OY, the Jaguar tire issue with no end!

The problem is the Pirellis fitted to the S-Type, and for years the P4000s
installed on the XJ. They are notorious for developing near-permanent flat
spots, which form after the car has been run for awhile and the rubber gets
warm and pliable. When the car is parked the rubber cools and the tire forms
a flat spot where it is in contact with the ground. While this condition in
varying degrees is common to most brands of  "Z" rated, high performance
radials, on other brands like Michelin, Continental, etc. the deformation
will go away after just a few minutes of driving. OTOH, the Pirellis begin
to take a "set" and the flat spots tend to become permanent. The condition
gets progressively worse and worse as more & more areas of the tire develop
these deformations.

Ford/Jaguar engineering use(d) Pirellis because they were cheap. They also
sourced some low-end Conti Contacs on the 2000 S-Type, not sure if that
continued. However the UK service guys started to rave about how nice the
Contis were, prbably because they'd used the crap Pirellis for so long they
had no experience with another brand.

When I ran Jaguar Customer Service in the USA we had a simple way to deal
with this annoying customer complaint: we fit equivalent rated Michelins and
never heard another peep from the customers. UK Service and Engineering knew
they had a crap vendor on their hands but for whatever reason there was
never any definitive action to solve this issue. Pirelli blamed
Engineeering's spec and said they'd warned them the problem would develop,
Engineering blamed Pirelli, etc. YADA YADA YADA, the Ford/Jaguar Corporate
BS went on and on. Meanwhile, no other competitior fit Pirellis to their
products so the simple answer was to just toss the tires and replace them
with another brand.

In those cases where the qualiy, engineering & service organizations
wouldn't deal with obvious issues, I was always very happy to spend A LOT of
Jaguar's money to help the customers.  Unfortunately, in the OP's case I'm
sure far too many miles and time have passed for Jaguar to contribute to
their replacment. A call to Tire Rack WILL solve your problem, however.

Gentlemen

Thanks I appreciate your comments and will take your combined advice. I will
keep you posted on outcome.

Regards

John

Are they really £56 +VAT each on the S-Type? I just had the main dealer
do these on my XJ8 (admittedly the suspension is probably completely
different), but the bushes were under £4 each, and the total job
including labour was less than £50 + VAT.

Matt