The Jaguar roars again
When first seen at the Detroit Auto Show earlier in the year, Jaguar’s Advanced Lightweight Coupe stole the show, capturing the attention as few cars have in recent years. With its sleek, sensual styling, powerful yet sophisticated stance and exquisite interior design, this is a car that brings out the best in modern design and engineering—coupled with tasteful retro touches from the golden age of the sumptuous sports car. With such credentials, it’s not surprising that people spoke of the new E-Type, for while the ‘ALC’ itself was not quite a production model yet, it formed the basis for the new Jaguar XK, launched at the Frankfurt Auto Show last month.
Some sceptics have complained that the new car is an Aston Martin with a Jaguar badge, the type of brand confusion typical of being part of a large corporation—in this case Ford. Although owning an ‘Aston Martin’ at Jaguar prices cannot be a bad thing, the people at Jaguar seem insulted at the insinuation. In the words of Joe Greenwell, Chairman and CEO of Jaguar Cars, “The new XK represents the very essence of Jaguar, its heart and soul. If you want to know what lies ahead for us, what direction we will take, this is Jaguar’s answer.” To Jaguar, therefore, this new car embodies their next generation of iconic sports cars, a vehicle that takes the company into the future and builds on the proud pedigree established by such illustrious predecessors as the XK120 and the legendary E-Type.
Created by the company’s celebrated advanced design team, the new XK is just that, a state-of-the-art sports car that uses all the technologies available to modern engineers. Highly rigid and durable yet lightweight materials such as aluminium and kevlar are used for the body panels and working parts, giving the car a high power to weight ratio that does wonders for its agility and performance. Official figures have not been released, but the company says it will be the fastest, most powerful Jaguar ever, so it’s safe to assume the V8 power train’s top speed will be electronically limited to somewhere around 300 kilometres per hour. Careful attention to such matters as suspension, body rigidity and weight distribution will produce the kind of road holding and dynamic driving experience currently found in Aston Martins, not Jaguars. Moreover, the company’s engineers insist that, while evocative and graceful, the car’s bodywork was designed from a racing perspective. In other words, there is not a superfluous line in sight; every beautiful curve and geometric shape has a function. It’s what design chief Ian Callum calls ‘proportion and stance’.
With the new XK, Callum’s belief that a luxury sports car should and can be both muscular and powerful, beautiful and elegant, has been realised. This is a perfect symbiosis of luxuriant style, comfort, visual beauty and pulse-raising power. The simple yet exquisite styling of the exterior is repeated inside, where high quality materials such as soft leather and brushed chrome accentuate an almost architectural beauty of form, layout and function. As befits a masterful work of styling, the interior is uncluttered yet a feast for the eyes and a pleasure to be in. Sufficiently powerful and masculine to suit a car of this kind, it is also opulent and sophisticated, successfully replacing the ‘old’ Jaguar trademarks of rosewood dashboards with sexy, modern chrome—if the client desires it. In having resisted the temptation to over-style or exaggerate the muscle tone of the car, the Coventry designers have created a well-balanced racing car that is sure to be a future classic, and likely to be as comfortable a long-distance cruiser as it will be exciting to push through tight bends. Here, however, one feels the sceptics may have a point. With the XK, Jaguar seems to be moving out of the luxury high performance car segment into the sports car bracket—the one usually inhabited by the likes of Maserati, Ferrari, Porsche and…Aston Martin.
But who cares about such things. Presumably the new car, when it hits the market early next year, will represent excellent value for money, just as its spiritual ancestor, the E-Type, did. For motoring enthusiasts, a far more important issue is how soon we’ll see them on the road; and for my money, the sooner the better!
© Michel Cruz
