In these days of restricted pleasures, our Prime Find feature still provides a safe haven for window shopping. We’re a fairly broad church here at ViaRETRO and our personal tastes vary, but I opened Tony Wawryk’s Prime Find on the lovely 1964 Jaguar S-Type feeling pretty sure I’d be on safe ground. After all, the original S-Type is an undeniably good looking car and its classic credentials are well defined. I actually read every word and noted Tony’s assessment that whilst from some angles the S-Type “looks terrific, from others – principally side-on profile – it looks a little clumsy”. Fair enough, I thought. But then… “Having said that, it’s surely a better-looking car than the ill-conceived “updated” S-Type that Jaguar foisted on the world in 1999.” Excuse me?
The 1999 Jaguar S-Type has been much maligned, but at 21 years old distance I suggest it’s time for the mob to put away the burning torches and calmly reconsider a much underrated car. Tony isn’t alone in tagging the car as being ill-conceived, but that doesn’t make him right. If you’re in the detractor camp, I’d advise you to spend a bit of time with one (an S-Type, not a Tony) and you’ll grow to see the error of your ways. Don’t expect me to fall back on making a case for beauty coming from within, as compared to most of the slab sided monoliths that stalk the roads today, the S-Type is ageing gracefully. It’s got lines and character. The new S-Type was styled by Geoff Lawson, father of the XJ220 supercar, the elegant X300 series XJ saloon from 1994, and the first incarnation of the XK8 coupe. Yes, the X-Type was also created on his watch but everyone is entitled to the occasional bad day at work. Just compare his highlights with the generation that followed under Ian Callum’s leadership, the bland XF and the frankly awkward X351 XJ from 2020. That’s what you get if you complain about a company not looking sufficiently toward the future; you get conformity and cars that don’t look like proper Jags.
The new S-Type was criticised for somehow robbing the stylistic grave of Jaguar’s past, but elsewhere in the industry others were lauded for playing the same trick. Consider the gopping revival of the Volkswagen Beetle, a design that was little more than a child’s drawing of the original plonked over the uninspiring generation of Golf. If ever a car deserved ridicule it was that one, but it sold in large numbers because huge swathes of the car buying public are gullible morons and got all misty eyed about Herbie films. When Jaguar unveiled their new model for 1999, the received wisdom was that it was also a cynically conceived throw back, and that even worse it was a re-bodied Ford. Both accusations are false and to dismiss the car as such does the Jag a terrible disservice. The point being, if it was ok for the Germans to recall their greatest hits, why not Jaguar? You’re not telling me the new Beetle was a high point in retro design.
So what of the accusation that the S-Type was not a proper Jag? Well, that’s utter rot quite frankly. It’s true that it was the product of a platform sharing agreement across the Ford Motor Company, of which Jaguar was then a part. The DEW platform also underpinned the contemporary Lincoln LS and Ford Thunderbird, but this was Ford’s gain rather than Jaguar’s loss. The key point is the platform was jointly developed and not simply plucked from the shelf in Detroit, although Ford’s engineering facilities at the time were world class and their involvement was inherently no bad thing. Jaguar was only a small division of the Ford empire but it was recognised that Jag’s core competencies lay in the development of wafting executive conveyances, so it was never a case of simply hammering a Coventry body over a Crown Vic or a Lincoln Town Car. Ford weren’t in the business of sabotaging their own brands, so the characteristics essential to Jaguar DNA were baked in from the start and engineered as necessary. Suspension dynamics and chassis geometry were tweaked for the Jaguar application, and then tweaked again throughout production. Just as the first S-Types were entering the showrooms, Ford publically recognised the importance of differentiating the prestige brands away from the blue collar products by placing Lincoln, Mercury, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo into the Premier Automotive Group, an ultimately doomed venture but a statement of intent nonetheless.
