Hi to all
having read most of this topic with interest and not having contributed to the club's forums before, I thought I would add my experience.
I only had my STR for 5 months, I thought I had got the best possible example, from condition, loads of invoices for work done and a FDSH on 95k. It was an '02 in Zircon Blue. I was really happy with the car, cruising at just under 2000rpm on a long motorway journey, it would even do 30mpg, not that that was ever a priority. Performance was good, not far off the 5ltr XKR I had a few years ago, although slightly blunted by the auto's insistence on changing up too early, even if in 'manual' selection. The XKR had the same box and another 100bhp, but presumably different software?
I had the rot in the sills, fortunately only small patches both sides about 20cm back from the front end and easily fixed. The rear subframe was also found heavily surface-rusted but still solid. The infamous hose under the supercharger was still intact but a local garage said they all go at my mileage, however they could do it for about £300 depending on exactly what ancillaries needed replacing, rather than the £1000+ I'd heard about. I also had occasional slight surging in revs under light load at 1700rpm in Sports mode, rumour was this was a failing torque converter, but it didn't do it in Normal mode.
At 98k, cruising at low revs, an engine rattle developed. Turned out to be one of the main bearing caps had fretted loose, lunching the bottom end. Despite my understanding these engines have a bulletproof reputation, the marque specialist who took it in told me they now get a steady stream of these engines letting go in this manner at these miles. The cheapest (!) option was another second-hand engine with just a 30 day warranty, at £4300 all in!! After much soul-searching, I decided to scrap the car, not least over the dawning realisation that even with another engine, the car had reached a point where lots of things were quite easily going to cost big money, e.g. found the headlamp washers had failed, no obvious fix, needed for next MOT due to being fitted and with xenon lamps, complete bumper-off job, intermittent ABS sensor fail, the aforementioned hose?, seat and pedal position memory fail etc etc.
Still a big Jag fan, lots of other makes have their own faults, it was the engine fail I wanted to mention as it was a shock to me, but apparently starting to become known in the trade, same with LR's as they use the same engine.