A few days ago Motor1’s Chris Bruce posted an article about the orphaned Jaguar X-Type race car that was intended for the stillborn SCV8 Supercar Championship in the UK. According to the article, the cars would have been built on a shared space frame but with brand-specific bodywork, with the competing cars being the Peugeot 407 and Vauxhall Vectra, all sharing a 550hp 3.2L Nicholson McLaren V8. The series never materialized, but one Jaguar X-Type race prototype was built and is now up for sale, albeit without the originally planned engine.
The article renewed a dull but familiar pang of sadness that I experience every time I see Jaguars from the past.
Jaguar sedans (and farther back, XJ coupes and other models) featured hallmark styling cues that include a forward canted grille flanked by quad headlights with beautifully sculpted nacelles integrated into a long hood and steeply raked windshield terminating into a sensuously low roofline with a formal C-pillar (for which I am inexorably weak). Other key design elements were gracefully sloping trunks with an almost impossibly small rear quarter panel between the rear quarter glass and wheel well, which imparted a sense of feline-esque agility and movement into their cars. These were the standards of Jaguar sedan design for decades.
Classic Jaguar XJ coupe
Image: Timeless Works
That all changed with Ian Callum’s design language ushered in by the XF in 2007.
For reasons that have long escaped me—but probably having something to do with the same mistake so many other manufacturers have fallen victim to by attempting to beat BMW and Mercedes at their own game—Jaguar ditched its decades-long established brand identity and adopted a new design language that delivered a sport-focused aesthetic but at the expense of all the things that made a Jaguar, a Jaguar.
The racing prototype in Chris Bruce’s story delivers on both fronts, however. Devoid of chrome accents and painted in a staggeringly appropriate shade of British Racing Green, the five spoke center locking wheels, front splitter, and threateningly low stance are diametrically opposed to the luxury raison d’être promised by the baby Jaguar’s sultry body lines. My favorite aspect of this prototype’s design by far is the juxtaposition of the car’s formal roofline against the massive rear spoiler. It is absolute perfection.
Although Callum’s Jaguars have have grilles that perhaps recall their predecessors, that’s where any obvious design similarities end. Modern-day Jags are wedge-shaped with high beltlines, swept-back front fascias, disappointingly short trunks and generic taillight signatures that could be from any other car were it not for the leaper emblem between them. Their designs have eschewed almost every link to the past, instead banking on non-existent brand equity based on designs with no historical significance.
Worse yet, Jaguar’s flagship XJ suffered one of the most unsuccessful
redesigns in automotive history, with bloated sheetmetal and probably the most bizarre and inelegant C-pillar treatment of any modern car. Upon its debut Jaguar claimed the new XJ was intentionally controversial, but as time has marched forward the design has aged remarkably poorly, in stark contrast to every XJ before it. These days Jaguar soldiers on without its most famous nameplate in the lineup for the foreseeable future after dropping it for the 2020 model year.
Jaguar XF and XJ featuring Jaguar's new design language
Image: Jaguar via NetCarShow
I am not the only person who prefers Jaguar’s pre-Ian Callum styling. In 2011, Italian design and coachbuilding firm Bertone—famously known for styling cars from Aston-Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini and others—debuted the B99 and B99 GT concept cars at that year’s Geneva Motor Show. Describing them as a compact executive sedan and grand tourer, the concepts were an evolution of Geoff Lawson era Jaguar designs rather than those penned under Callum’s leadership.
Ultimately Jaguar declined to allow Bertone to design to replacement for the X-Type.
“I saw it for the first time yesterday,” Jaguar’s then global brand director Adrian Hallmark, said. ”It is not our concept. We appreciate the fact that Jaguar is interesting enough for people to do a concept around. It’s not that we are offended by it, or against it—it is just not for us.”
Perhaps it should have been.
Bertone B99 and B99 GT concepts
Image: Bertone via NetCarShow
Jaguar eventually released the 2015 XE, a rear- and all wheel drive compact sedan which was met with a lukewarm reaction by the automotive press and buyers alike. Simply a smaller version of the XF design wise, the XE never set any sales ledgers on fire in the US when it debuted as a 2016 model. The XE was unceremoniously pulled from the US market in 2020 after dismal sales numbers, which peaked at 9,278 for the 2017 model year according to carsalesbase.com. For the sake of comparison, the X-Type’s sales peaked at 33,018 also while in its second year.
2016 Jaguar XE
Image: Jaguar via NetCarShow
Although the X-Type was ridiculed for sharing its platform with the humble Ford Mondeo and being the first Jaguar with a transversely mounted engine and front wheel drive (the US-spec X-Type had a 40:60 rear-biased AWD system standard), the one thing it did well was translate traditional Jaguar styling into a compact sedan. While the XE was arguably the better performance car, having been born sans the design limitations imposed by the X-Type’s front wheel drive architecture, it had to make do with a not well-established design language that jettisoned Jaguar’s rich history.
Obviously, the compact sedans were birthed into wildly different automotive landscapes—the X-Type when rear wheel drive compact luxury sedans were king; and the XE fifteen years later after luxury automakers embraced front- and all wheel drive entry-level models, but also at a time when crossovers were—and continue to be—the hottest vehicles in almost every automaker’s lineup.
It may well be a moot point now since SUVs and crossovers dominate the non-truck segment of the US market. The once potent XF which was previously available in a plethora of trims and drivetrains (and even an estate, if briefly) has has now been reduced to a single powertrain model for the US. Don’t look for it to stick around much longer. The remaining models in Jag’s lineup consist of the now V8 only F-Type coupe and convertible, the I-Pace electric “SUV”, the slow selling, almost anonymously styled E-Pace, and the perennially impressive F-Pace, which is by all accounts is the new Jaguar flagship.
Like almost every other manufacturer has learned the hard way, competing with Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz requires more than just competent entries in their respective segments. Those brands have established followings with first-time and repeat buyers lined up to take delivery of new A4/Q5s, 3/X3-Series, and C/GLC-Classes ad infinitum. Jaguar desperately needs to connect emotionally with potential buyers if it wishes to do more than just scrape by. With electrification soon to level the playing field this is more true now than ever. It is not enough for Jaguar to just build dynamic and tech-heavy vehicles. That’s the minimum barrier of entry. For Jaguar to truly compete, it needs to be beautiful. It needs to be special in the way that only a Jaguar can be.
The leadership at Jaguar should heed the gentle advice from the experts in design at Bertone and return the brand to its roots. Build the sedans and coupes and SUVs and SUV-coupes and whatever else the market is calling for and embrace the beautiful design language of its past rather than trying to conjure a new identity from the void. There are a lot of new players in the automotive landscape these days with no heritage to draw from. Let that be their struggle.
Until Jaguar builds Jaguars again, I will probably need to get comfortable with that familiar pang of sadness whenever I am reminded of what used to be.
