2008-03-31 11:58:08
I make a promise in the intro that this blog will go places regular reviews don’t go. For example the following, which proves itself objective (assuming I didn’t make it all up), because being a personal email it’s evidence of how I really feel about the Jaguar XF. I wrote my friend and hero, Portland Jaguar dealer and racedriver Monte Shelton.
Monte,
Spent Thursday driving new Jaguar XF, San Diego out to Julian and back, chief designer Ian Callum rode with me, what a terrific guy, we had a great time.
The car is fantastic. Gorgeous for starters, and what a great suspension. Only wish the paddle shifter in the normally aspirated had a "pure" mode, like the supercharged. Jag said they have 4000 orders so far.
Sam
So there’s your review of the Jaguar XF sports sedan in a soundbite. Fantastic. Gorgeous. Great suspension. Enthusiastic reception. A 4.2-liter V8 that makes either 300 horsepower normally aspirated or 420 horsepower supercharged, using the same smooth six-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters, with the SC programmed to let you make your own shifting decisions.
Ian Callum is a Scot, like my mom. We had a lot of things in common to talk about. I like Brits a lot, maybe especially Scots—my kitesurfing instructor down in Baja is a Scot, also named Ian. I first traveled to England to write about racing and racers in 1971. Callum, who’s fiftysomething, might have been surprised by the depth of my roots and connections there, including driving 1600 miles in 5 days in a turbocharged Volvo S40, hitting all four corners of England to interview 11 WW2 veterans during the research for "At All Costs."
I wasn't surprised by his passion for American hot rods--I've seen it before, in Brits. He owns a ’56 Chevy, and a 450-horsepower ’32 Ford that he likes to use to blow minds on the Motorway by blasting at ungodly speeds past expensive European sports sedans.
How do you envision a brilliant British designer? Designers are always interesting, although not always alike, other than being into style and shape. More so than other artists, they have to be both left-brained and right-brained. They need an acute appreciation for balancing form, function and operation.
Callum was a most enjoyable companion for the day-long drive. He seemed a bit absent-minded-professorish, almost distracted,as half his mind is always on form; for the last 4 years it’s been on one shape, that of the Jaguar XF, and have I said it was gorgeous yet?
That Thursday he sported a Band-Aid on the bridge of his nose, from walking into the outside corner of two glass walls in the hotel room, half-asleep at 4 a.m. Why was corner there? Dumb design!
“Clear case of form over function,” he said, about the trendy rooms in the trendy Ivy Hotel of the trendy Gaslight district in San Diego. The glass walls around the bathtub and shower were common walls with the rest of the room. The windows to the street were big, and the drapes were cumbersome. I jumped in the shower at 8 a.m. without thinking to draw the drapes, and when I wiped the shampoo off my eyelids I looked down from my second-story room onto the corner and saw pedestrians at a crosswalk, casually looking around and I hoped not up as they waited for the light to change.
When Callum was 12, he wrote a letter to the chief designer of Jaguar, announcing that he wanted to be a Jaguar designer some day, and he got an encouraging personal reply. Thirty-four years later, he was the design director of Jaguar himself.
After completing a degree in industrial design from the Glasgow School of Art, he studied vehicle design at the Royal College of Art, and then began his career at Ford of England. Later at Tom Walkinshaw Racing (another Scot), he designed the Aston Martin DB7, one of the most beautiful cars on earth. Italians are supposed to rule the roost on sensual shapes, but Jaguar and Aston Martin show them a sensual thing or two.
The Jaguar XF is the most important car Callum has ever done, for business and historic reasons. Coincidentally, on the day we drove from San Diego, the headlines on the business pages announced that Jaguar and Land Rover had been sold by Ford for $2.3 billion to India’s Tata Motors, a company that’s been building cars for 10 years.
