Next Jag X-Type lives?

Newswheel staff :: 21 March 2006 :: Filed under Estate/Wagon, Saloon, Jaguar, Jaguar X-Type, Europe & UK, US

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But it won’t be a boggo saloon

Flagging sales. A chintzy product line up. A near-destitute sugar daddy in the form of Ford Motor Company. And the indefinite postponement of the platform technology that might just have turned things around. Things are not looking too clever for the rather pitiful pussy that is Jaguar Cars. So, you’ll forgive us for not getting overly juiced up by news that Jag is considering replacing the X-Type with an alternative-concept, shooting brake-style model. At a fundamental level, we’re not convinced the brand is a goer under Ford ownership…

Whatever, industry bible Automotive News has been having a chin wag with one of Jaguar’s European distribution executives and it seems that despite previous suggestions that the X-Type would be permanently terminated, a successor model is being prepped after all. “Work has been held back for some time now,” spake the distributor to Automotive’s exotically monikered reporter, Wim Oude Weernink. “They are studying what sort of model the next X-Type should be. But it won’t be a sedan again.” A shooting brake inspired form factor is apparently the preferred option.

Superficially, this ties in with comments made at the Detroit show in January by Jag’s MD Bibiana Boerio. “Someday we may create our own segment, with an alternative [concept] option.” But given Ford’s recent decision to cull the shared aluminium architecture which the next XJ and S-Type were due to be based upon, well, we doubt Ford has the stomach for investing the sort of money that’s necessary to make an X-Type successor worthy of the brand.

Linkage:
Automotive News