All generations and engines together · 42,802 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 62k
Middling among saloons and estates, by age and by mileage. Watch lights & electrics and wheels. A fair used buy, provided its MOT history has no repeating lights & electrics advisories.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Owners report a pause when pulling away gently, especially off a roundabout, followed by the ZF 8-speed box suddenly dropping two or three gears and lurching forward. It shows up from fairly low mileage and isn't tied to age. Dealers have fixed it with a software update or, on some cars, a throttle pedal potentiometer swap, both relatively cheap compared with a transmission fault. Doesn't affect manual XE diesels.
A metallic rattle from the top of the engine, worse on cold start, has been reported on the 2.0-litre diesel from around 48,000 miles on some cars. Left alone it can mean a stretched chain or worn tensioner, and because the chain sits behind the engine it's usually an engine-out job if it needs replacing rather than a quick fix, plausibly running into four figures. Petrol Ingenium units aren't reported with the same issue.
Owners describe repeated ABS and wheel-sensor fault codes, spurious warning lights on the dash, and the electronic parking brake refusing to release. This is the electrical layer of the car misbehaving, which lines up with lights and electrics being the measured signature fault for this class of car in the MOT record, though the register's version is mostly bulbs and wiring rather than sensor electronics. A single sensor replacement is usually a few hundred pounds; a cascade of fault codes can mean more than one visit to sort.
The touchscreen system freezes, drops the SD-card navigation, or goes blank and needs a restart, and the USB port can stop recognising phones or players until repeatedly reinserted. Jaguar has run recalls covering faulty infotainment screens on the XE, so check whether a car's recall work is up to date, since a screen fixed under recall costs the buyer nothing but one bought out-of-warranty can mean a module swap.
Rear discs are reported needing replacement well before you'd expect, sometimes by 27,000-40,000 miles, and heavier corrosion has shown up even earlier on cars that don't do much motorway work. Some owners put this down to a genuine parts issue, others say it's the usual result of a light-braking rear axle and short journeys in wet UK weather not shifting surface rust. Either way, budget for it.
Early XEs were subject to a Jaguar safety recall over a fuel line clamp fault, linked to a fuel or exhaust smell getting into the cabin, sometimes described by owners as a "tom cat spray" odour (which on other cars traces to the air-con evaporator, so don't assume every smell complaint is this recall). If you're buying an early car, confirm the recall work was actually carried out rather than just offered.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 34,949 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Same segment (Saloons & estates), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.