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Silvio Calabi: Stuck in style in a Jaguar XF

Unless you're already an aficionado, Jaguar models can be confusing — all those Xs paired with other letters, and some are called "Type" this and "Type"' that. But, old as it is, Jaguar is still a small car company, with just five models right now, of which two are so new that deliveries haven't yet begun. Recently I met one of them, the midsize aluminum XF sedan, in Arizona, and promised more detail after I'd been able to live with it for a week. That week is now up, but our XF spent nearly all of it in a garage at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill in Breckenridge, Colorado. The agile, comfortable, well-equipped rear-wheel drive XF made short work of the 100-mile dash up into the mountains from Denver, but even with snow tires and All-Surface Progress Control it couldn't handle our driveway. An AWD XF will be available soon—just not soon enough. Stay tuned.

Postscript—Pilot texting and driving. A reader from North Carolina reacted to my review of the updated Honda Pilot, wherein I claimed that its new safety systems could protect the driver while texting. She wrote: "Are you encouraging or condoning texting? The Honda Pilot may hit the brakes if a frontal collision is possible, but the driver should not have been texting to begin with. Your statement could make the reader/driver assume it is now safe to text and drive."

Having observed people reading the newspaper, shaving, applying makeup, eating, drinking and even procreating while driving, as well as telephoning and staring fixedly down at their digital doohickeys, I was being, like, facetious. Because we all know that texting and driving is like drinking and driving; it's just a different form of craziness. Like many carmakers, Honda just wants to protect us from ourselves—and they surely don't want us texting in their cars.

Well and good, but as cars learn to address more and more of our mistakes—sideswiping other cars, drifting out of our lane, blindly backing into stuff or out into traffic, mis-shifting, braking too hard or not hard enough, tailgating, going into corners too fast, stalling on hills, over-steering or over-throttling on slick surfaces, or just driving into whatever's in front of us—we get more and more sloppy behind the wheel.

Thanks to anti-lock brakes and traction control, we already have two generations of drivers who don't really know how to steer and stop by feel. Today's young drivers must be developing even more failings. Yet we can hardly blame them, since carmakers are aiding and abetting this in the name of safety. Hey, why should I look before changing lanes, if my blind-spot monitor says it's OK? Modern airliners are crammed with safety systems, but when they fail, rarely, often their pilots don't know what to do.

I drove across Wyoming not long ago in an Infiniti that could—in perfect conditions—steer and pace itself continuously at up to 90 mph. For minutes at a time, I was able to sit and gaze at the antelope and wind turbines with just one monitory thumb on the wheel while the car galloped across the plains. Had a text or email arrived on my phone, I can't swear that I wouldn't have read it, and even replied to it, because doing so would have been too easy and too tempting, and apparently safe. Infiniti would be the first to be horrified about this, but it's like providing in-car infotainment and connectivity and then cautioning us against distracted driving. Eh? What?

Most carmakers are offering this kind of help as baby steps en route to truly self-driving, autonomous cars. Their impact on our skills aside, so far none of these systems is as active, effortless, calculating and farseeing as a reasonably skilled and focused human driver. A good driver can come up behind a slower car, modulate the brakes and throttle, fade left, pass, fade right and resume speed more smoothly than any "intelligent" cruise control. A good driver can also stay in a lane better than any robot, with its intrusive touch-and-react methodology. So after a trial run, unless I'm in mindless stop-and-go traffic or droning down an interstate highway, or I'm so tired I shouldn't be driving anyway, I shut down much of this software and proceed the old-fashioned way. When I'm driving, I'm driving. Either I'm paying attention or I'm not; I can't do halfway. Must be an age-and-experience thing.

Silvio Calabi reviews the latest from Detroit, Munich, Yokohama, Gothenburg, Crewe, Seoul and wherever else interesting cars are born. Silvio is a member of the International Motor Press Association whose automotive reviews date back to the Reagan administration. He is the former publisher of Speedway Illustrated magazine and an author. Contact him at calabi.silvio@gmail.com.