Washington Post columnist Warren Brown doesn't have very much nice to say about the new Jaguar XJR. (Sit over here, Warren.) He reckons the model's lower-priced competition taunts it with an automotive rendition of "Anything you can do, I can do better:" "Where is the prestige in the XJR Supercharged sedan's 400-horsepower V-8 engine in a world where 200-horsepower engines for pitifully ordinary cars are the norm, and where anyone who can spend $30,000 can get a big 5.7-liter, 340-horsepower Dodge Hemi V-8 that would give any Jaguar a run for its money?" After dissing the Jag's sat nav and safety as pedestrian, Warren pronounces a paradigm shift. Apparently luxury car buyers are moving away from "excessive horsepower" towards cars that "show the world they are committed to clean and green living." After a huge metaphorical sigh, the self-pronounced old-fashioned snob writes the ungreen luxury car a fitting, politically correct epitaph: "Those days have disappeared — effectively erased by technology that has empowered the masses, and made irrelevant by a rapidly growing global appetite for oil, a natural resource that is getting more difficult to develop. In that world, the high-end Jaguar has become a dinosaur."
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Funny how $30,000 can’t seem to buy that level of styling on a new car though (well, at least from the rear three-quarter view).
That is a picture of an XKR which is probably leading to some confusion.
The XJR is the anciently-styled sedan that Warren Brown has every right to criticize.
………….and $30k cannot buy the panache or class of a Jaguar, either. But, as usual, the dilettante with a pen trumps real world experience. Sound familiar?
So a little Toyota is a luxury car? What, pray tell, is his idea of luxury?
i will take the XKR. if you can afford the car the gas is nothing, I love the look of 2 door jags.
Hah!
I’m spending all of next week with an XKR and trust me, I won’t be thinking about Warren Brown (whom I’ve never heard of anyway).
I think its you-know-what looks dead sexy.
You haven’t heard of Warren Brown? Been around for years, well-known in the trade…one of the very few highly placed, respected African-American car writers.
The problem with the XJR is that it looks funny, at least from the front, not the horsepower or anything else. If it looks like a Taurus, why pay the premium?
So I’m confused… what the hell does this guy want? Does he want Jaguar to build subcompact Hybrids? Does he want them to build 340 HP SR/T clones with ugly plastic interiors and bland styling? Stay on target man!
Here’s the Reality of Jaguar: Jaguar WAS a niche maker of “CHEAP supercars” and “downmarket luxury” cars. Think XK 120/140 and E-type for the former and Mark 2 and XJ for the latter. These were the halcyon days of Sir William Lyons. He had a knack for styling and could pinch a penny like Sam Walton, squeezing his suppliers (and workers) till they cried.
It STARTED going downhill at the same time as the whole British Auto industry, which you can track from the consolidations of British-Leyland in the late 1960s. Lyons retired as Managing Director of Jaguar in 1967. He left his Board position in 1972.
Can you think of even ONE production car built by Jaguar since 1972 that really captures the true spirit of Jaguar? Anything that even matches the grace and pace of the SS100, the XK 120, the C-type, D-type, or E-type? Of course not.
Starting in 1967 is when Jaguars started getting a reputation for unreliability, poor build quality, and quirky design. They damn near went out of business in the 1980s, for good reason. Ford bought them, and pumped massive infusions of cash into Jaguar. Made a few valiant attempts to recapture the magic of the bygone era, but really without the singular focus of a man like Lyons, they were doomed to fail.
Of course jaguar is a dinosaur. In fact a better term to use is Zombie. They are a walking corpse that should have been buried decades ago. Picking on small points of their cars, or the overall design goals is like hitting underhanded softballs… way too easy. Why bother Mr. Brown?
Ford should either treat Jaguar to a proper burial, or sell it to some truly insane eccentric who can actually pull off what they have no chance of doing.
JCB’s Sir Anthony Bamford made them an offer for Jaguar last year. If anyone can do it, he can… he seems a complete nutter.
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
I’m confused. The article is about the XJR and the accompaning photo is of an XK. Chalk and cheese. So, which car do you mean?
The article is about the XJR and all the comments are about the XKR.
And apparently Jaguar needs to change their naming scheme.
They could name their cars CTS, STS, DTS, SRX, XLR, ESV and EXT. That oughta do it.
Or C-class, E-class, S-class, CLK-class, CLS-class, CL-class, SLR-class, SLK-class, SL-class, M-class, R-class, GL-class and G-class.
Those are pretty sensible.
Doh! Picture fixed.
I’m also confused. At $83K it seems like it’s priced rather exclusively. I don’t really see anyone deliberating between a prius and XJR supercharged.
If Mr. Brown’s point is that low priced cars can give you all (or most) of the ammenities of higher priced cars, all I can say is – Welcome to 1956.
Just imagine when they change the name to Mahindra Slurpee XJR
Chuck, your a Jaghead would you still be one if Ford sold them to an Indian or Chinese company?
Ford bought Jag just for the brand and treated them like crap (cough..GM&SAAB). I think Jag has less of their market share then before Ford bought them.
Jag needs to die unless someone like the Aston Martin group can purchase them to restore their pride. NOT some other auto. company just have them rebadged lineup. I am not a Jag fan but they deserve more than just a rebadged Ford product.
There is a market for an alternative to MB, BMW, Audi, Volvo, Lexus, Infiniti,and Acura.
Jag enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after they launched the new XK8. It seemed to capture at least some of the elegance of the old E-type. However, it was none too fast at a time when the performance ante was getting upped with every new model and was also somewhat cramped.
That seems to have been their last hurrah. The recent updating of that model seems to have been somewhat successful (i.e., they didn’t ruin it) but looks so similar to most people they may as well not have bothered. And the sedan got a refresh that made it look….just like it did before.
What is killing Jaguar though (well, apart from absentee landlord Ford) is they have no visibility in the market at all. I honestly don’t hear their name mentioned in any conversation I have, even with car people. They get a token review now and then, and settle back into obscurity.
kjc117: “Chuck, your a Jaghead would you still be one if Ford sold them to an Indian or Chinese company?…Jag needs to die unless someone like the Aston Martin group can purchase them to restore their pride. NOT some other auto. company just have them rebadged lineup”
True an Indian or Chinese auto company could never do proper job with Jaguar. That would be like a Japanese or Korean company building better cars than GM or Ford.
So… what’s the problem with the XJR? It has retro styling, but is built on an aluminium space frame and is by a huge margin the lightest car of it’s class – making it quicker and more economical than similarly powered competitors.
Sounds like a good idea to me?
I think the article makes a good point. All he’s saying is that times have changed. Jaguar’s business model is old-school and there’s no market for it anymore. I think Jaguar does have one thing that people want, and that’s gorgeous good looks. But only the XK has it. The rest of the lineup are barely distinguishable from Hyudais and Kias, due to those companies cribbing Jaguar’s look.