TWIN TEST
With the S-TYPE of 1999, Jaguar was openly aiming for the BMW E39 5-series. Was it capable of toppling the class favourite?
If you wanted a medium sized executive saloon in the late 1990s and you had about £30,000 to spend, there was only one logical answer – the BMW 5-series. While devotees might have pointed with winning smiles toward the Alfa Romeo 166, the Audi A6, the MercedesBenz W210 E-class and even our own home grown Rover 75, they all knew that the BMW was the obvious choice and that it was the car against which all of theirs would be judged. And Jaguar knew this too; when developing the S-TYPE it openly admitted that the car it had benchmarked was the Bavarian masterclass on wheels.
BMW in Britain had effectively picked up the centre market where Jaguar had left off in the late 1960s – while rivals Rover and Triumph plugged away with older designs, the Neue Klasse and its successors led BMW to an image of quiet competence and sporting prowess. The cars weren’t cheap, but they were cheaper than a Mercedes and let’s be honest here, status symbols were never made of cars that everybody could attain with ease. Through the late 1970s and the 1980s the 5-series came to be known as the default choice for a young executive making his mark – and when the E39 model came out in 1996 it was widely seen as the best 5-series yet. Even today there are devotees who swear that subsequent BMWs haven’t come close. With a range of six cylinder petrol engines ranging from 2.0 to 3.0 and a couple of useful V8s at the top of the tree, it seemed like all the car you’d ever need – and with prices at the top of the range encroaching on XJ territory, Jaguar knew it would have to do something to attract lower-end buyers into the Jaguar fold before it was too late.
Enter the S-TYPE of 1999. Benchmarked against the 5-series, it was supposed to offer Jaguar’s traditional trio of targets – grace, space, and pace – to a new audience of youthful buyers. Styled in the retro mould that was becoming popular within the industry at the time, it harked back to Jaguar saloons of the 1960s from its oval grille to the shapes inherent in its cabin.
At launch, opinions on the new car were positive – with inevitable comparisons to the similarly retro Rover 75 launched at the same show, and heralding a new age for Jaguar design. We’ve covered a lot of the early S-TYPE’s history recently in the May issue, so feel free to read ahead if this bit feels repetitive. Jaguar was conscious of the need to attract a wholly new client base to the marque, a younger and more dynamic type of customer for whom a smaller XJ simply wouldn’t hit the mark.
So it consciously looked to the past to create a separate brand identity for the new car; choosing the most obviously retro of four diff
