Saving the best until last?
LAST MONTH, I spoke about pettiness and parking disputes, and my incurable urge to buy a pink XJ from Anglia Car Auctions. It almost happened, but I was outbid by £100 – and now it’s for sale at a local dealership.
I did, however, treat my grumpy neighbours to the sight of another Jaguar, and that’s it, above. It’s only temporarily in my custody, but it’s a 2006 Model Year S-Type 3.0 Sport and it’s a fabulous car. You see, while it may have been a deliberate anachronism when launched, with its fusion of retro styling and its traditional reardrive mechanical layout, by the time the Jaguar S-Type reached its final incarnation it had evolved into a thoroughly modern car. It is the car the S-Type should have been when it debuted, rather than a boardroom wrangle between Jaguar and Ford to reach a compromise between Jaguar DNA and appeal to the American market.
That’s proven by the fact that the S-Type received three facelifts during its nine-year life, each time as an answer to the model’s critics. First to go was the original dashboard, which copped for all manner of disapproval at launch and (in my humble opinion at least) quite rightly so. It didn’t feel special enough, and as the cars got older, bits of dashboard started to fall off. And what on earth was that foot-long drawer in the dashboard all about? Handy if you enjoy a Subway, I suppose, but that’s about the end of its usefulness. To fix it, Jaguar used the blueprint from the X-Type and suddenly it felt like a far more coherent piece of design.
Next to go, in 2003, were the shiny leather seats, droopy back end and plasticky switchgear. The rear styling is, of course, subjective and I’m still not sure which I prefer, but by removing the O-shaped boot release button from the badge plinth Jaguar at least stopped some of its US customers from spelling it as ‘Jagouar’. A diesel model appeared, too, and the specification was upgraded across the range.
But by the time of its final nip and tuck in 2005, for the 2006 Model Year, the S-Type evolved into the car it should always have been – far better built, much more refined and better rustprotected, yet retaining the wonderful dynamics, great performance and old-school silhouette of the original.
Today, that modern-retro styling is core to the car’s appeal. A good S-Type is a cool thing, as nostalgia for the late 1990s and early 2000s develops apace.
After all, it’s a car that’s ra
