Roll over to preview

Anyone who keeps an eye on the general motoring press will know that Jaguar is often the subject of stories regarding future models, the vast majority of which contain no offi cial Jaguar comment, as company policy is not to comment on future product! However, that has changed this month. Following a raft of articles about a new small sports car and an XF estate, Jaguar has gone on record to confi rm the development of both…and that a new ‘small Jaguar’ is also being considered. You can read the offi cial statements on all of them and our own opinion on when you might see the results in the metal on page six, but here I thought the ‘small Jaguar’ project, the one that appears to be still in the very earliest stages of development, worthy of further consideration. It was only on 18 December 2009, of course, that the very last X-TYPE – the most recent ‘small’ Jaguar – left the Halewood production line. Its imminent demise had been announced by the then Jaguar Land Rover CEO, David Smith, in July of that year. The announcement came little more than a year after the model was facelifted, at which point it was expected to be around for some time, sales of the ‘new’ X-TYPE initially doing very well. The subsequent reason for its early disappearance was said to be down to the necessary tightening of expenditure in the face of the hard economic climate, Smith commenting: “Ceasing production of the X-TYPE early, with further redundancies and temporary shutdowns at Halewood, is necessary to protect our other investment plans.” On top of that, my hunch would be that new owners, Tata Motors, felt the X-TYPE – conceived, developed and launched in the ‘Ford’ era – just didn’t sit well with the current generation of Jaguars designed under the eye of Ian Callum, the XK, XF, and the new XJ.