Is it a classic? Jaguar X-Type

00s cars Jaguar

The X-Type is such an easy target, it’s a wonder it didn’t leave the Halewood factory with a massive ‘X’ painted on its butt. ‘X’ marks the spot; free arrows for all motoring journalists, pub bores and drivers of German compact executives. Don’t mention the Mondeo, man.

Jaguar had high hopes for the X-Type. There was talk of production increasing from 45,000 to 200,000 vehicles a year, with the ‘baby Jag’ accounting for around half that number. Lofty ambitions for a brand with no pedigree in the small saloon car segment, so it’s no surprise that sales fell short. Annual production hit of peak of 50,000, before sales dwindled until the little cat was laid to rest in 2009. It would be another six years until Jaguar mustered up the courage to re-enter the compact exec market with the criminally underrated XE.

These were different times. In the year 2001 BC (before crossovers), talk of the company downsizing and building cars for the proletariat would have seen dyed-in-the-wool Jaguar purists grumbling over their Telegraph crosswords. Jaguar was caught between a rock and a gentlemen’s club leather armchair. It knew it needed to lower the age of its average buyer from retiree to 30-something, but the S-Type and XJ weren’t the cars to deliver the goods (or toner cartridges). ‘We want to carve out a piece of turf in a very crowded piece of the market. BMW, Mercedes and Audi make a lot of money there and they don’t want to give it up,’ said Dick Elsy, Jaguar’s engineering director, speaking to CAR in 2001. ‘Our customers have been reared on a diet of Mercedes and BMW, so you can’t just give them badge engineering.’

The X-Type was so much more than a badge-engineered Mondeo, so it’s odd that the Ford connection has become a stick with which to beat the Jaguar. It’s a cheap shot, but it misses the point, not least the fact that the Mondeo was a mighty fine car. Aside from the front suspension, subframe, rear suspension (Mondeo estate), some metal pressing in the floor, the innards of the climate control system, manual gearbox and brakes, the X-Type shared little in common with the Mondeo. Even the wheelbase was shortened to make it less roomy than the larger and more expensive S-Type. The other key difference is that the X-Type was all-wheel drive, the Traction4 system sending 60% of the torque to the rear. A front-wheel drive variant arrived later, but it’s to Jaguar’s credit that it attempted to retain some of its sporting heritage in a more modern and youthful package. That, and the fact that developing a rear-wheel drive platform to take on the 3 Series would have been prohibitively expensive.

Crucially, the X-Type looked like a Jaguar, felt like a Jaguar inside, and drove like a Jaguar. Few people reference the VW Golf when celebrating the Audi TT. Punters unaware of the Ford connection would have been hard-pressed to pinpoint the Mondeo bits, although their neighbours would have been quick to point them out when they arrived home from the showroom. A quick riposte would have been to mention that the bonnet was designed to make the headlights look like the engines from a de Havilland Comet, while the rear lights mimicked the afterburners when illuminated. The X-Type should have, ahem, flown off the shelves.

It was never going to beat the 3 Series, but the X-Type ran the BMW close. The timing couldn’t have been worse, with its arrival in 2001 coinciding with the government’s shift towards a CO2-based company car taxation policy. Launching with a pair of V6s made the X-Type look decidedly unattractive to fleet managers. A diesel would follow and would eventually account for 97% of all X-Type sales, but the ‘baby Jag’ would never grow into the sales boomer it was designed to be. To purists, the X-Type comes with too much baggage to be considered a classic. To others, the X-Type is an under-appreciated ‘posh Mondeo’ that’s coming of age after a quarter of a century. You could have asked the Queen, who seemingly loved her X-Type estate. If it’s good enough for Her Majesty…

This article first appeared in issue 4 of Classic.Retro.Modern. magazine.