Jaguar XJ – Driven To Write

A Game Of Two Halves

Three friends head out of deepest South Yorkshire to see how the Midland’s made cars in 2009.

On the 18th January 2008, Tata Motors purchased two illustrious British car brands from Ford, in the process establishing Jaguar Land Rover, aka JLR . Your author, along with many of our readership will no doubt remember the motoring magazines introducing this new Jaguar dawn, fresh with Indian money. At the time of our trip to the West Bromwich plant, the factory produced both XF and XJ models, considered by the press to be something of a relaunch for the Leaping Cat’s fortunes and capable of bloodying their German rivals’ noses.

Our November dawn was leaden, with heavy traffic heading south. As memory serves, we paid nothing for the privilege of the tour. Having registered our names sometime earlier, we were ticked off in school register fashion and like good school children wore our high visibility jackets and protective goggles without question. Informed the plant could be noisy, no ear defenders were proffered but we were told to Continue reading “A Game Of Two Halves”

Welcome to the Machine : Part Five

Opening up the XJ-S. In sections.

Even amongst luxurious and indulgent grand turismos the Jaguar XJ-S stood apart, alongside its other more contentious attributes for its disproportionate length-to-cabin ratio. Despite generous exterior proportions, the XJ-S was avowedly a 2+2, with the rear seats of only the occasional variety. But if close-coupled coupés might be considered the preserve of the sybarite, its drophead coupé equivalent was by comparison entirely the chariot of the hedonist.

During the early 1970s, convertibles began to fall out of favour on both sides of the Atlantic. The reasons for this are complex, but a major factor influencing carmakers involved fears of draconian United States federal safety proposals which threatened to outlaw open-topped cars entirely, or at the very least render them unsaleable. In Europe on the other hand, as socio-political tensions began to turn violent, the Riviera-set elected to Continue reading “Welcome to the Machine : Part Five”

The Last of England

Jaguar’s compact post-Millennial contender misfired badly. We look back on the X-Type and reconsider its legacy.

New Jag Generation.

In car manufacture, there can be no success without failure, each new model an educated shot in the dark, each failure a reproach, all the more so should the product in question represent a new market sector for its maker. Moving downmarket carries greater risk, for the virtues to which customers have become familiar and value most must be offered in diminished form. Nor does development cost fall, any gains being rooted in volume and economies of scale. Furthermore, once a business has taken such a step, there really is no going back.

To some extent therefore, the X-Type irreparably damaged brand-Jaguar, the carmaker never quite recovering from the financial losses incurred by the X400 programme. The figures involved are sobering. According to a study carried out by corporate analysts, Sanford C Bernstein a number of years ago, Jaguar allegedly lost €4600 on every X-Type sold – an overall loss amounting to over €1.7 billion.

Widely viewed as Jaguar’s deadliest sin and the butt of derision amongst the more sensationalist automotive press, the story behind the X-Type’s less than charmed career is not only more complex than is often told, but deserves a less emotive, more nuanced telling. But beforehand we must first Continue reading “The Last of England”

F is for Failure

There’s little new in the world.

An artist’s render of the upper-level version of Projet F. (c) citroenet.org.uk

The news earlier this week that JLR cancelled its Jaguar XJ programme, believed to have been close to production-readiness was greeted with varying degrees of dismay by the commentator and enthusiast community. Many questioned the financial logic of taking such drastic action so late in the developmental programme, suggesting that such profligacy was madness.

Whether folly or expediency, it was certainly not unique, BLMC rather notably electing to cancel the Rover P8 programme at huge expense in 1971, for example. However, perhaps the most glaring and possibly the most financially damaging instance was that of Citroën, when in April 1967, President, Pierre Bercot took the decision to Continue reading “F is for Failure”

Nocturama

As regular readers roll their eyes skywards in exasperation, we return to a familiar theme, but in a somewhat untimely setting.

As some of you know all too well, DTW’s editor has something of a habit of repeating himself – almost as much as the subject of today’s nocturnal meditation. The more astute amongst you, by the way will have discerned that these photographs were not taken all that recently, which I will admit to – they were in fact snapped in early December, when the world was young(er) and life was, well, a little simpler.

What I really don’t want to do today is Continue reading “Nocturama”

Under the Knife – Introducing the Hard Line

The 2007 XJ facelift was tasteless as it was expedient. But there are things we can learn from it.

Let us get one thing abundantly clear before we progress. Designing Jaguars is fiendishly difficult and if you doubt this for a moment, try it. Therefore anyone who makes a decent fist of the craft deserves credit rather than opprobrium. Having said that however, there are a few strictures a Jaguar designer ignores at his peril – the primary one being a matter of discernment.

There is a very simple process one can perform: I call it The Sir William Test. It’s quite simple really. When presented with a problem of a stylistic or creative nature, the Jaguar stylist should Continue reading “Under the Knife – Introducing the Hard Line”

Cat-tivated

The Editor makes no apologies.

