ShareThisThey had saloons, but that's not what made them memorable.
No, for Jaguar it was always the sports coupes and convertibles with monikers like XK-120 and E-Type. Their sedans -- saloons in British parlance -- had luxury and high performance as well, though not always reliability.
Jaguar got its start in the 1920s when William Lyons founded the company to manufacturer motorcycle sidecars, which it built throughout World War II. After the war, in 1948, the company introduced its first modern sports car, the iconic Jaguar XK120. A few years later, it broadened the lineup with the Mark VII saloon.
But it was always the sports cars and their racing successes that got the public's juices flowing, starting with the XK120C, or the C-Type, as it became known. In the 1960s it was followed by the sensuously styled E-Type, which is the model that most people still think of when they hear a reference to Jaguar.
The company has gone through a wrenching period in which it has been batted around like a badminton shuttlecock. The current troubles in the automobile industry caused its most recent owner, Ford Motor Co., to dump it at a time when it was starting to shed some of its negatives and come into its own as a modern purveyor of sports/luxury cars.
Jaguar, along with Britain's Land Rover, now is owned by the Tata Group of India, which currently also produces the world's lowest-priced car, the Tata Nano.
With all that commotion, we still are able to witness the culmination of the Jaguar persona -- the new XKR convertible, which blends lavish accommodations with rip-snorting performance and, of course, a price tag to match.
The test car had a sticker price of $102,000, which included all of the safety, luxury and performance enhancements that Jaguar has to offer. It's enough to buy about 35 Nanos, and you could argue that even though it's not a saloon, it's drunk with power.
The engine is a new 5-liter V8, force-fed by a supercharger to produce 510 horsepower, linked to a six-speed automatic transmission with a manual-shift mode. It's a guided missile with a zero-to-60 acceleration time of 4.6 seconds and a governed top speed of 155 miles an hour -- not bad considering it weighs more than 2 tons.
Given that heft and the ridiculous amount of power available, the XKR doesn't do badly on the fuel-economy front. The EPA city/highway rating is 15/22 miles to the gallon.
Acceleration runs are accompanied by mellow sounds from the exhaust system, tuned to let you know you're driving a hot sports car but not so loud that they might become annoying. After all, anything that costs more than 100 grand ought to have comfort and ambiance to go with performance.
The XKR has that, in large measure. Its cockpit surrounds the driver with soft leather and designer-quality appointments. Different wood treatments are available, but the test car had the "dark mesh aluminum" trim. It's supposed to impart a more sporting look, but it doesn't stand out the way the wood does.
Instruments and controls are ergonomically friendly, except for the automatic shift control, which takes some getting used to. It's a large knob that rises, wraithlike, from the center console when you punch the start button. To shift, you twist it like a radio tuner. It's hard to beat for ease of operation, but it detracts from the sports-car experience of shifting yourself.
There are steering-wheel paddles for the manual-shift mode, which is the modern way of giving the driver some control over an automatic transmission. But you do not, as on some other cars, have the option of shifting with a console-mounted lever.
The XKR is what is sometimes called a "plus two," which means it has a couple of vestigial -- and useless -- back seats. You might be able to squeeze a small child back there, but only if you run the front seats forward. Up front, the seats are big, supportive and comfortable for long-distance touring.
Jaguar's designers did not stint on cargo space. With the top down, there's a small trunk, with just 7 cubic feet of space. But with the top up, the boot area also is available, which provides an extra 4 cubic feet for a total of 11 -- or about as much as you get in a compact sedan. Of course, you can also toss a lot of stuff on those "plus two" seats in back.
The convertible top is made of fabric, which makes a lot of sense now that fabric technology is such that the top likely could last almost the life of the car. Other manufacturers are fitting folding metal tops, which usually nearly wipe out trunk space when the top is down.
Jaguar's top is nicely padded and fitted, so that the XKR has the ambiance of a closed coupe with the top up. It goes up and down in a matter of about 20 seconds with the touch of a button.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service. For more columns, go to scrippsnews.com.)
DriveWaysWith JAGUAR-SPECS
