Jaguar World Magazine XJ Series 3 Buying Guide Sept 10 Retour à l'édition précédente

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.