Those amongst you who know me will recognise my propensity to repeat myself, so if you have heard this before, well, the only solace I can offer is the assurance that there will be another (better) article tomorrow.

Growing up in an Irish backwater – (Cork was very parochial in the 1970s) – was a pretty meagre affair. Mostly I remember the rain. It was always raining. And while we weren’t badly off, there was little in reserve and even less by way of indulgence, frippery or delight. Belts were worn tightly. String was saved. Even the biscuits were of a distinctly penitential nature. Continue reading “Cat-tivated”

Leap of Faith

It was brave, it was a failure and its fate was etched in Jaguar’s past.

Acts of creative reinvention are rarely acknowledged at the time of committal, being far more likely to be misunderstood and derided by those whose expectations were, for a variety of reasons subverted or otherwise denied. Brave or foolish? There is a fine line which separates both polarities, because inevitably, whenever these adjectives are appended to matters of a creative nature, it tends to be connected to its failure.

The X351-series Jaguar was a brave design, attempting to break from the creative straitjacket the over-familiar, and overworked XJ silhouette had evolved into. But now, a decade on from its Summer 2009 debut, and with the curtain soon to fall upon its production career, we can Continue reading “Leap of Faith”

Fate Accompli

The lessons of history are fated to be repeated – endlessly.

It was all going to plan. In 2002, production of the X308-series XJ ceased at Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant, after all, an all-new replacement was shortly to come on stream to replace it. However, with the decision taken and implemented, a crisis arose. Jaguar engineers hit significant hurdles in the pressing of the X350 XJ’s aluminium bodyshell, necessitating a significant delay in series production.

As it transpired, it would be another year before the XJ was launched and in the interregnum, Jaguar was absent, not only from its core market, but also its most lucrative. When the 2003 XJ did reach buyers, not only did the car itself meet with a less than rapturous reception, but a significant number of former Jaguar customers had taken their business elsewhere. Many failed to Continue reading “Fate Accompli”

Saving Grace

The Series III XJ saved Jaguar. We tell its story.

The culmination of a lifetime’s study by a master auteur, the original XJ saloon of 1968 was not only a defining motor car, but the definitive Jaguar. Proving by comparison to be something of a fortuitous accident, its third iteration, the Series III of 1979 would become more significant still – all the more so for the fact that despite it being an almost perfectly pitched update of a well-loved design, its botched introduction almost killed the business entirely.

Frequently exercises in diminishing returns, facelifts tend to either manifest as change for changes sake, or alternatively a last ditch effort to Continue reading “Saving Grace”

See Them Dance Around The Five-Lamps At Sunrise

The words “Double Six” constitute a very short poem, don’t they?

Even when new, the words Double Six carried a lot of force, a force approximate to the stump-pulling torque of the 12-cylinder power station jammed under the lusciously scultpted bonnet. Since then the heft of the words have only increased. Twelve pot engines are exceedingly rare now and they were not common when this Daimler could Continue reading “See Them Dance Around The Five-Lamps At Sunrise”

Saving Grace – Part Four

Understanding the background to Jaguar’s 1979 annus horriblis.

The Castle Bromwich paint debacle crystallised the manner in which the relationship between Jaguar and its adoptive parent broke down in the years following its absorption into British Leyland; one characterised by unwarranted interference and lack of meaningful communication on one hand and distrust, insubordination and outright defiance on the other.

The roots of this go back to the creation of the car giant in 1968 – a piece of well-meaning, government-led commercial engineering. Much like a certain latterday piece of political engineering currently paralysing Britain’s political establishment, the BLMC experiment was undeliverable, but more fundamentally still, should probably never have been attempted in the first place. Continue reading “Saving Grace – Part Four”

The Shining of Things

It’s the end of a long week and you find us today in a somewhat reflective mood.

It was a daring gambit on the part of Jaguar’s styling hierarchy to overturn what had become a stagnant design aesthetic, but ten years on, the X351 series XJ has not lost its power to polarise opinion. Certainly, the passage of time has failed to leaven its more visually unsettling aspects – most of which, (as recently discussed on these pages) centre around the D-pillar area, where a good many visual strands converge in a not altogether harmonious fashion.

With all due consideration, it’s quite possible to imagine that Jaguar’s Ian Callum frequently finds himself awake at night scouring his memory to Continue reading “The Shining of Things”

Mystery Car

Today we are having a mystery car competition which is why the headline says “Mystery Car”.

To make it difficult for almost everyone, I am showing the underside of the car and not the usual detail of the exterior. Seeing this car up close came as a pleasant surprise. Just after Christmas day I was driving past a venue in south county Dublin known for meetings of members of the marque club.

