Hey Rob, no, this thread caught my eye and I discovered that one or two were really having a Ford love-fest. I provided some healthy contrast.

(dont tell'em I love Chevy)

Only because you used the analogy yourself- and are about to have a once in a lifetime rendezvous, Jaguar is the exotic mistress that recharges your batteries to continue driving the station wagon.

Savor it Rob, you earned it.

 

Queen you say America USA never built any quality cars,so that got me thinking!

my own father had &drove a 1935 Lincoln K model with an ALUMINUM body, big 12 cylinder engine.

how about the FAMOUS DUESENBERG cars supercharged, 4 valve heads, twin overhead cams,.
Pierce-Arrow V12s,, Packard V12s,, Cord & Auburn .

And the darling Cadillacs with big V12s and V16 cylinder engines.

comon' those were awesome cars of the world, ALL designed and built in USA with all USA parts!

only cars in the world that came close were the German/**** Mercedes SSK roadsters.

Jaguar of that era was a joke in comparison.

 

OK that said , i do like and respect my own 1978 XJS roadster, modified V12 engine.

yup you guessed it NO Lucas under the hood/bonnet, all GM electronics along with some custom computers to manage things,plus couple Japanese pieces!

heck i even have my electric fans made in Turkey(WTF).

I'm sure Jaguar for now will last until the world turns to Hybrids and Electric for personal transportation.

the technology for such will be so far out of the box , TATA will be in the mix, but if they have used up the UK genes and Dna they just may go elsewhere for new blood!

having 5/10 trillion money , you can accomplish much.

i suppose only time will tell,(and i hope this useless bickering will pass).

it all started with your name (Queen and Country), that sir is intimidating in it self!

i am of english name, it came over wearing a RED coat,LOL.

but my other half is Irish(course you probably figured that out), but many not nice stories about the hardships imposed by Britain, spoken by my Grandmother(long passed).

 

That's worthy of a separate thread of it's own.

 

If it wasn't for the Ford connection I would never have bought a Jaguar.

Growing up in Australia all I ever had was big Ford RWD sedans, with V8's, and the occasional straight six. (there was a Land Rover in the mix too, but it was an old one).

When we moved to Switzerland I couldn't get my big V8 Ford. So I bought the biggest one I could find which was a Mondeo ST200 (Ford Contour SVT for my American friends). Front wheel drive, ugh...

It was OK but it wasn't the same.

When the Taurus SHO came out in 2010, there was an importer near Zürich who brought some in, I was >< this close to buying one, but the insurance costs killed it ($10k a year for insurance? WTF). But it was a great car for me, 3.5L twin-turbo V6, and all-wheel-drive (for the snow).

So I went looking again, the 3.0L V6 AWD X-Type was the closest thing I could find to the SHO, that wasn't a German marque. So I bought one. A lot of people criticised the X-Type for being a Mondeo, that was fine with me, I traded a Mondeo in on one LOL.

Owning the X-Type opened up the Jaguar world to me, I discovered the S-Type (which was a shared platform with the Lincoln LS, i.e. a Ford) and all of a sudden I realised I could get my big Ford RWD V8 sedan over in Europe, and I was happy again.

Plans changed and we were moving back to Australia, so I took the opportunity to buy the XJR in London, and bring it "home" with me.

I've since developed a love affair with all these cars, and Land Rovers, and Astons too. The Ford influence was totally a positive thing for me.

Anyone who hates on Ford for "what they did to Jaguar" is probably still driving an old Series 3 XJ and has no interest in catching up to the modern world. Jaguar was owned by Ford since 1989, that's 27 years ago. A lot happened in that time, most of it good from where I sit.

Yes they were hobbled and the glass ceiling stopped them from building "better and faster" cars than Aston. They weren't allowed to do whatever they wanted. They had to fit into the big corporate product portfolio.

Since the split from Ford, the Jaguar cars "came off the leash" in a way, power output jumped 175hp, the E-Diff, the F-Type (which would never have been allowed, since it would take sales from the Aston Vantage for sure).

