Would it be too much to ask that a Jaguar look like a Jaguar as opposed to something more American? I live in America and am surrounded by mediocre mediocrity on four wheels. It's as if designers are being told by accountants that "every additional bend in the metal costs X so nothing above X number of bends on the vehicle." I do hope designers there are following the U.S. in producing large-scale projections with natural light that show the proposed design from all normal viewing angles.
I read about a somewhat amusing showing of a new pickup truck design to typical buyers. The primary complaint was that the grille did not look manly enough. Of course, additional questions had to be asked to help define "manly" to a group of car designers. This elicited comments like the grille looked "girly." The solution was sharper and heavier looking. This resulted in high approvals.
What is a Jaguar supposed to look like? Aside from the XK120 and a few 4-cylinders, early post-WWII Jags were large sedans meant to compete with a coachbuilt Rolls Royce at a fraction of the price, and presumable a fraction of the mechanical reliability. A 1949 Jaguar Mark IV really didn’t look all that different than an Austin Princess. Willian Lyons was making cut price luxury cars.
Then came the compact Mark I and the classic Mark II… and Daimler 250, 1963 Jaguar S-type and rehashed 240, 340 and 420. Attractive, but that design language was completely played out by the end of the 1960s. Unless you like various iterations of the Mitsuoka Viewt replica car. Or the failed retro Ford era S-Type revival?
Notice that I failed to mention the immensely cumbersome luxury Mark X and 420G - cars that were too wide for English B-roads and unloved in America. Ultimately, Lyons combined the compact and luxury lines into the intermediate sized XJ6, a product that lived too long and outside of Britain never was truly competitive. Maybe Jaguar should have been killed by British Leyland because Ford ultimately dumped a lot of money into it and so did Tata, with no financial return to show for it. After all the various failed products, what is a Jaguar supposed to look like? In many ways, the brand’s relevance died with wire wheels and the 1960s. Even back then, it was absurd to put weak and inherently imbalanced wire wheels of an E-type that very optimistically could have made 150MPH.
As far as the America market, we now have a gender based dichotomy between feminine crossovers and masculine pickups. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to foreigners but aside from muscle cars and a rare few off-roaders like the Wrangler and Bronco, the pick-up truck is the only gender conforming transport for the successful, steak eating American male. As ludicrous as it seems, even full sized body-on-frame SUVs are largely marketed to women, namely the stereotypical “soccer mom.” I’m a fan of muscle cars in the American idiom (no wire wheels) but even I had to succumb to the allure of an immense 20 foot long truck. And sadly, I’ve used the truck bed for debris and building materials every week since. I need a vacation from DIY.
I’m not sure where that leaves Jaguar, aside from being completely dead and unmissed in North America. Land Rover and Range Rover still live for a demographic of fashionable buyers, although, I can’t see anything there you couldn’t find at a BMW, Mercedes or Audi dealership.
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