Comeback for Jaguar X-Type

Steve Cropley is usually right. In Autocar this week he suggests it’s time we “allowed the X-Type Jaguar in from the cold.” It’s true. Autocar tests awarded a rare four stars to both saloon and estate X-Types but ever since its introduction in 2001 critics were sniffy about it not being a real Jaguar but only a Mondeo in fancy dress. It has been underrated ever since, a bit like the splendid Rover 75 of 1998-2005, which also got off to a bad start. You can now buy perfectly worthy examples of either for £1,000.

Codenamed X400, the X-type followed a precedent of 1922, using underpinnings from another car manufacturer. Then the SS as Jaguar was known at the time, was based on the Standard Motor Company’s Standard Sixteen. Now it was Jaguar’s owner Ford Motor Company, and the new model’s technical basis was the Ford Mondeo. However, although it followed the broad principles worked out for the Mondeo, with four wheel drive, Macpherson strut suspension and transverse engine it owed almost as much to world standards of medium-sized car design. It was just as much a car of its time as a collection of bits from the Ford parts inventory.

Halewood was barely 60 miles (96.56km) by road from Blackpool, where young William Lyons started and the X-type, in some senses, went back to its SS roots; stylish, well made and fast, with interior trim of good taste and quality. It completed Jaguar’s four-model range, designed to at least double production from 85,000, a target temptingly close but never in real terms achievable. Conceived, developed and paid for at the Whitley Engineering Centre in Coventry, X-type remained strongly Jaguar in style and detail.

Like the first unitary construction Jaguar, the 2.4 of 1955, the X-type was aimed at a new clientele of whom some had never had a Jaguar before. In 1955 there had been big Jaguars and sports Jaguars but the 2.4 was neither and at £1269 cost the same as a contemporary Rover 75. The analogy could be stretched to the X-type, once again about the same price, or a little more than, the Rover 75 yet with its novel transmission and emphasis on speed and precise handling smaller, sportier and more affordable. X-type remained unflinchingly refined, well-furnished and by no means down-market with a choice of 2.5 litre or 3.0 litre V6 engines and, Mike Cross, senior engineering specialist, promised, an exceptional chassis, “The X-type will perform exactly how the driver wants it to. Its balance of ride and handling complemented by all-wheel-drive means it will hug the road or cruise smoothly and quietly.”

Distributing 41 per cent of driving torque to the front wheels and 59 per cent to the rear gave the X-type a predominantly rear wheel drive feel with the security of four wheel drive. Differences in speed between the front and rear wheels were sensed by a viscous coupling in the epicyclic centre differential. In the event of one set of wheels spinning, the torque split adjusted automatically to provide the best traction and stability.

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Goodwood Jaguar

D-type MWS 302 (chassis No XKD502) was never quite as distinguished as its almost identical twin XKD501, registered by Ecurie Ecosse in Edinburgh as MWS 301. A new production D-type in May 1955, 301 was crashed in practice at the Nürburgring by Jimmy Stewart. Trapped underneath after the new disc brakes failed him Jackie’s brother, who had crashed heavily in an Aston Martin at Le Mans the previous year, resolved to give up racing. Irishman Desmond Titterington, driving 302 also suffered braking problems but 301 went on to glory, coming second at the Goodwood 9 hours race in August. Wilkie Wilkinson Ecosse’s chief mechanic rolled it at Snetterton in 1956 but it was rebuilt by the works and won Le Mans, with Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson. Here is 302 at Goodwood last weekend.

There was no Le Mans luck for 302. Titterington took the Ulster Trophy with it and Sanderson won at Aintree, then Ecosse disposed of it to Maurice Charles in Cardiff who fitted E-type independent rear suspension. Like most racing cars 302 was taken to pieces, rebuilt several times then restored by Lynx before being sold to a Japanese collector in the 1980s. 

