It’s strange how things never seem to work out entirely as you anticipate. After my last tirade about the social inadequacy of the proletariat I was expecting to be the recipient of at least a smattering of bile and vitriol from the bus dwelling community, but it seems that in general the world agrees with me. Or at least it doesn’t find my viewpoint objectionable enough to justify a major counter-strike.

Instead the response from the select few of my acquaintances who happen to peruse my weekly ramblings was focussed on one specific sentence. The bit where I casually proclaimed my least favourite car of all time to be the Jaguar X-Type.

It turns out that along with Olympic whinging abilities and an inability to play expansive rugby; most Kiwis’ believe that a passionate devotion to all things Jag is a deep seated trait of those of us from the motherland. And they are absolutely correct.

Throughout its history, Jaguar has been about making truly great cars that have been accessible to the common man. Not too accessible of course, but not in the airy realms of fantasy that seem to be the reserve of other motoring exotica. If you worked hard in life and didn’t fritter too much of your life savings away on other frivolous wastes such as children, then at some point you would accrue enough coinage to join the big cat club of motoring pleasure.

But with the X-Type they took a sharp and unpleasant diversion from this tried and trusted theory and instead decided to make a truly great badge accessible to the common man. Although at this point I must point out that the X-Type was in no way a bad car. At its core was the Ford CD132 platform which was also used to produce the Mondeo; a dynamically excellent vehicle and one of my all time favourite rep-movers. Read the rest of this entry »