I saw no classic cars and drove on disappointed. By chance, ten minutes later saw the whole lot of the club parked up in Dun Laoighaire, by the yacht club. I did a rapid U-turn and drove back to give the fleet a closer gander. I had a chance to talk to some of the members as well and if you are by chance reading this please do not Continue reading “Mystery Car”

The Quintessence : (Part Five)

Manufacturing was Jaguar’s fatal weakness. It would become XJ6’s undoing.

Browns Lane production tracks. (c) curbside Classic

Through a combination of genius, skill, misfortune and at times, sheer good luck, the Jaguar XJ6 proved to be precisely what the market realised it wanted. Offering all the glamour and visual allure of the E-Type in a four-door package, customers quickly discovered it fitted their needs very nicely indeed. The trouble was obtaining one.

When Lyons sanctioned the model, he set production targets of a thousand cars a week. This would have amounted to slightly over 50,000 cars per annum, a figure Jaguar wouldn’t meet until the 1990s, and certainly one the XJ-series never came close to meeting – for a whole host of reasons.

The first of these manifested itself as Jaguar struggled to ramp up XJ6 production in the advent of the car’s launch. The XJ bodyshell was built at PSF in Castle Bromwich. Made up of hundreds of small pressings, the XJ shells were designed this way, firstly to Continue reading “The Quintessence : (Part Five)”

Quintessence

William Lyons’ masterpiece.

“Without any doubt at all, the XJ6 is my personal favourite. It comes closer to than any other to what I always had in mind as my ideal car.” Sir William Lyons.

One bright spring morning in 1967, two men strode towards a lock-up garage in the grounds of an imposing Edwardian stately home, amid the rolling Warwickshire countryside. As the dew shimmered on the immaculately tended lawns and borders of Wappenbury Hall, Sir William Lyons, Jaguar Chairman, Chief Executive and spiritus rector regarding all matters aesthetic, led his European Sales Director, John Morgan to where Jaguar’s vitally important new car lay sequestered, in seemingly definitive prototype form.

An autocrat to the tips of his highly polished brogues he may have been, but Lyons nevertheless regularly canvassed the opinions of those he trusted, although having done so, he would Continue reading “Quintessence”

The Quintessence : (Part One)

William Lyons’ masterpiece. In a series of articles, we celebrate an automotive high watermark as it marks its 50th anniversary.

“Without any doubt at all, the XJ6 is my personal favourite. It comes closer to than any other to what I always had in mind as my ideal car.” Sir William Lyons.

One bright spring morning in 1967, two men strode towards a lock-up garage in the grounds of an imposing Victorian stately home, amid the rolling Warwickshire countryside. As the dew shimmered on the immaculately tended lawns and borders of Wappenbury Hall, Sir William Lyons, Chairman, Chief Executive and spiritus rector regarding all matters aesthetic, led his European Sales Director, John Morgan to where Jaguar’s vitally important new car lay sequestered, in seemingly definitive prototype form.

Jury-Rigged?

The 1987 ECOTY winner was something of a DTW stalwart. Even more so however was the fifth placed entrant, one championed by longtime panellist and judge, L.J.K. Setright.

1987 winner. Image credit: (c) wheelsage

Since its inception in 1964, the European Car of the Year has been an annual award, adjudicated by a panel of leading European motoring journalists. Its stated aim has been to acclaim the most outstanding new car to go on sale within the 12 months preceding the adjudication.

The ECOTY jury currently consists of 60 members, representing 23 European countries. National representation is based on the size and significance of the country’s car market. France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain each Continue reading “Jury-Rigged?”

Jurors the Dawn, Dusk and Midnight Silently Attend

To save this village we must destroy it. And similar logic applies to the next Jaguar XJ. Altered to be saved.

That is the common theme to reports from this, this and this source but not this one***.

Join these dots: It has worked well for Tesla, this big, five-door luxury car idea. Lexus has been able to sell hybrid V-8s since 2008. Land Rover has been competing for the top-drawer luxury market for at least twenty years or more. Five doors and luxury are not strangers to each other. Sales of conventional luxury cars are not what they were, not unless the Panamera nameplate is involved.

In particular, the current XJ whose sales appear to be in the low thousands. Twenty one years ago the XJ sold 10,000 units annually – not stellar, not terrible. Today even those kinds of numbers aren’t sustainable. Those were the dots. On the basis of this kind of background, Jaguar have decided that they simply must Continue reading “Jurors the Dawn, Dusk and Midnight Silently Attend”

Southwards, By Jaguar

A languid road trip to Italy by Jaguar. What could possibly go wrong?

The combination of Italy, twelve cylinders and pleasant company ought not leave space for prosaic considerations, such as reliability or fuel economy. But worries have a habit of finding their way, nevertheless.

