Pick Of The Bunch
by David Finlay (24 August 06)

In gentleman's clubs across the land there may still be a few old buffers who splutter over their whiskies and soda when some fool raises the topic of a Jaguar fitted with a diesel engine. It's still, after all, quite a recent phenomenon. Just ten years ago the very idea would have been enough to give many people the hiccups. But a few miles behind the wheel should be enough to convince all but the most bigoted that the XJ 2.7 TDVi is in all respects a Good Thing.

I've said many times in the past that I think the XJ is the best Jaguar, the model that is most securely in the company's comfort zone, the car that Jaguar people really want to build. All the versions fitted with petrol engines (supercharged or otherwise) are impressive, but the TDVi is just possibly the best car in the range.

The 2.7-litre V6 turbo diesel unit has been discussed here often. It's the engine co-developed by Ford - mostly for its Premier Automotive Group products - and PSA Peugeot Citroen, and both conglomerates have been busily inserting it into any engine bay large enough to accept it. And so it can be found (in more or less the same form, though with some detail differences) in cars as diverse as the Citroen C6, the Jaguar S-Type, the Land Rover Discovery, the Peugeot 407 and the Range Rover Sport.

The common thread here is that the engine is almost invariably the best thing about the car. It's powerful (around the 200bhp mark depending on application), it's economical (35mpg combined in the XJ), it's flexible, it's smooth and it's quiet. Noise levels in the XJ TDVi are about the same as those for the V8 petrol models in gentle motoring, and even under pressure the diesel provides nothing more offensive than an unusually throaty purr.

Compared with the 3.0 V6, the TDVi offers various pros and cons. For cars with the same trim level, the diesel is £1980 more expensive and comes one insurance group higher (though since all XJs these days will set you back more than £40,000 this is perhaps trivial detail).

The diesel produces less power but a full 100lb/ft more torque, and does it at much lower revs. The result is that the standard performance figures are almost identical; the TDVi has inferior top speed and 0-62mph stats to the piffling extent of 4mph and 0.1 seconds respectively.

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