Jaguar XJR X358

RAREL Y HAS a car hidden cutting edge technology as effectively as the previous generation Jaguar XJ. That classic body shape with its twin headlights and prowling-cat lowness of the bonnet and boot throwsyou off the scent so completely it’s like opening one of those hinged antique writing desks and finding an iP ad embedded inside. Yet that couldn’t be further fr om the truth.

The car’s major facelift fr om 2007 internally known as the X358 was Jaguar’s attempt topoint out that, actually , the X350 XJ with its all-aluminium lightw eight chassis is still pretty damn up-to-date, thank you very much. It also previewed a couple of minor but important design ideas that would be seen on all subsequent Jaguars. It’s also clear fr om the lovely early 2009 diesel example we’ve tracked down for our photos that the purity of the original Geoff Lawson design didn’t allow for a massive rethink.

It was a team lead by Lawson’s replacement, Ian Callum, that was tasked with the job of grafting Jaguar’s then newfound modernism onto a car that visually could still trace its links back tothe original ground-breaking 1968 XJ Series 1.

Richard Carter , design manager , Jaguar Design Studio, told us, “The biggest challenge, I think, was toharmonise the sharper more contemporary design intent with the rather soft surface development of the aluminium body shell. X350 was one of the first all-aluminium bodied cars, and a limitation of the aluminium pressing technology at the time resulted in excessively lar gecorner radii tothe body panels.”In a statement at the time, Callum said the facelifted car , “Combines the beauty of the traditional with the confidence of the present,” and it works pretty well. Fans of the still very beautiful X350 would say it was pretty much unimproveable, and Callum sensibly avoided a major redesign of those iconic lights, especially given how much bonnet reworking that would require, with the all-new XJ just two years down the road. Instead, he made more of the low er grille, linking it with the one above with a sportsinspir ed mesh covering and incr easing the sports aggression.


Says Richard, “The design intent was togive it a sportier , more muscular and contemporary appearance within the limitations of a mid-cycle freshening. “The air int ake grilles wereaccentuated with chrome bezels and made more prominent with greater emphasis on the fr ont centre low er int ake. This deepened the appearance of the fr ont end, giving the car the more muscular stance. The fr ont and rear bumpers weregiv en a cleaner more modern surface tr eatment with simpler more faceted forms and tighter corner radii.” Perhaps more noticeably , the car came with the ‘power vents’ behind the fr ont wheelarches that don’t do a whole lot but again nudge the brain into thinking sports machine rather than gentleman’s conveyance. These haveahistory of their own, first appearing on the RD-6 showcar from 2003 (June 20 13) and then redefined for the Concept Eight XJ show car fr om 2004 (see JWM, July 20 14) where Callum and his right-hand-man, Jaguar’s director for advanced design, Julian Thomson, played with the idea of ultimate interior luxury in the newly introduced long-wheelbase version. They werethen fitted toan XJR Portfolio of 2006, and werealso on the XK of 2005, giving the car , in Richard’s words, a visual connection with the-then 18-month-old sports car . They’re now very much part of the current Jaguar look.

“Looking back at what was produced,” says Richard,“I think overall the mid-cycle fr eshening was successful,blending an indication of the futur e direction of the Jaguar design aesthetic onto an existing product, the result looking natural, and certainly an impr ovement on X350.”

The market would tend toagree with him. Salesman Matthew Sweeney from Jaguar specialists Chiltern of Bovingdon reckons the facelifted cars appeal toa younger buyer . “The older man prefers the older shape, more chrome on the bumpers, whereas the facelift model is a bit more aggressive,” he tells us.

The prices are certainly appealing. The facelift car with the 2.7-litre diesel starts at around £1 0,000 for a car that cost £45,520 new in 2007 in the entry Executive trim. Even these came loaded with spec. Standard wheels were1 9in and the new heated seats (cooled, too, in the 400bhp XJR) werereshaped togive even more room in the back. As before, you got adaptive dampers with air suspension, and if you upgraded toSport Premium for £51,520, as the first owner of Simon Goddard’s car in our shots did, Jaguar traditionalism was backpedalled even further with aluminium veneer on the dash, blacked window surrounds and 20in wheels.

Prices are even more appealing if your taste (or budget) is more directed towards the cars from 2003: wefound diesels starting from £5,000 for high-mileage examples, while the first petrol V6s are down toaround £4,000. This is no money at all for a car that was as groundbreaking as the X350.

Atits launch in 2003, Jaguar claimed that the new XJ was lighter than its rivals by around 150kg. That aluminium monocoque body was 60 percent stiffer and 40 percent lighter than the steel-bodied car it replaced, the company said, meaning that Jaguar could install all the latest gadgets and safety equipment that both buyers and government bodies wereclamoring for,while at the same time improving performance and fuel consumption.

A new X350 with the updated 4.2-litre AJV8 was 3766lb, compared tothe outgoing 4.0-litre X308 at 3995lb. Plus, it was bigger and a whole lot more roomier , especially for rear passengers (at long last).

The key was that aluminum structure, which really was brand new in the market. True, Audi was using a spaceframe structure for its A8 limo by then, but Jaguar claimed its monocoque body (with its entire body panels bonded and riveted toform a rigid shell) was a better solution, offering more space and greater weight-saving.

How on earth was plucky underdog Jaguar able tocarry off such a coup? The answer,of course, was that owner Fordhad been experimenting with aluminum for years,along with Alcan, better known for making billions of Cokecans. While Fordcertainly drove the project forward and paid, along with Alcan, for a lot of the research, Jaguar played its part too. As Fordwas producing limited-run
aluminium versions of dull cars like the Mercury Sable,Jaguar built the amazing aluminium-bodied XJ220 supercar , the car that enabled the X350 XJ toexist.