What Ford gave Jaguar was money, factories (Halewood) access to a huge supply chain (goodbye Lucas, hello Valeo, Visteon, etc) and literally kept them alive so that they could flourish under new ownership. Ford also gave them Land Rover.

In the JLR family Jaguar is the junior, Land Rover is the senior. The sales figures and profitability of the two brands make that clear. Yes Land Rover benefited greatly from Jaguar (engines, other technology) but also Jaguar got a hell of a lot from Land Rover, and from Ford.

It's quite complex but the bottom line is simple, without Ford, without Land Rover, there would be no Jaguar like we know it today. Hell it probably wouldn't even exist anymore. Tata's deep pockets allowed Jaguar to have a renaissance.

As for the present day and the future, I don't know...

The XE, the new XF, the F-Pace, no XK-successor, the C-X75 that was so close but never made it, it's clear that Jaguar is moving in a new direction. At the same time they are riding on the Heritage movement; the lightweight E-Types, the unbuilt XK-SS' and you can now buy original E-Type parts directly from Jaguar. It can be a bit confusing.

The old geezers lament the Ford-era, but there's a new generation of old geezers coming who will lament the current era. For those people Jaguar peaked at around 2014 or 2015, the XKR, XFR, and F-Type were the big bangers, the XJ in it's various guises was a true luxury sporting sedan. Looking ahead we have smaller engines, no grand tourer, smaller & cheaper entry models, a friggin SUV, a massive focus on technology & gadgets, hybrids. But you could say that of all brands, not just Jaguar.

Whatever the company looks like in the future, and whatever cars they make, whatever engines are in them, i'll still be thankful that it exists.

 

+1 on the continued existence of Jaguar as a brand.

The buyers of the future, for the most part, do not care about the past, meaning the 1950s and 1960s. What these newer buyers do care very much about is connectivity, technology and being recognised for the status symbol Jaguar is now and into the future.

In my opinion, the Jaguar of today looks nothing like the Jaguar of the past:

 

Cambo,

The Ford we knew in UK and Australia may as well have been from another planet.

We had legendary cars, Escort, Sierra, Cortina (borderline) and you guys had the car/pickup thing.

Guess what- they did not have any of that in US. In fact the Escort they had was really appalling. Do a simple experiment look for Ford Escort on ebay us, you will find only scrap value cars. Do same in ebay UK and you will see Escorts selling for 50 grand.

So think about that for a second- and get your arms around this: All parts of the world outside US had all these fantastic Fords. The million dollar question is- did the rest of the world start using US fords. No absolutely not- it went the other way- US Ford started using Ford Europe models. And most importantly
Ford itself has changed far more radically than others. Under the "One Ford" initiative.

This is why Ford sold Jaguar / Mazda and others, to survive- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Forward

Trust me there is No Ford DNA in Jaguar or Land Rover. What little there was is being removed very quickly. Because they dont want to be a Ford, they cannot survive in that segment.

 

You are convincing me of my point:

None of those models have survived the test of time- Jaguar is still making all the models and formulas it once did. Do we need to know anymore?

The world made a choice- it did not go with heavy, un-engineered cars that had no handling. It went with light, handling, and luxury. Cars Jaguar has been making all along.

So no Jaguar was not a joke- ever.

 

I am sorry that you have a predisposed grievance and thereby prejudice against England and vi-a-vis me. You may have really good reasons for it.

But doesnt that skew your judgement somewhat? At least your compassion??

BTW you have worked on my car many moons ago. Imagine my firsthand hardship, having to give my money to people who did not like where I was from.

 

Australia had the Escort, and the Cortina. The Sierra was not sold locally but it was raced here in Group A in the 80's when Ford actually stopped production of the local V8's. Which actually sealed their fate and they never recovered.

Production of cars in Australia is ceasing in the next two years, Ford, Holden and Toyota are shutting their factories. Nissan, Mitsubishi and the others left years ago.

Not sure how this fits in the discussion but it's all over the place now so, meh...

I have to stop you there. You have obviously never worked on a modern Jag or Land Rover. When you start pulling them apart you find Ford has left it's mark on these cars. Maybe not DNA but the actual components.

