While sporty in style and substance, the XJ most impressed me with its creature comforts and attention to detail. The XJ I tested was trimmed in a gorgeous, biscuit-brown leather with clotted-cream piping that carried through in the inlaid wood dash. The dashboard display was a trio of circular gauges that appeared to be analog but were in fact digital. Analog dials are easier to read, but digital provides more information because the gauges aren't mechanical and can disappear at the touch of a button.
Using steering wheel controls, the tachometer gauge vanishes and becomes a menu to operate the stereo and other systems; the gas gauge can also fade at the touch of a button, to be replaced with a line-of-sight navigation screen. My favorite dashboard feature? The speedometer, which rings the vehicle speed in a halo of light — the better to see how ungodly fast one might be traveling.
