Technology | 2009.07.09
Jaguar launches lavish new XJ
Company\'s new car, unveiled in London, is sporty, voluptuous and ever so slightly baroque\'n\'roll
Launching the exquisitely indulgent Jaguar XJ in the teeth of a recession is a bit like your local wine bar suddenly offering vintage burgundy at £50 a pop instead of last week\'s cooking Chilean Merlot at less than a tenner.
This, though, is what Jaguar did at a champagne-popping, sound system-blasting party at the Saatchi Gallery , housed in the appropriately grand setting of the former Duke of York barracks in Chelsea, tonight.
The bash was hosted by Jay Leno, the US chatshow host and a dedicated car buff.
The fastest, most powerful and, it has to be said, aggressive, of the new XJ line-up at the gallery proved to be a gleaming, burgundy Supersports model, complete with a 510hp V8 engine and capable of accelerating driver and four passengers towards the motorway horizon as fast as a Maserati.
Actually, the svelte new XJ model – designed by a small team led by Jaguar\'s Ian Callum – has more than something of the look of the spectacular, new-generation Maserati Quattroporte.
It also borrows, through a happily distorted glass, from Jaguar\'s best loved historic four-door saloon, the Mk2 of 1959-67, with the curvaceous lines giving the car something of the character of a muscular yet lithe big cat.
Those teardrop windows. That sense of what Jaguar itself used to call grace, space and pace. Whatever its inspiration, this is one imposing car. Sporty. Voluptuous. Ever so slightly baroque\'n\'roll.
Neatly and strongly machined, aerospace-style, from welded and riveted aluminium, 50% of it recycled, decked out in supple Italian leather and a choice of veneers, equipped with air suspension, six-speed automatic gearbox, a 1,200-watt Bowers and Wilkins 20-speaker stereo and virtual instruments, the XJ should prove to be a disturbing rival for BMW and Mercedes-Benz when it goes on sale next January.
Mike O\'Driscoll, Jaguar\'s managing director and now an employee of the Indian engineering giant Tata, talks of "making Jaguar Jaguar again".
Callum would like Jaguar to go back into racing, and he would like to have a go at designing a racer to take on the Olympian legacy of the Le Mans-winning D-Type Jaguar of the mid-50s, designed by the company\'s famous aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer.
He wants Jaguars to be as surprising and modern today as the happily shocking E-type was when this stunning car made its debut in 1961 and he was six years old.
Callum submitted his first confident design to the Midlands company when he was just 13, hoping, not altogether unrealistically, for the job he has held for the past decade under Ford and now Tata ownership.
But a 155mph sports saloon, slightly bigger, although lighter and more economical, than the outgoing model in a recession, and at a time when we are meant to be more concerned with carbon emissions than acceleration and speed?
Come on. What, I ask Callum, would he say to an audience made up exclusively of loyal Guardian readers?
With a smile, but barely a pause for thought, he replies: "I\'d say that a Jaguar is an indulgence, a pleasure, a car to enjoy and to keep for up to 40 or 50 years, when it becomes a classic.
"There are never going to be that many Jaguars on the road compared to mass-market saloons. But it\'s a celebration of British design, engineering and manufacturing – something we can get as much pleasure from making as from driving."
Is there a more eco-friendly XJ somewhere down the assembly line at Castle Bromwich, where Jaguars are built in the daunting second world war factory that produced 10,000 Spitfires? "Yes," says Callum. "It\'s all a matter of how much we can afford, but we\'ve a very special hybrid prototype of the new XJ on the way."
In any case, Jaguar\'s press team says, the three-litre diesel version of Callum\'s XJ has a low carbon emission for its class [184g/km] and will return more than 40 to the gallon.
They are clearly trying, even though a Jaguar will never be – nor particularly wants to be – a Prius or, indeed, a Tata Nano.
Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata, takes a close interest in Jaguar.
A 71-year-old Zoroastrian philanthropist, he trained as an architect and stuctural engineer in the US.
He believes, says Callum, as we wait for the razzmatazz launch party to begin and the drapes to come off the new cars, that there is a place in the world for both the big mechanical cats from Castle Bromwich as well as eco-cars, made in India, and selling for up to 50 times less than the price of a dramatic new XJ.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/09/jaguar-launches-new-xj
