Nostalgia is great for a niche vehicle like the Mustang or PT Cruiser but it is not something to establish your brand on. Even the iconic 911 has evolved over the years. The name is the same, the shadow is similar, but the car is very different.

Actually, I think the 911 is the model all car companies should use. You have a car model. Improve it…every year…continously. Can you imagine the outcry if Porsche said “we will no longer make 911’s!

Back on topic, Jag has a long way to go to overcome it’s past and is a good reminder for FIAT when they come back to America with Chrysler.

-Because, the original Jag guys like Malcolm Sayer (I think) were more Futurists than anything else. They wanted to do what was new & cutting-edge & ‘born from jets’ (SORRY ;P ) & cool.

Then the 70s come along, in stead of free love, we got violence, riots, stagflation, carter, naugahyde, brown cars, huge new york slice of pizza bushes, sideburns & afros everywhere & it all sucks.
-Basically a giant ‘Rage Against The Machine’ video.
(or Quentin Tarantino movie; take your pick)

So, if you took the mind-map of the original Jag guys & did it today: they might be putting fuel-cell supercapacitor electric scramjets into cnc-milled graphene f-22 cars that share at least a little milkshake with Lucy Pinder; to keep you looking.

I guess the public felt the same way as the people running it & wanted all British cars to look like H.H. Hughson’s bowler.

I don’t think the current XF and XK are bad looking cars, and I hold out hope that Jag manages to hold onto the essence of the XJ in the new model, but when your heritage is having the sexiest looking sedan on the market, I don’t see a need to change that.

I speculated to a friend the other day that part of its problem may be that it still shares much of the platform of the S-Type, which, if I recall correctly, was based on the DEW98 platform under the late and not particularly lamented Lincoln LS. As much as it tried to ape the look of the 60s S-Type, the hardpoints were too upright. Part of what always marked the Jag sedans was that they were rakish and low slung, even at the expense of headroom. The S-Type looked like a chastened schoolboy, ordered to sit up straight.

I agree that the recent XJ was far too cautious. I understand that caution, after the mistakes of the XJ40, but it really does look dated.

I think what Jaguar has to offer in that market is a genuine raciness. It’s become so conservative since the late seventies that we (particularly Americans) tend to forget that in an earlier era, Jaguar sedans were a little too racy and voluptuous to be respectable — there was a definite ‘gangsta lean’ to them. As a consequence, when the neo-stodgy Rover P5 (3.5 Litre) went out of production in 1973, the British government actually bought up a bunch of them as ministerial transport, because the thought of senior British officials having to turn to Jaguar sedans (or even the more upscale Daimler brand) was just too uncouth.

I’m not a big supporter of retro styling, but a real “heritage” Jaguar — not one that looks like a 60s Mk2 or S-Type, but one that has the same kind of swagger — might be a good thing. I’d be tempted to sit the designers down, show them the original Get Carter, and say, “Come back with something that a young Michael Caine might drive today.”

You don’t like the new line of Rolls-Royces? I think they do a grand job of exuding Rolls character yet remind me of the road-going equivalent of a ultra-chic mega-yacht one might find in the Monte Carlo harbor. You don’t like the Bentley Continental either? While not as ‘mod’ as the Rolls line, the current Bentley line is certainly more contemporary and modern than their offerings have been in 50+ years.

As for Jaguar, I think Ian Callum is a great designer and I think the new XF is gorgeously striking; I only wish they made a coupe’ version. As such, I’d venture a guess that the new XJ will be similarly beautiful.

I think a lot of people tend to forget that the Jaguars we think of as iconic were, in their day, very modern, sleek, sexy, avante-garde designs. Once those avante-garde designs became icons, I would venture a guess that Jaguar corporate might have leaned on the Design Studios to try and refresh those designs through the decades instead of allowing the designers to try and create new icons…which is very hard to do-thus you see a lot of Minis, Beetles, Thunderbirds and 80’s, 90’s, and 2000-2008 Jaguars as retro-mobiles instead of new designs. I hope Jaguar survives and thrives and design-wise I hope they set the world on fire-they have the potential, heritage and talent.

But what kills the brand stateside is…

1) Incredibly complex and painful maintenance costs.

2) Lack of rear seat room for the bulk of their offerings.

3) A simple compelling characteristic of the Jaguar brand.

A Jaguar is just… British. As the article mentions, this hasn’t been an asset for well over 35 years in the eyes of the mainstream public.

Great write-up and sound analogy Mr. Niedermeyer.

http://www.americandreamcars.com/jaguarxjcbroadspeed.jpg
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/uploads/new/50840.jpg
http://www.motorbase.com/vd/uploads/2008/05/19/fs_jaguar_xjc_4.2_coupe.jpg

You want to feel at least the thinnest thread of the lineage is there without it becoming another copy of a G35 sedan copy of a copy at the extreme of mod uniformity. (esp w/ the c-pillar everyone’s grabbing)

The 90’s vibe of anti-chrome body-colored everything was only interesting for the first few months, and did a lot to really no help design.

The pendulum seems to be swinging the other way toward frugal tasteful use of no more than 4 shiny bits (save the wheels).

-A lot of people did not like modern versions of the GTO and Charger because they didn’t have enough nostalgia infused into them.

-How many times has someone said that the G8 should have been called the “Bonneville” or “Grand Prix”?

-Who around here likes Lincoln’s MK-whatever naming system over using names like “Continental” and “Zephyr”?

-The retro Mustang has worked out good for Ford.

-The Wrangler and 911 have been successful without radical styling changes.

-The biggest knock on XF is its bland styling, so why use it as the inspiration for the XJ?

One man’s branding is another man’s heritage.

Jaguar’s mistake with the ‘03 XJ was that even XJ fans like myself had a hard time recognizing it as the new model. Unlike the current gen Mustang, or the New Beetle, while it was instantly recognizable as a Jaguar, it was not instantly recognizable as a “new” Jaguar.

Mechanically and technologically, the ‘03 XJ was competitive with the S Class and 7 Series cars from M-B and BMW but it’s styling was way too conservative. In the late 1980s, Jaguar went from the gorgeous series III XJ to the XJ40, with a more modern shape. It ditched the classic quad headlamp setup for large rectangular units. While I’ve always found them pleasantly styled, the XJ40 did poorly and is not regarded highly by Jaguaristas. Wrong car for the time, but I think something like the XJ40 might work today, slightly retro but with a modern look. They shouldn’t just make a larger XF. A larger XF would be reminiscent of BMW’s same sausage different size philosophy. I hope the new XJ has as many retro XJ cues as it does elements of the XF. At the NAIAS I told Ian Callum how the new XJ really needs to evoke some XJ styling heritage. Make fun of musty old Blighty, but burled walnut and the traditions of pace, space and grace are part of what make Jaguars Jaguars. It’s an integral part of the Jaguar brand.

So the new XJ should look modern, but not completely abandon iconic XJ styling elements. Instead of the XF’s large quasi-Audi gaping maw grille, perhaps a more rectangular XJ style grille, and maybe they can add a fairing for the inside HID headlamps, like they have for the outboard ones. That would give it a quad lamp look.

The styling brief should have been to come up with a “new XJ”, very much an XJ while very much a modern and new car.

That brand new Roewe sedan may not owe anything to the brand’s wood-paneled past, but neither is it easily distinguishable from other new small cars the world over. Yes, one does have to leave the past behind, but not at the cost of modern, formless mediocrity.