All Entries in the "JAGUAR" Category
On The Street: New York Jag
by Gunnar Heinrich ::: img Automobiles De Luxe ::: Jaguar MK2 3.8 Litre
JUST about everything in New York is dog-eared from hard use. Curbs, door frames, taxis, shoes…this 60’s MK2 Jag’s no exception. I found this aged cat – its ass sticking halfway into 26th Street, this side of 10th – diagonally across from a Tesla showroom.
Stoically, the cat sat as I took picture after picture. Like some British lion, its best years well past, there’s some aspect of this Jaguar – as with almost any Jaguar – that never lost its luster.
It’s something that’s neither really engineered nor fitted, but has more to do with an inert passion that’s espoused in every glint of chrome and every curve of line.
It’s why when I stopped to observe the black MK2 with wire rims, another pedestrian was compelled to stop, too.
She marveled for a spell and then took out her camera and capture one photo, then two, then three, then four. You see, almost regardless of condition, not only is the sex appeal of a vintage Jag universal – it’s addictive.
Cinema & Car: Vertigo’s Jaguar Mk VIII
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG via IMCDB.org
VERTIGO is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s all time greats.
Shot in 1957, released in ‘58, the film is a distant, surreal look at unrequited love, betrayal, and revenge. Vertigo envelops us in a San Franciscan fog of mystery. There’s little dialogue and each scene takes on the dreamlike, melancholic din of an Edward Hopper oil-on-canvas.
It’s said that Hitchcock dedicated months to story boarding so that every cinematic moment would symbolically transmit the plot’s (and perhaps his own) naked message of lust, vulnerability, and rage.
Our darkest conditions, in otherwords.
When I first watched Vertigo ten years ago, I discovered that part of this gothic work’s appeal is in how Hitchcock artfully implements automobiles in establishing scene and, of course, to transport the story. Herein the graceful Jaguar Mk VIII played a central role.
The casting was perfect.
Jaguar represented an exotic alternative in the American car market circa 1958. The Mark series presented the same upstanding chrome and burl inlay qualities of a Bentley but with the sporting forward lean of the Jaguar S-Type.
The big cat’s flowing fenders, shown in the above screenshot in three quarter, perfectly compliment the deportment of our mysterious, anglophilic lady (Kim Novak).
Notice how the car’s right fender is in direct line with the Golden Gate’s abutment and seems to point at the actress; framing the action that’s about to ensue. An artful confluence of automobile and cinema, no doubt.
And, ladies & gents, a stylish template for automotive product placement for years to come.
What Makes a Jaguar, “A Jag-u-ar”?
- The essential elements of Jaguar design
- Ian Callum’s team should avoid Germanification
- Keep the sex please, Jaguar’s British
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Jaguar Cars
NO, seriously.
What makes a Jaguar a “Jag-wharr” “Jag-u-ar” or a “Shagwharr, baby, yeah!” ?
Coming down from the summer’s high of witnessing the troubled Brit car maker launch something – anything – that could be considered exciting, fresh, and new, yours is compelled to pick up a fresh blogger’s grenade, pull the pin and…
Can’t throw it. Won’t.
The world needs Jaguar now more than ever. We need a car company that promises to deliver what we’ll call the “everyday exotic”.
“Everyday” meaning a car that’s produced in some volume with a wide range of engine and trim options that inevitably includes a low-spec variant that has a euro-zone friendly diesel engine and an interior trimmed in velour.
By “exotic”, I refer to an automobile that makes your hand stand on end or at least prompts a second, lasting glance.
Neither BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus are in the business of building everday head-turners.
The latest generation 5er, E-Class, and GS and their higher and lower stablemates are quite doomed to automotive anonymity thanks in large part to their ubiquity and that they share the same design elements from like-minded studios.
Jaguar’s team, led by the talented Ian Callum, is badly tempted to follow this terribly efficient Teutonic trend. They’re prepared to sacrifice the marque’s quintessentially British heritage by playing ze Germans’ game; borrowing heavily from Audi’s middle-of-the-road German aesthetic while pitching an emphasis on technology.
Technology isn’t sexy. Sleek, lean, power and grace is. Which brings us nicely back to our nugget: what makes a Jaguar, a Jaguar?
It’s sex appeal, ladies and gentlemen.
Time’s up. Throw the grenade!
Family Ties? Picture of XJ, XF, XK Boots Shows No Relation
- All three cars are Jaguars
- Could you tell?
- A call for some cross lineup continuity
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Jaguar Cars
ASIDE from all three Jaguars – XJ, XF, XK – sharing obvious features like, well, similar trim, LED tail lights, exhaust pipes, faux-chrome badging, and a gentle lip that acts as a spoiler to nature’s air currents, what common element(s) announce these three cars as Jaguars?
From this carefully composed shot: nothing.
The XJ’s lofty boot lid with vertically slatted LED lamps seems borrowed from the Lancia Delta. Likewise, the XF horizontally generic lamps with broad chrome strip seem to reveal a Brit interpretation of the cleaner Audi A6.