There was never any intent for the S-Type to be a re-bodied anything, but one part that was unashamedly carryover could be found under the bonnet. In addition to Jaguar’s own 4.0 AJ-V8, buyers could specify a 2.5 or 3.0 litre petrol V6 Ford Duratec hailing from the Cleveland Engine Plant in Ohio. An American engine in a Jag? Well yes, especially when it has an aluminium block and DOHC head with four valves per cylinder, producing a full bodied 240bhp. Early S-Types were available with either a five speed manual that nobody ordered, or a five speed automatic transmission. This was later superseded by a six speed auto with the famous J-Gate selector pattern. The 4.2 litre Supercharged S-Type R was the fastest production saloon in the world when it came on stream in 2002. Producing a thumping 400bhp it could sprint to 60mph in 5.3 seconds and onto a limited 155mph. As if this wasn’t enough, a revised pulley was developed for the Eaton Supercharger which liberated a further 20bhp. Either version was more than a match for the German BMW M5 and Mercedes E55 AMG. Nor did those V6 variants disgrace themselves, the 3.0 litre managing the same electronically limited top speed and still hitting 60mph in a fraction under 7 seconds. The 3.0 litre was really the one to have, being cheaper and more efficient than the V8 but still lively enough to have some fun with impressive pull right through the rev range up to a red line at 6,800 rpm. All models delivered that trademark Jaguar ride, poised but supremely comfortable, but the chassis was tuned to allow the driver to press on in confidence. It was a great driver’s car.
But whilst technical specifications are factual, criticism of the S-Type centred on its styling. It got an immediate kicking from the team at BBC Top Gear, even though they had to concede it drove well. A million bar room mimics jumped on the bandwagon and parroted their assertions that it was ugly, gawky, too old fashioned or not old fashioned enough. But really, those seem like groundless complaints to me. They’ve got shape and form. What once may have looked contrived now looks classy, subtle even.
I’ll show my hand here. I’m standing up for the S-Type because we spent 18 happy months with one in our household. It was a 2004 3.0 V6 with the six speed automatic, finished in British Racing Green with an Ivory leather interior. Dating from the period between sharpening the chassis and implementing the facelift, it was the S-Type sweet spot. My partner bought it after I used her Eunos Roadster to comprehensively destroy a Toyota, the Jag being a sturdy safe haven and the polar opposite to the small Japanese sports car. Although she would have happily had another MX-5, the Jag was the right car at the right time and she handed over £1,900 in used notes to a dealer who’d had it hanging around for a while. We mentally wrote the expense off that very day, expecting it to dramatically fail at any moment, but it defied all predictions for a year and a half. It memorably took us on trips into Snowdonia and down to the south coast and the Isle of Wight, always eager but supremely comfortable and quiet. It was happy to cruise along for mile after mile but a small application of throttle would see it kick down and pounce on lesser cars, gathering speeds that would rapidly become highly illegal. It couldn’t rival a hot hatch down a twisty lane but on a swooping B-road it rode superbly and swept through the bends with poise and intent, never getting out of phase and even allowing a little misbehaviour if the driver wanted to play when exiting a tight junction. Grace, space and pace indeed.
The trick with buying an old Jag is to never get too far into it financially because once you start to pick at threads the whole thing will unravel expensively and sometimes literally. Inevitably the day came when it failed to proceed, the top hose shearing from the radiator. Once repaired it transpired that the loss of coolant had triggered a problem deep within the Heating and Ventilation system, and googling suggested a proper fix wouldn’t be cheap. We took it to be assessed but once up on the four poster it was evident that the list of “things to be attended to” could become quite lengthy. It was a testament to the core qualities of that chassis that it still drove like a new car. We sold it for spares or repairs and against the odds it saw the road again, gaining a fresh MOT. It recently dropped off the DVLA records but isn’t showing as scrapped so who knows, it might still be out there wearing a different number plate or perhaps exported. I’d like to think so.
It may have been easy to mock the S-Type but to do so is to miss the fact there’s a really good car under that controversial body. It wasn’t so much ill-conceived as ill-received, but that wasn’t Jaguar’s fault. It currently languishes in that hinterland of “used car” and even I would lift an eyebrow if I encountered one at a classic car show (remember them?) but I’m confident that its time will come. Until then you have a window of opportunity to beat the rush before everyone else cottons on. Variety is the spice of ViaRETRO for sure, but I’m right on this one.
