CRAIG CHEETHAM

Nothing like a Daim

I’M SURE, like a lot of Jaguar fans, I’m not alone in lamenting the demise of the XJ saloon car range. XJs, for me, were the very soul of Jaguar – a brand that made some pretty impressive sports cars and had its roots in performance motoring, but which moreover made the best saloon cars in the world. I’ve owned XJs of four generations, each one flawed, but all of them beautiful.

The appeal lies in the fact that every single generation of XJ was designed around the driver, to handle and ride as well as they possibly could, while at the same time exhibiting wonderful, often anachronistic styling. These were cars that were classics as soon as they left the showroom, something that’s reflected in the surge in values we’ve seen in recent times for Series models, XJ40s and – latterly – the X300/X308 models. People who own them cherish them. That doesn’t really happen with a lot of cars.

Don’t get me wrong. There were other luxury cars that were better built. The older Mercedes-Benz S-Classes were beautifully engineered and wonderful in their own right. In more recent times, the Audi A8 and Lexus LS were much better packaged and technologically more advanced. But the one thing they were all missing was the fundamental soul that makes a Jaguar a Jaguar.

With the death of the XJ (and, I must confess, I’m not a huge fan of the last of the breed compared with its predecessors), Jaguar has let go an essential strand of its DNA.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the need to change and evolve. I worked for over a decade inside a car manufacturer’s senior management team, and the one thing I learned above all is that if you don’t embrace change, you get left behind. Jaguar did embrace change. It kept its sports cars as they’re high-value, high-profit models, but the evolution of the executive car market into one that has a much greater focus on SUVs and alternative fuels meant that for a company with limited resources, following the herd made sense.

A new XJ would have been a monumental investment in both technology and architecture, the latter of which would only have suited a large saloon car. And, like it or not, big saloons are out of fashion. That’s a trend that I hope won’t last forever. In the meantime, Jaguar must follow a more diverse path in order to survive – but it must also not forget its roots. After all, prior to its demise the demographic of XJ buyers was largely among the over-55s. When the first XJ emerged in 1968, it was far from that, as the agile newcomer appealed to a younger customer. But all is not lost. You only have to look at models such as the Porsche Panamera and Maserati Quattroporte to see that a market for large luxury cars with sports car DNA still exists and whilst Jaguar has no option but to chase a more mainstream market with its core model range, there’s an argument that a range-topping, highly specialist luxury saloon could very well still appeal to the A NEW XJ WOULD effortlessly wealthy. HAVE BEEN A So, here’s an idea. There hasn’t been MONUMENTAL a Daimler model from Jaguar Cars since the demise of the X350 in 2010, but INVESTMENT IN BOTH the dormant brand name still remains in TECHNOLOGY AND Jaguar’s possession. Could Jaguar bring ARCHITECTURE back Daimler, and make it what Maybach is to Mercedes-Benz or Lagonda is to Aston-Martin? After all, sub-brands are a thing in the car industry right now – DS and Cupra are Citroën and SEAT with an extra dose of flair, and by the same token Daimler could return as Jaguar with an extra splash of luxury. After all, a Daimler was always a very special derivative of an XJ. My very first XJ was a 1986 Daimler 3.6 – an XJ40 with a club lounge behind the driver’s seat (and, sadly, not much floor). It felt like a very special car indeed, and if a big Jaguar saloon is to ever return then that’s the aura it needs to project. You could sell one for over £100k easily, and then I could pick one up many years down the line for a twentieth of that and be a very happy man indeed. CC