irishcar.com - Jaguar X-Type 2-litre

Let’s face it. Not that many of us are going to buy a Jaguar in our lifetimes. As a car brand it has a special place. A special RICH place, even at the level of this most affordable of Jaguars.

The 2-litre X-Type is about as ‘affordable’ as the brand is ever going to get, and even then the 43,000-euros sticker makes it a vehicle for few enough, even if it is the car that will possibly double global sales of the ‘big cat’ badge, and is probably already doing something startling to the sales figures in Ireland.

It is an alternative to the BMW 3-Series, but you can get into the Beemer at a significantly lower price point, and that doesn’t even include the quite excellent Compact version. But the BMW attracts a certain kind of person, and the Jaguar quite another.

Both kinds are successful, and both want to show it. But I suspect the buyer of the Jaguar X 2-litre is somewhat older, already has enough confidence in him- or herself as to not need to bolster the ego, and is buying the car in the KNOWLEDGE of the self-satisfaction it can give rather than someone who is still SEEKING confidence and satisfaction.

Carmakers spend zillions just thinking about things like that. Because the purchase of a car, unlike any other consumer product with the possible exceptions of a home and an Apple iBook, is an extraordinarily personal thing.

And targeting that personality is what every car designer’s brief involves, whether it is to produce a Daewoo Matiz or a VW Phaeton.

So, what are the elements of a Jaguar X-Type, specifically the 2-litre, that are designed to attract specific customers?

There’s the tradition behind that catface badge, reared and trained on a racetrack but released into the jungle of the highway with an unbridled luxury of wood and leather. It was always thus.

And regardless of time and style, every Jaguar ever built had a cat-like lithness in its metalwork that made it unmistakeable in the heaving gridlock of lesser-pedigree’d vehicles. The X-Type is no less outstanding.

There’s a quality of engineering, not necessarily the most refined or even reliable in the past (let me tell you, again, sometime, about my father’s 240, while the declining build quality of Jags of the 70s and 80s brought the company to bankruptcy), that still has a Merlinesque magic about it. Though today’s magic has more to do with Ford-backed hardware and knowhow than any Arthurian legerdemain.

There’s the surety of that self-confidence I mentioned before just by owning one (there was this new Guard in Naas who told the late Tom Lawlor that he should wind up the windows of his parked Mark 10 and when he accepted Tom’s suggestion that he do it himself, nearly had the hand taken off him by the Alsatian in the back seat. Of course, everybody else in town knew about the Alsatian).

There’s the sense that you’re driving a ‘bit of posh’ which doesn’t scream ‘Celtic Tiger’. You’re mature. And even if it IS the latest Jaguar, and the smallest, it was itself born mature. A maturity mix of sportiness and class.

In the realities of the jungle road we call our roads infrastructure, you’re beyond the 2-seater roadster such as the MX-5 or even the MR2. Even while commuting in first gear, you feel a Kellogs Frosties growwwwl building. And you know that the car that takes you to your office can carry you at the weekend back into the free-ranging veldt of the country’s less-travelled rural roads.

Those above are probably among the reasons you might have bought this Jaguar.

And it certainly IS worth buying if you are in that bracket because it is very well designed, with engineering that IS top drawer, and other people will even unconciously alter their perception of you.

The latest X-Type doesn’t look any different than the original versions, except that it doesn’t have anything indicating the engine size. Under the bonnet is a 2099cc version of the AJ-V6 power units familiar in the larger-engined cars, outputting 157bhp and offering a top speed of 130mph. The car car under review is the Sport version which has a suspension that is firmer than on the other versions, but which otherwise has the same running gear.

The Sport version also has 17” wheels against the 16” ones on the other cars, and has black instead of chrome window and body trims.

The interior had grey-stained birds-eye maple wood trim and being a Sport version had special sports-style seats with electric driver’s seat adjustment.

The car received a 4-star rating in the most recent Euro NCAP crash safety tests. Eight airbags are standard, including side curtains for rear passengers. The vehicle has as standard ABS with EBD, and traction control.

One of the first things noticable with the car was NOT noticable, if you get what I mean: the 2-litre X-Type is actually FWD, a first in a Jaguar, and that’s because the vehicle is built on a Ford Mondeo floorpan. But you wouldn’t realise the fact that it doesn’t have the 4WD of the other Xs, unless, presumably, you were driving in rather extreme ways. And, really, that’s not what Jaguar owners do, by and large. That said, in a bit of fast cornering, it was precise and direct to get in and out of the twists.

The 2-litre felt much punchier in Ireland than I thought when I first drove it on the European launch, and indeed it makes for a surprisingly satisfying driving experience given that it is the ‘entry-level’ car. The 0-60mph run can be done in under ine seconds, which is highly respectable.

The luxury bits feel just right, and there’s a nice understated look to the wood and leather trimming which is a pleasant alternative to a gaudiness which seems to have found itself into a number of other marques in the class.

Noise levels are low, as they should be. The Sport suspension wasn’t intrusively firm, as such can be on Irish roads.

All in all, despite expecting some downsides because it was a smaller engine, I left this car back with a feeling that it might just be what I’d go for myself if money was not a prime consideration in my purchase of a personal car. And actually, if I had the money to spend on anything in the overall classs, the 2-litre X-type might well be one of the better investments.