the car keeps shifting gears to neutral while driving I own a Jaguar XJL 2011 car which was bought a few years back from the Jaguar dealership in Great Neck, Long Island, NY. Although the sleek stylish look is an advantage, my overall experience has been absolutely horrific and death defying.

We started experiencing numerous technical issues earlier this year that were affecting the overall performance of the car with only 35,000 miles on it. For example, as we were driving on the road, the car would automatically shift gears into neutral. In some cases, we had to keep driving on neutral to get off the highway which obviously can be very dangerous. It happened several times and when we took it to Jaguar service station in Great Neck for servicing, they assured us that they fixed the problem and all was good; however, it happened again and again.

In March 2015, I had the most terrifying incident occur when I was driving on the Triboro Bridge from NY to NJ. I had my 12 year-old son and 10 year-old niece in the back seat. As we were on the bridge, the gear shifted automatically to neutral and smoke started to come out from the front engine. As the car started slowing down, and since there was no more control over the acceleration, I was very worried about getting rear ended by the vehicles coming up behind me. Since I was on the middle of the bridge, I had no choice but to keep driving until I could safely get off as there was no shoulder for me to park. The smoke had enveloped the entire outside of the car and I was so fearful of my children's lives. It felt as if the car was ready to blow up. We finally made it off the bridge and I immediately stopped the car on a shoulder lane and called the service hotline. Again, the car was taken in for servicing and the technicians supposedly fixed it and they said all was good.

Not so long after, the gear started automatically shifting to neutral again as we were driving to a friend's house. As we were too far from our home and did not want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, we stopped and turned the car off, waited a while, and then turned it back on so it could somehow reset itself. Unfortunately, this process had to be done numerous times until we were able to reach our friend's place. All the while, feeling as if the car was going to die out on us. Once we finally reached their home, we called the service hotline which towed away the car and we had to cab it back to our place. This time around, the Jaguar service station said that they were replacing the entire transmission. This replacement took place just 4 months ago.

Within a month later we had another similar situation, and took it into the service station. This time they said that the software was not re-calibrated and now that they did we would no longer have this issue.

Unfortunately, since then we have had a couple more incidents where the gear automatically shifts into neutral while driving. This of course, is an extremely dangerous situation while driving on a highway, bridge or tunnel. Having this constant feeling of being unsafe in your own car is very unnerving. At this point, I feel that we have given the dealership enough opportunities to resolve the situation, however, I believe that we have been sold a "lemon". Knowing that we don't put much mileage annually on our vehicles, we financed this car so that after paying it off, we would still be able to enjoy it for many years after our payments were over. When we approached the dealer recently, and wanted to know how they plan to rectify our situation, they suggested leasing or financing a new vehicle. This feels like a bait and switch tactic. Unfortunately, we are expected to bear the burden of additional costs of many more years of payments when I am almost finished paying off this existing one. This seems quite unfair when the cause of the problem seems evidently to be a defective vehicle that was sold to us from the start.

I did not expect this from a high end automobile company like Jaguar. For an expensive luxury car, our experience has been very disappointing. Given the constant issues with this car, we would never suggest leasing or purchasing a Jaguar.