The Jaguar X-Type has always had more than its fair share of negative preconceptions to cart about. Like the Honda brand which never quite managed to break free of its OAP image in the UK despite the best efforts of red-braced ad men to bring down the owners' average age by four decades or so, Jaguar saloons haven't really been cool since the days of Mike Hawthorn. That was all supposed to change with the X-Type.
A luxurious and classy alternative to the 3 Series and the Audi A4, it was pushed quite hurrriedly onto the stage in 2001 as a young exec's dream. The spec of the higher models looked bang on, with an all-wheel drive chassis under your choice of a brace of fruity V6s, but the squished-XJ style clearly didn't look right because young execs stayed away from it in droves.
Looks weren't the only cause of the sales resistance. Snobbishness played a part too. Ford had incorporated Jaguar into its Premier Automotive Group in 1999, and in all the excitement of the merger the PAG marketing machine made the mistake of linking the X-Type rather too strongly with the second-generation Mondeo. They thought that would impress folk, and it should have done really because that Mondeo was a great car, but all that actually happened was the alienation of both Jaguar traditionalists and the young tyros who might well have bought a Jaguar if only they hadn't thought it was, under the Geoff Lawson skin, a non-aspirational Ford.
Ford eventually gave up with Jaguar in 2008 having made not a bean of profit from their association. A year after that the X-Type was gone too, 350,000 of them having sold against a total expectation of 800,000. Shame really because the car had a lot going for it. Early models had Ford's smooth 195hp Duratec-based (but with variable valve timing) 2.5 AJ-V6, or a 231hp 3.0 version that could knock out the 0-60 in six seconds and deliver a combined fuel consumption of 27.5mpg against the 2.5's 29.5mpg. The ride was smooth and the experience refined.
The generic downsides of the X-Type, other than disappointing fuel economy, were a cramped rear cabin and a sneaking feeling that the V6 horsepower numbers might be a bit flattering. The manual 'box was a good choice in one respect because the ZF 'sealed for life' autos turned out to be nothing of the sort, but the throw on the manual shift was nearly as long as Fatima Whitbread's. In later life you could also expect a visit from the well-known country & western singer Rusty Sills.
The AWD transfer box didn't hold much oil so you needed to keep your eye on the level. That wasn't easy from the driver's seat, which over time developed a rocking function that was a bit more annoying than the mental image of a relaxing mint julep on the stoup might suggest. If the seat on this week's shed is indeed rocking, don't go knocking, just go to the owner's club website to find out about the mod that many owners have done. There you'll also find out about failing door seals and boot locks, and cracking ABS rings.
Seems we've got this far without saying anything nice about X-Types in general or this car in particular, so maybe it's time to redress the balance a bit. This is an early 2.5, which is actually a good thing because there were strong suspicions that later Xs were being less carefully quality-checked by an increasingly disgruntled workforce. Unsold cars were left for months up to their axles in water on some blasted disused airfield. Fortunately the Adriatic Blue paint on this car looks to be in very decent nick, and there has been no mention of rust anywhere on the MOT history.
The current certificate runs to next March, the only advisories being a deteriorated front number plate (which appears to have been fixed) and one brake pipe 'corroded, covered in grease or other material'. Shed once bought a car where the 'other material' on the brake pipes seemed to be sheep poo or similar farmyard product. He left it on partly as an experiment, but mainly because it didn't seem to want to come off. He quickly sold the car to the postmistress's son and as far as he knows the 'other material' is still on there, delighting the MOT tester on an annual basis. Spread the love, that's Shed's motto. Well, spread something anyway.
If we believe the ad's claim that this car has had no previous owners, then it's had the longest delivery drive in history followed by two decades of storage, but it's more likely that that's a mistake. Some posters will claim that the £1,495 price is another mistake, and the £99 ADMIN FEE! certainly won't impress many here, but if you can get past all that and come to a sensible agreement in these difficult times you could be pleasantly surprised.
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