Right now I have a new door lock for my XJR sitting on my desk in a box with a Jaguar sticker on the outside. The actual part itself is stamped Ford, and the lock assembly is the same one used in the Mondeo. Just an example.

So many parts are stamped with FoMoCo logo and are shared with various Ford vehicles (and Volvo's). Many components are sourced from the Ford supply chain, former Ford-owned companies and current ones too. Of course outside companies as well.

My S-Type had FoMoCo parts all through it. And by cross-checking the engineering part numbers I could find them in all sorts of Ford vehicles.

There are threads on this forum dedicated to the subject of identifying the equivalent Ford part numbers to make it easier to source spares.

My Land Rover has a Volvo engine in it, which was made in the Ford Bridgend factory in the UK. The brakes had FoMoCo logo cast in them. The electrical system comes from Visteon, which was spun-off from Ford years ago. The same sub-suppliers and OEMs who supplied Ford, also supplied JLR.

If by DNA you mean the design, the engineering, ok fair enough. But where the actual parts came from is a different story.

The engine-block in your XKR has a FoMoCo logo cast into it btw.

So no, I can't trust you.

 

The S-type platform was co-designed with Ford. They used it in the Lincoln LS vehicle.

 

Parts dont make DNA - execution does, not unlike two chefs can very different dish with the same ingredients. The same engine in in my truck and a corvette have very different DNA.

I would know about Jaguar DNA, its best represented in the sports car I own, and yes worked on.

No, a FoMoCo stamp on an engine does not represent Ford design nor DNA, all you have to do is read this thread to discover that.

The best example of DNA is a Ford Escort produced in Europe vs Ford Escort produced in USA- they both had ford stamps on all the parts- thats where the similarities ended.

 

Your point is quite WRONG. You obviously do not understand the U. S. car market or history; or you are ignoring it. The above marques did not survive the Depression because they built luxury cars and there was no longer a market for them. Period, end of story.


By the way, the late Duesenburg SJ's were making 400hp on the crappy low octane gas of the era. What was Rolls Royce doing? Anyone else in England doing anything like that?


BTW, as I recall there was no Jaguar until Swallow Sidecar started using the name as a model in about '35. They were not making the so called luxury cars you so glowingly refer to. Rather those I have seen were basic roadsters.


Jaguar as a brand did not come into existence until '45, and did not make a car of substance until the XK 120 of '48. Do I need to mention the fine engineering of the Prince of Darkness?


As for American cars, you need to consider history. After the war our population boomed, which is how I got here. America needed inexpensive cars in great numbers as the population moved to the suburbs. The economy would not support luxury cars in any number; the demand was for inexpensive cars that could carry large families ( we were breeding like rabbits in those days). That is what Detroit built.


As far as what the world went with; the answer seems to be Asian cars from what we have around here. If your point was correct, Jaguar would have great sales numbers. Instead they are so small that they don't get calculated in the J. D. Powers statistics, because Jaguar is seen as irrelevant. Thankfully there are those of us who love them.

 

You are right categorically. I see my mistake. Lets get something out of the way, America had superb engineering and cars for their time and intended use. England was no slouch either. But all that garbage aside....

My point is that we can call Jaguar a joke, but its no joke when you consider the car of my dreams (in essence) is still being made today, the Cadillac I owned in my youth has nothing common in essence with a current Cadillac.

 

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I think all Jag lovers should read this book:


Sir William was a remarkable gentleman.

He would not consider selling the company to Mercedes, BTW. (Think about it)
Vector

 

Oh god no, Jaguar needs to stay far away from Ford.... Those S-types are such a headache

 

They wanted to take his mojo. The Jaguar magic exists is no other car. Not even Rolls Royce. I wish I could describe it. He was very big on 'Value for money' and the cars should have a personality.

Not too many know that Jaguar's success came from his revolutionary engine- which was good for 200,000 and one of the longest in production.

 

Might have had something to do with the Battle of Britain and the Germans bombing the h**l out of them too.
Vector

 

Perhaps you can elaborate on exactly what the 'headache' is with the S-Type and are you referring to the 3.0 litre, 4.0 litre or 4.2 litre?

 

I presumed he meant that they're too durable/reliable and as such doesn't see many in his scrap yard.