| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 21.11 | Message # 1 |
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User ID: 777
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| When even hip Parisians and jaded New Yorkers go wild over a car, you know you’re onto something. For Jaguar, that car is the XJ, and it combines stately and sexy like few big sedans I’ve driven in recent years.
I first drove the XJ in and around Paris, where the brainchild of Ian Callum -- the man who brought us notable rides like the Aston Martin DB9 -- drew nonstop admiration from France’s normally cool, cigarette-wielding fashionistas. The story was the same in New York last week, where the long-wheelbase XJ I tested -- it was painted black and looked so brilliant that Jaguar shouldn’t even bother with other colors -- won over nearly everyone who saw it or sat in it.
Jaguar has been selling the XJ since 1968, and its conservative, coach-built look made it a luxury icon. But the car slowly slid into irrelevancy, and Jaguar’s notoriously poor reliability didn’t help. The XJ’s styling, as traditional and immune to change as Buckingham Palace, made it the stodgiest car in a land-yacht segment that includes the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7-Series, Lexus LS and the Audi A8. (I don't count the Cadillac DTS, whose mausoleum-resident status and front-wheel drive don't put it in the class of top-shelf luxury cars.)
Now, just like that, the XJ feels like the freshest Brit since Russell Brand. It’s sporty, modern and daring inside and out, the big sedan most likely to be driven by someone under 60. Every trace of the XJ’s stuffy, British-butler vibe has been banished, along with the old sense that the car is a good decade behind the leaders in performance, technology and quality.
And it’s not just a pretty, pedigreed cat: The Jag is a joy to drive, romping over the road like a smaller sedan, whether you choose the smartly priced base version at less than $75,000 to start, with its 385-horsepower V8 engine, the 470-horsepower supercharged version or the monster Super Sports model with 510 horses.
The Jaguar’s handling may not be as technically adept as the computer-stuffed BMW 7-Series, but the XJ feels more natural and fluid than even the BMW. Not surprisingly, the aluminum space-framed Jaguar is the lightest car in the segment by a wide margin, barely topping 4,000 pounds, or about 300 pounds less than the BMW and more than 400 below the big Benz S-Class.
The Jaguar’s biggest negative, by far, is its central touch-screen, which manages -- poorly -- the navigation, audio and climate-control systems. The system dawdles over the most mundane tasks -- even boosting the audio volume causes a screen delay -- and the nav system itself is mediocre. And the Jaguar’s side windows in the rear seat are unusually small, thanks to the sexily sloping roof, which left taller passengers feeling a bit claustrophobic. But the seat itself is spacious, especially in the long-wheelbase version, another area where the old XJ never came close to stacking up against the competition.
For Jaguar, selling 802 XJs in June may not sound like much. But those sales, in the car’s first full month on the market, are a nearly tenfold increase from the same period last year. And it’s a clear sign that the XJ, helped by a slick advertising and marketing campaign, has caught people’s eyes, and that more people are willing to give the Jaguar a look instead of reflexively choosing the Bimmer, Benz or Lexus.
BMW is still leading the segment, however. In June it moved 1,716 of its 7-Series, a car that I’d argue is the Jaguar’s only real rival for sporty performance besides the Maserati Quattroporte, a far-pricier sedan aimed at an even smaller subset of fans. Among the more traditional luxury barges, Mercedes sold 1,549 S-Class sedans, plus 63 of its new hybrid offshoot. Lexus moved 735 LS 600s, while finding just four suckers -- er, takers -- for its wildly overpriced LS 600h hybrid version. Audi sold 58 of the outgoing A8, a veritable sales leper as Audi fans await the all-new version going on sale later this year.
The XJ’s renaissance gives Jaguar by far its most compelling, consistent lineup in decades, joining the XK sports car and midsize XF
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