One of the autojournos in our group had twice interviewed Mr. Ratan Tata himself, and was impressed by his abstract intelligence and no-nonsense approach to business. Tata has a Harvard MBA, and is no dilettante to carmaking. In New Delhi in January, he unveiled the Nano, the “People’s Car,” less than 10 feet long, two cylinders, comfortably seats four, very high mileage and very low price. Tata said it was designed for Asian families that now travel on scooters. He got the idea for the Nano watching, “the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, and his wife seated behind him holding a little baby.”
The sale of Jaguar was a desperate move by Ford, sinking fast lately despite building good cars and trucks. Jaguar too has been losing money for a few years, partly because its S-Type, with retro styling and trailing-edge technology, couldn’t compete with BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Cadillac. The new XF leaps ahead of all of them, as I see it. Base price of the XF is about $50k, and for that you get a lot of luxury sports sedan. Body, suspension, engine, transmission, interior. A quick comparison test in my mind gives Jaguar a blowout win. It's the body, baby.
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| A roomy back seat... |
... big trunk with folding rear seats making more cargo space ... |
... and a classy interior in aluminum, walnut and leather. Blissfully free of techno-gadgets. |
You could put your finger anyplace on the car, and Callum could tell you about the thought that went into the design, at that point. Designers have to work with engineers and accountants, to achieve what each wants, often needs, and sometimes must have. So to get a car finished without compromises in its form is no small thing for a designer, and means each problem was carefully worked out. When the engineers, designers, and budgeteers are all happy, it’s a successful collaboration.
“We had to jump two or three generations in terms of design and style,” said Callum, as I pictured the S-Type and XJ in my mind. “We worked hard to give the XF its sleek, flowing profile. Every line is disciplined and controlled. The XF is about proportion, simplicity, and purity.
“It’s not cheap and it’s not easy, but it was worth it,” he added.
Callum isn’t the only one at Jaguar who’s proud of the XF, they all are. Said Tim Watson, VP of Communications, “We have a lot of great new cars in the pipeline, and we’re all quite optimistic at Jaguar”—or, as the Brits pronounce it, “jag-you-er.” Not “jagwire,” like we say.
The XF uses the engine, transmission, and suspension design of the Jaguar XK, so it has the heart and soul of a sports car. There’s a fellow at Jaguar named Mike Cross, whose position is Chief Engineer of Vehicle Integrity, but Guru of Handling and Ride might be a better job description. “Jackie Stewart once said Mike had the driving ability and car perception to be a Formula 1 driver,” said Callum.
Not only does the XF handle beautifully, but the ride is comfortable at all times, something I can’t say about the Mercedes C63 AMG. http://www.sammoses.com/roadtestBlog-Mercedes-C63-AMGthe-first-badass-Benz-totally-built-by-AMG-4.html
The XF's beautiful ride and handling can be pegged to its stiff spine--the torsional rigidity of the new chassis, which uses 25 different types of steel because there are that many different stresses at particular chassis points. There's a heavy dose of Boron steel, expensive and difficult to work with, but 9 times as strong as mild steel. You might say the XF has a Boron backbone. A rigid chassis makes the steering more precise and the ride more stable. When a chassis flexes too much, the springs and shock absorbers have to do more work than they should, to achieve good cornering.
We drove from San Diego east over winding roads to Julian for lunch, and then back. We drove out in a silver 300-horsepower base XF, and back, a bit quicker, in a dark green 420-hp SC. The powerful whine of the supercharger has been muted, when compared to the XJ sedan, thanks mostly to a two-layer bulkhead. I missed the whine.
The road on our route would have been perfect for a sports car like the Mazda Miata or Pontiac Solstice, but the XF is too beautifully long-legged for those tight curves. I could still tell, though, that it handles like a vector. The ride is totally on an even firm keel. The supercharged XF is born to be driven on a winding road with 80- and 90-mph curves and 120-mph straights.
"When Jaguar was created back in the 1930s it was all about creating beautiful, fast cars," said Callum. "I grew up when Jags were the most modern cars on the road. That's something that's rightfully ours, and something we are going to take back. The XF is just the starting point."
Great photos by David Dewhurst for Jaguar.
Sam Moses
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