaty tone but then when you stand in the gas it turns into a sharp barb.

So it’s great to hear especially when the top is down with the convertible. This engine
teams with a 6-speed automatic transmission, and the EPA says it gets 16 miles per
gallon on the city and 22 on the highway. In a high priced car you should expect the high
end interior and the XK mostly has one. There are a lot of rich materials like this leather
and the seats also this black veneer on the center control panel which looks really nice.
But there are also some lower grade finishes that just seemed out of place especially these
buttons here. And that’s interesting because a lot of the buttons and controls have this
nice kind of chrome and black appearance. It seems like they couldn’t use something like
that down here for this control panel.

You're not always going to be able to drive the XK with the roof down so with the roof
up it does pretty well too. The roof comes up quickly and quietly and when it is up there's
not a lot of excess wind noise in the cabin. There's also decent headroom for taller drivers
when the roof is in place. What's not so good though is that there's a pretty big blind spot
created by the soft top roof. Seat pillars, so when backing about of a parking space, it’s
kind of difficult to see cars. The convertibles roof affects how much cargo room there is
in the XK. And if you don’t plan on using it, you still don’t get a lot of space there's only
enough a couple of soft bags. If you do want to use it you have to move this divider in
place so that the roof went down, can take up some of the cargo area and that gives even
less space to use but there's probably enough fore two people to bring things for a short
weekend trip.

So we wanted to see whether the XK lived up to its high starting price and I think it does
for the most part. Its looks grab a lot of attention. It’s got a strong V8 engine with the
great exhaust sound and a mostly premium interior.

There are those couple things that drag it down but overall I think this car really delivers
on its mission. For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog kickingtires.net.