In early 2018 Shed brought you a 2001 Jaguar X-Type 3.0 Sport saloon. The 228hp V6 motor used by Jaguar in that car made it a potent performer that only needed six point something seconds for the 0-60. Coincidentally, that’s all the time Shed needs for his dalliances with the postmistress. He can’t remember the last time he experienced six point secs but it might have been with that circus contortionist who chugged into his workshop in an ailing Alfa 147 GTA.
Whatever, he does know that even today, well over 20 years after the X-Type first hoved into view, this 3 Series rival remains an appealing prospect when it’s in the right spec, i.e. with the 3.0-litre V6 which gave you 35hp more go than the 2.5 V6 but more or less the same fuel consumption (27mpg instead of 29mpg), and as an estate, a body shape that came along in 2004 as Ian Callum’s first design for Jaguar. With all-wheel drive and a posh mini-Jag interior these were capable as well as comfortable and clean-cut chariots.
The one you’re looking at here is a late example, registered in September 2007. That makes it one of the last pre-facelift Xs, which is no bad thing because the refreshed ones weren’t anywhere near as classy as the old ones, having had all their chrome stripped off and a pair of blobby bodycoloured bumper panels bunged on.
Many thought the earlier cars were better in other ways too. The five-speed Jatco autos (as also used on Mondeos, Galaxies, Mk 1 Freelanders and various Volkswagens) were a bit more troublesome than the considerably rarer five-speed 3.0 manuals, which in Sport- and Sovereign-spec X saloons were half a second quicker than the autos. The Estates were a little heavier than the four-doors, adding 0.3 seconds to the 0-60 time in manual cars (6.9) and 0.2 seconds to the autos. In the interests of longevity, smarter owners of 3.0 autos learned not to pay any attention to Jaguar’s ‘sealed for life transmission’ boast.
It’s just a question of how long you can expect, or hope for, your X-Type to last. That 2001 saloon we mentioned at the start had 86,000 miles on it when Shed laid his crusty old eyes on it. He noted some rust on the MOT history back then, but it still valiantly managed another 20,000 miles over the next seven years before failing what looks like being its final test just a couple of months ago with a list of rust issues long enough to consign it (by Shed’s guess) to the great scrapyard in the sky.
Today’s X is different. It’s just whizzed through the MOT at 119,000 miles with a clean pass, which most of its tests have had apart from the odd small brake fluid or coolant leak or cracked tyre. All this, plus an opening rear window, for under £1,500. You can’t complain at that, although some probably will.
You do have to watch the fluid level in the transfer box on these as there’s not a lot of it in there and the difference between Not A Lot and Not A Lot Minus A Bit can be catastrophic. Drivers’ seats got wobbly on their mounts but there was a mod you could do to take the nautical element out of the ride. Other than that you were good to go. So what if Euro NCAP said that the airbag didn’t stop the driver’s head from hitting the wheel in a crash? If you believed the boozy golf club stereotype of the X-Type driver they probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. And who cared about Euro NCAP’s description of the X-Type’s pedestrian impact performance as ‘dire’? As any X-Type driver will tell you, pedestrians shouldn’t be on the road in the first place.
In commercial terms, the X-Type was a failure. Jaguar was hoping to flog a hundred thousand of them every year. In the end (2009) they averaged just under half that, adding up to 350,000 or so over the eight-year run. Doesn’t sound so bad for a failure or for a car that, according to Ian Callum, was designed in Detroit and then handed over to tongue-biting Jaguar engineers in Whitley to sort out.
They do go though. Here’s an overseas dude giving his manual 3.0 some serious grief through what, in part at least, looks suspiciously like a built-up area. He pauses only to give it a quick wash (?) before shooting off again. Wonder if he’s still around? At these speeds, possibly not.
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