When I drove it to Le Mans in about 1966 it was a bit down at heel. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest wanted to parade past winners of the 24 hours’ race, so 302’s owner and I drove it there; that’s me (below) taking a precise line through Mulsanne corner. The long nose was ill-fitting, a later addition that it didn’t have new and it even had a sort of luggage compartment along with a fin. A D-Type had a lightweight central section but the front tubular sub-frame was not integral and made from steel, not aluminium. The engine was dry-sump with no proper flywheel and made do with a crankshaft damper and the massive triple-plate clutch. With 285bhp on three Weber carburettors, a 2.79:1 axle, and 6000rpm (only 250rpm above peak power) it would do 183mph (294.5kph) but 302’s independent rear suspension made it squirm a bit. It rode quite well on the road. It was certainly less precise than a D-type should have been. Proper rear suspension was restored, a more exact body made and it returned to Europe in the 1990s. It now owned by French enthusiast and collector Robert Sarrailh.

 I was able to compare the slightly erratic 302 with TKF 9, the Border Reivers’ D-type of Jim Clark, on a memorable day’s driving at Oulton Park. For an Autocar feature published on 20 June 1968 I did a back-to-back test with a C-type, D-type and E-type, and thought the D “perhaps less well suited to tight slow corners than long fast ones - a car for a fast circuit.” I did not enjoy it as much as the less supple but a racier and maybe stiffer C-type. Basic price of a D-type in 1955 was £2,585, purchase tax brought it to £3,878 17s 6d. In 1968 I ventured that, “… today 13 years after it left Browns Lane, it is still one of the fastest production cars ever. A good D is such a collector's item that when one comes on the market, upwards of £5,000 is likely to change hands.” That would be £80,000 now. So D-types, at the £2.2million paid for one in 2008, were sound investments.

XE Launch

YouGov’s poll in the Scottish referendum destroyed any hope Jaguar might have had about front pages and TV news channels. Exploits on or above the Thames presupposed Monday would be a slow news day and it was not. Spectaculars may be great for a management’s morale but good cars don’t need them. Three E-types at Geneva and lunch for press at a lakeside restaurant were enough in 1961. More attainable than a Ferrari, more charismatic than a Rolls-Royce, racier than a Mercedes-Benz the E-type stamped its image on a generation. The Mini made it big with a day’s press testing on a military test track at Chobham.

To be fair it’s not easy nowadays to make much of a new car. You can’t break a story in style. They are so conformist. The new XE looks so much like the XF and XJ it may pass un-noticed. As a family rendition it’s great. It is what the X-type should have been, yet perfectly good though it was, failed at. With a starting price of £27,000 XE takes on the 3-series BMW. It has advantages including being largely aluminium (Jaguar is careful to call it “aluminium-intensive”) and the F-type’s wishbone front suspension and integral link rear promise good handling. It is the most aerodynamic production Jaguar, with a Cd of 0.26. The quick S has an 8-speed automatic.

Unfortunately there is not much new about XE that you can see unless you count “The signature J-Blade running lights; another instantly recognisable Jaguar design element. In the rear lights, a horizontal line intersecting a roundel is a powerful styling feature inherited from the iconic E-type.” The aluminium and the Ingenium engines will be great but the helicoptering and the costly VIP endorsements reveal a collapse of confidence. Winning Le Mans used to be enough to get attention and reassure customers. Now Jaguar puts on stunts and made a great deal of working with “multi-platinum” (whatever that is) singer songwriter Emeli Sandé to create what it called a FEEL XE track, inspired through social media. Fans were asked “What makes you feel Exhilarated?”

Emeli premiered the new track live on the Thames as part of what Jaguar called an exclusive 45-minute set on a floating stage in the middle of the river. Three hundred guests watched from another boat and there was a projection-mapping spectacle on County Hall. “To create a truly stunning setting The London Eye, County Hall and Shell Building were turned red, while a series of red flares were launched along the river to turn the skyline red during the performance.”

BMW and Mercedes-Benz introductions are by comparison low-key. Audi would think it inappropriate. Their cars speak for themselves.

There’s nothing new. Jaguar flew the XE to Earls Court by way of Tower Bridge (left). Ford did the same 44 years ago (right) celebrating its millionth Cortina with a 2-hour flight to a new owner in Ostend.

From next week it's a whole new Dove Publishing. http://www.dovepublishing.co.uk