25th Nov 2010, 08:11
XFs look nice, but are hugely problematic: our accountant is on his third replacement car after persistent breakdowns with both other new XKs, one of our clients is one his second after rejecting the first for a large number of ongoing faults, and is still not happy with the replacement car.
For me, the first thing a car should be is fault free and reliable; then and only then make it stylish, pretty, high spec etc. Every £1000 of purchase price above a basic car buys something over the basic premise that it is built to do a job - better plastics, ambiance etc - the reliability should be there even on a cheap car.
To spend 50k-odd on something not fundamentally reliable is lunacy, when a 10k car can be faultless; regardless of image etc.
At least you are comfortable when it breaks down. Again.
12th Dec 2011, 05:21
Mine has been awful. I've had it for just shy of two years, and the only time it hasn't had at least one thing wrong with it was the first four days of the ownership period.
The only consolation is that modern BMWs are even worse if the experiences of my colleagues with various models of 3 and 5 series diesels are anything to go by. One of the 5s (a 530d) is very close to an economic write off at 3 years old after a runaway engine failure caused by a known turbocharger fault.
I suspect the complexity of cars nowadays, means that most ownership experiences involve endless chasing of faults.
3rd Jul 2012, 09:51
I think it's hard to find reliable cars now. Just sold my 2008 Mercedes C220 CDi, because at 96,000 miles, the repair costs and frequent faults (despite full MB S/H) were intolerable.
Replaced with a BMW 320d (F30), which has already been into the dealer four times in its first 2 months with an i-Drive system failure, noisy fan blower, knocking front suspension, and outright failure of the Stop/Start system.
I think this is the first generation of cars that are less reliable than their predecessors. I remember running stuff in the 90's and early 2000's that racked up six figure mileages without so much as a murmur. Cars have become temperamental and over complicated, and are stuffed with technology that basically doesn't work properly.
24th Nov 2010, 15:12
I'm not having such a great time with my 2009 XF V6 Diesel S.
It's a beautiful car to look at, sit in, and drive, but the fault tally is rapidly becoming unacceptable. So far (at 18 months and 22,000 carefully driven miles) :
Noisy rear suspension
Noisy steering column
ESP error
Rattle from rear seats
Excessive wind noise from drivers door.
Not acceptable on a £44,000 car.