It had been a rather testing day, with little sleep and an unusual amount of stress, right at the end of a particularly challenging summer. The back aches, the tired mind is dulled on one hand, yet feverishly edgy on the other. The three issues at the forefront of any immediate consideration are: a welcoming bed, the board computer’s average MPG calculations and the engine temperature gauge.

As the night is relatively cool and the Autobahn relatively clear, the engine temperature thankfully shows no signs of panic – yet. The average MPG, on the other hand, remains disconcertingly high. And that bed, well, that’s still some 300 kilometres further south. Continue reading “Southwards, By Jaguar”

Theme: Wheels – Going In Circles

Once upon a time, there was a belief that the ideal way to complement the shape of a wheel was… by adding circles. That time was the Eighties.

SONY DSC — The, somewhat notorious, GKN ‘Pepperpot’ Wheel

Perception is a fickle beast. Take Jaguar’s XJ saloon: an undisputed classic to most, yet, as far as its image is concerned, the devil is in the details. In the UK, its elegant silhouette cannot quite strip off the odour of Pub Owner’s Favourite. In Germany, on the other hand, Jaguar still suffers from being perceived as a much more elitist brand than its actual pricing suggests. Which is why running a classic XJ is viewed as an enterprise closer to owning a Rolls-Royce than a relatively run-of-the-mill S-class, in terms of the financial commitment necessary. But that only half explains why an XJ is considered the exclusive domain of silver haired golfing enthusiasts on these shores. Continue reading “Theme: Wheels – Going In Circles”

You’re Not Alone, Jaguar

We look closer at European luxury car sales

Looking at European sales of the 7 Series, A8, XJ and S Class since 1997 (figures courtesy Left-Lane.com) in chart form is revealing. Of course, each brand’s sales pick up when a new model is released, but the S Class jump with its last three model launches is proportionally huge compared with the others. But as the model becomes established, it sinks to quite similar levels as the A8 and 7 Series. Why is this? One explanation may be the private hire trade. In this a Mercedes is the default choice and, as I heard from one guy who runs his own car, clients don’t like being picked up in a previous model – as soon as the new model becomes available he puts in his order for a car that lasts him 7 years. Continue reading “You’re Not Alone, Jaguar”

Theme : Secondhand – Forecourt Temptations 3

DTW Looks At The Used XJ Market

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Big secondhand cars are a bargain – until they go wrong. This one owner, 4 year old, dark grey XJ has done just 30,000 miles and could be yours for £19,880, almost 1/3 of its cost new today. Personally I wouldn’t choose the 3.0 litre diesel version, the idiot in me would look further up the scale on Autotrader for an entirely inappropriate Supersport. Otherwise, there’s an 8 year old X350 at just 28,000 miles for just under £13,000. In any case, the XJ looks like it is shaping up to be the wedding car of the next decade.

View It Here.

Tinseltown in the Rain

Reflections on Jaguar’s XJ: DTW’s resident Jaguariste remembers a time when life and advertising met, sniffed one another before hurriedly going their separate ways.

jaguar-xj-2010 — Image credit: (c) Jaguar

In 2009, I became somewhat overexcited about a new car launch. Following over 40-years of stylistic diminishing returns, to be presented with a twenty first century interpretation of the Jaguar XJ was exciting beyond rational explanation. Lacking a decent opportunity to Continue reading “Tinseltown in the Rain”

Devourer Of Worlds – The Inexorable Rise Of The S-Class

Mercedes’ new W222 S-Class is decimating its European and Asian rivals. A renaissance for a declining sector or the final gasp? Driven to write investigates.

The S-Class is the quintessential Mercedes and the centre of gravity around which the entire Stuttgart-Untertürkheim behemoth pivots. None more so than today’s W222 series; which if current sales are a reliable barometer, is shaping up to be the fastest selling iteration in the model’s history. Continue reading “Devourer Of Worlds – The Inexorable Rise Of The S-Class”

1968 Jaguar XJ-6 Road Test: “A Load of Old Baltics” (Part 3)

Archie Vicar continues touring from London to Latvia in Jaguar’s new XJ-6. His mission, to test this important new saloon and to recover his hand-made shoes left behind on a previous jaunt.

_{From “Private Motor Car Owner” (pages 34-39, page 109, page 116, December, 1968). Photography by Douglas Land-Windermere. Owing to the very poor quality of the original images, stock photography has been used.}

Day Four
Getting into Latvia was a breeze. We presented our passports and sacrificed a few cherished boxes of Craven “A” cigarettes and we were in. Even the sight of the new Jaguar, in De Luxe trim and virtually rust free, didn’t make the unshaven brute at the border blink. It seemed like we would sail through under the dusty hem of the Iron Curtain.

But then we spent 9 hours waiting at a road-block deep in the middle of nowhere. Continue reading “1968 Jaguar XJ-6 Road Test: “A Load of Old Baltics” (Part 3)”