The XK, sadly, with its busy mishmash of fat and skinny lines, complicated rear lighting, and Aston-like shape is the closest to casting ties with Coventry’s past. But that, too, is approximate at best and features nothing that carries over to the newer saloons.
Not even the circular, quad-pipe exhausts enjoy cross-marque continuity. The XJ features the same dual, plastic, horizonal bumper vents that we find on the Lexus LS.
Allowing for continuity is key to crafting an image. That’s fairly basic. And, to be fair, we can see more of something akin to familial ties when these cats are positioned differently and from a frontal aspect.
Ian Callum’s team should consider further integration going forward as Jaguar seeks to remodel itself into a hell-with-tradtion modernist luxury car company.
Jaguar Land Rover Sales Stabilizing
- Jaguar-Land Rover net loss declines to “only” £60 million ($99 million)
- Q2 Announcement comes on the heels of £175 million ($289 million) loan from India
- Group sales rise 23%, Tata records tidy profit
By Gunnar Heinrich
NOT entirely certain what to make of this fiscal info from Tata’s Jaguar Land Rover group.
Jaguar Land Rover Group, jointly declared that sales rose 23% in this latest quarter. The BBC reports that stabilizing losses are due to action seen from the Land Rover division.
Could it be that the new Discovery’s launch is pulling the rest of the group out of the fiscal bog?
Possibly, though, last month’s news was grim across Tata’s board which suggests some media spin at play. Tata Motors lost money last year when the Indian car maker bought the two luxury marques from Ford.
That purchase (which Tata asked the UK government to help finance) started a flow of red ink for Tata; it’s newly acquisitioned Jaguar Land Rover have recorded losses clear through 2009.
Last month, Jaguar Land Rover applied for and received a £175 million loan from the Indian government following Tata turning down further British aid. Reportedly, this brings the total tally of private and sovereign loans to £500 million ($825 million) for Jaguar Land Rover.
Tata’s now recorded an on-paper profit of £2.8 million ($4.7 million) with the latest announcement. Can we directly corelate this Tata profit to an increase in Jag and Landie sales?
Hard to tell with this info coming on the heels of financed capital and within precious few news cycles since October’s loan.
We’ll have a clearer pictures by the second quarter of 2010 when the loans effects are known and the new XJ sedans come to market.
In Defense of Last XJ’s Staidness
Before the revolution
By Gunnar Heinrich
“DON’T be fooled by the fact that the styling of the latest Jaguar XJ is so evolutionary – for which read, if you will, staid [...] beneath the shape there’s little danger of the XJ being anything other than an excellent car.”
So wrote CAR magazine, the great defender of the scions of the British Automotive Empire. The year was 2002 and the “excellent” XJ in question was the rather unremarkable X350 generation XJ (2003-2007).
In those days, nearly a decade ago, Rover was still on life support, Bentley was busy unveiling the Continental GT, and Jaguar was part ‘n parcel of a London based subsidiary of FoMoCo called the “Premier Auto Group”.
Ford had strictly classical views for the marque and seemed to provide a development budget to match; that is to say, one that didn’t quite reflect decades inflation.
One thing that did seem to inflate with Jaguar was that the initial sticker shock when the company was bought in the 80s and the subsequent half-hearted maintenance of one of Britain’s finest cost Ford a billions of greenbacks.
But all that’s beside the point, really.
What matters is that what made the X350 so unremarkable wasn’t the “staid” styling but in fact that the quality did not match the look of heritage. The XJ had become a cheap imitation of its venerable, if quirky forebears.
And for all the ground made in technology and practicality (aluminum frame and new V8), Coventry’s quintessential Britishness – the heavenly Connolly leather scent, the cast iron feel of interior bright work, the heft to a door that didn’t feel like it was made from a recycled coke can – all were conspicuously absent in the new car.
Couple those lackings with staggering depreciation and the chorus of cranky car journalists who bemoaned the fact that the package looked to similar to its predecessor and its easy to see why the car faltered in the face of Teutonic competition.
But on that last point I’d like to counter it with this alternative: so what?
So what if the X350 looked so similar the X308 which preceded it.
That sedan was the most elegant post-war saloon yet built. What it lacked in space, it made of up in grace. And why not carry such eloquent design language forward? It was unlike anything else on the road in a market where there remain too many cars that look and feel like everything else.
And why can we forgive Porsche for the subtle evolution of the 911, an iconic shape if a simple descendant of the VW Beetle, and not Jaguar for evolving a sexy icon from the 60s?
Given that the 2010 XJ shared next to nothing with Jaguar’s glorious past, you can’t help but feel that the company has caved into a pressure that stemmed from a complete misunderstanding.
To be classic is to be timeless. Jaguar buyers get this which sets them apart from say, Lexus, Audi, Mercedes, or BMW buyers.
The X350’s shape, for all the saloon’s other pitfalls, had the aesthetic qualities of an excellent car.