That 220’s first appearance as a concept in 1988 predated Ford’s $2.38 billion (£1 .4 billion at today’sconversion rate) purchase of Jaguar by a year , and when it went into production, it was helped by the aluminum knowledge of both companies. Indeed, the company that actually did the aluminium pressings for the XJ220’s body , Abbey Panels, had in the past done work for Jaguar on the C-type and D-type sports cars, as well as for the aircraft industry . When Jaguar says aluminium goes tothe heart of the company’s heritage, it’s not just spinning a line.

You’d think that such an early application of what’s now becoming a much more common building material for cars would havehad its teething problems, but according tothe service department of Chiltern of Bovingdon, the problems havebeen few and far between.

Service advisor Mark Holden reckons that corrosion stemming from stone chips is the main one, but says it’s relatively easy for it tobe rubbed back and painted again.
The other issue is where steel earths welded onto the aluminum bodywork can fail, leading tothe appearance of all sorts of scary electric warning lights. It’s rarely the electric components themselves that fail, according to Holden. “Normally , wetake the earth off, drill a hole and put in a new stud,” he says.

One thing he has noticed is that the price of aluminum suspension parts has actually come down. “Suspension arms wereabout £420, now they are £1 95,” he says. That’s made his lif e and his customers’ lives easier . “W e used to just change the bushes in them, but now with the price drop it’s hardly worth it.” It also means you get Jaguar original part bushes, which weren’t available aftermarket.

Sales success

The X350 was a big hit when it was first launched. In 2003,an impressive 3,8 10 were sold in the UK to take 28 percent of that limo-sized saloon market, beating even the ever popular Mercedes S-class. Even the next year it was still on top with 21percent of the market, according tofigur es from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

But the German rivals had an ace up their sleeve: diesels.In 2004, 1,377 of the S-class’s 2,268 sales werediesel, and both the Audi A8 and BMW 7-series also offered them.Jaguar responded in 2005 by fitting the 2.7-litre twinturbo diesel (co-developed by Fordand PSA Peugeot Citroën) that had also just gone into the S- TYPE. With 204bhp translating toa0-60mph time of 7.8 seconds, a top speed of 14 1mph and economy averaging 35mpg, it was pretty clear before you’d even got in the car that all that lightness created a car that sacrificed little in the way of performance toachieve its economy.The CO2 figure of 21 4g/km is nice, too, in that you’re paying £285 a year instead of £485 in VED.

By 2006, the diesel was taking over half of all XJ sales in the UK at 1,321 cars that year , and by 2008, it rose to75 percent of XJ sales. Who would havethought compression ignition would havecome so far in Jaguar? Certainly not test-driver Norman Dewis, who, in 1975, got a roasting from founder William Lyons for evaluating a diesel, telling him, “W e don’t want a diesel engine in Jaguar cars. Dirty, smelly , noisy things – forget it!”He wouldn’t havebelieved the 2.7 was a diesel. Driving Simon Goddard’s X358 will be a revelation toanyone who still believes the fuel has no place powering Jaguars.

The only place you could possibly tell it was dieselpowered is from outside, standing near the bonnet. From the driver seat and with your foot down, all you hear is a muted, but still appealing, V6 woofle as the ZF six-speed auto spins through its gears. Drivers of older six-cylinder Jaguars will approve of the spirited acceleration that dispenses with other traffic, rather than makes it disappear altogether as the XJR would.

In fact, the diesel pretty much sounded the death knell for the 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine and, although it just crept into the facelift version intact, by 2008,Jaguar had deleted it fr om the XJ as part of a model cull ahead of the all-new replacement in 2009.

Now 3.0-litres are hens teeth, particularly with the facelift, according tosalesman Sweeney at Chiltern of Bovingdon. Which is a shame, because as his says, “They make a good, reliable car topotter about in.”The diesel has no major foibles according to Holden in the service centre, but they do need a good run. “Like all modern diesels, they don’t like being trickled round town. You get EGR [exhaust gas recirculation] turbo and DPF [particulate filter] issues,” he says. “Y ou run the risk of having issues if you don’t do the mileages.”He means lots of runs when it doesn’t get hot enough. Turbos can stick and then fail, which is £1 ,600 fitted. And there are two of them. The particulate filters need a blast of 20 minutes above 50mph toregenerate, although Holden says they’ve only ever had toreplace one.

The other issue the diesels became famous for is the cracking in the exhaust downpipe, and those who went back toJaguar found themselves paying for an entire downpipe, including catalytic convertor , at around £700 unfitted. However , Jaguar has sorted itself out and now produces a repair section for £1 65 complete with the expansion joint (some cheaper repairs were missing this bit), which Chiltern will fit for £370 all in.

The 4.2 V8s are pretty reliable too the only reasonably common fault is a split coolant pipe that runs under the supercharger on the XJR and XJ V8 supercars and requires five hours of labour to repair .

The reliability is a bonus given the complexity of the car , with its adaptive dampers, air suspension, radar -guided cruise control and everything else. Given that list, it still feels a bit dated inside, even with the aluminum trim fitted to Simon’s car . With that yoke looping around the top of the dash, the ‘Generican’ US-inspired fonts on the big buttons, the old J-gate shifter , the pen-line drawings of theSat-Nav (that Simon had updated for a wincing £1 69 from supplier Denso), it doesn’t feel that modern.

On the other hand, the elegant graphics of the dials and the central clock look wonderful, the rear is now big enough so real-life adults of average European height can actually relax back there, and most of all, it’s STILL a marvel todrive. The flowing gait over choppy roads is something a contemporary-era Audi A8, for example, would kill for.

It is serene, agile, comfortable and, with the facelift, just something of a brawler visually. It’s the perfect car toown while you make your peace with modern Jaguars.