Alright, against my better judgement I spent a ridiculous amount of time on Twitter yesterday talking about this Jaguar thing. Here are my considered thoughts.
1) The rot didn’t start last year, or even five years ago. It started decades ago. Their ‘gentleman’s club on wheels’ retro aesthetic has been a millstone around their neck for decades, and in the eyes of Jaguar fans any car that didn’t subscribe to this look was ‘not a Jaguar’.
2) They tried to be a British BMW twice. One under Ford with the S-Type and X-Type, and latterly under Tata with the XE and XF. It didn’t work in the first instance because the cars were perceived as too retro with younger buyers and in the second instance because the cars were dull, had poor interiors and failed to keep pace with the competition.
3)They haven’t helped themselves with their shameless continuation cars which no-one under fifty cares about.
4) They didn’t race the F-Type in GT3. Paint it purple and white, job done. Speaking of the F-Type, it was oddly positioned; sized like a Boxster and priced like a 911 without the practicality of either. The fact they kept mucking about with powertrains and tenuous limited editions in search of sales proves this. And the facelift was awful.
5) If you’ve seen the leaked images of the cancelled X391 XJ from four years ago, you know nothing of value was lost. I saw all the future Jaguars (including the J-Pace) in about 2019 for a Mr Tata presentation and with one notable exception it was all more of the same. These cars have all now been cancelled.
6) The ad that landed yesterday is tonally problematic (is a perfume ad? A clothing ad?) and seems to have bought out the very worst of the ‘car community’. I’ve seen a lot of truly disgusting and bigoted commentary about it. If half the people trying to turn a short internet spot into a culture war issue had actually bought a bloody Jaguar, then maybe the company wouldn’t be in this position.
7) The LR side of the business has been keeping the J side afloat very handsomely. For every car Jaguar sold Land Rover sells at least two and recently maybe three, at much higher transaction prices and with very healthy margins.
8) Anyone hoping for a return to ‘retro’ is in for a rude shock. Gerry doesn’t do heritage - he is very much influenced by Modernism.
9) It’s a thirty second internet spot. Let’s see what the concept looks like when it’s revealed in a couple of weeks time at Art Basel in Miami.
This is partly a me issue, with my class warrior chip firmly on my shoulder. But there's only so much 'how to spend a hundred grand on two cars' or 'what Ferraris are going to go up in value this year' I can take. It just got boring and irrelevant for me, and I have too many other podcasts filling my limited listening time.
When I was a kid my dad listened to talk radio in the car endlessly. Either sports talk, live sports broadcasts, or NPR/political radio. I vowed never to be like him and listen to talk radio.
What do I listen to 80% of the time? Podcasts. Ugh.
Any good design or automotive podcasts you like? I like podcasts as they’re one of the few sources of information where you can hear ideas fully discussed along with some thoughtful original ideas. All it takes is a great interviewer who listens and reacts to the interviewee, and an interviewee who can cogently expound on a subject.
There’s Looking Out, which is co-hosted by my friend Joe Simpson (design strategist at Volvo). It covers more transport and mobility as opposed to just talking about design, although they do cover that as well. Crown Unfiltered is only on Youtube and there’s been no new episodes for about two years. I’ve not listened to it so comment as to its quality.
The travails of JLR (emphasis on the J portion) are a frequent topic of conversation on his podcast w/ friends. They convened for an “emergency” session to commiserate yesterday.
Well-said. A few years ago, my dad and I were waiting to exit a parking lot behind a row of cars, when he pointed to a newer XJ and asked what it was. When I told him it was a Jaguar XJ, my dad (who is not really into cars and has little success in identifying the various makes and models at my club races) was almost appalled, "That car just looks like everything else on the road, when I was a kid if you were looking at a Jaguar, you knew it!"
Also, and this is just my perspective, here in the "flyover" states, I think the pre-Tata Jaguar sedans gave off a blue-blood air, which might've made them unappealing to would-be buyers who didn't want to be perceived as pretentious. Those people spent $70k on a Yukon Denali instead. For my generation, Jaguar is probably a lot like Cadillac - a brand that used to serve a very specific niche and do so quite well, but who has now lost sight of who they are and who their customer is supposed to be.
I think this is astute - I know Jack has written about this kind of blue-collar luxury phenomena before. The boss doesn’t drive a $70k Jaguar or BMW. He drives a $70k GMC to show he’s still one of the guys.
Hard agree that Jaguar is like Cadillac. The answers were clear a decade ago. Now’s it’s too late. In my mind a Cadillac should be able to stand next to Bentley and Rolls Royce.
I’d like to think Cadillac could’ve stood head and shoulders above Bentley and Rolls, had they had a real renaissance man at the helm while those two were being purchased by the Germans. Instead, GM decided to chase BMW, a marque that was producing maybe 15k cars a year back when Cadillac was still the world standard.
I’m not really sure what sort of person bought a Jaguar when that name still meant something, but I imagine it was the same kind of guy who a few years ago would choose a Viper over a Corvette.
Cadillac, at the time you are talking about through today, uses the same engineering specifications and playbook as Chevrolet.
They struggled in the early 2000s to make a credible Lexus competitor, and frankly struggle today to make a credible Kia competitor, blackwing excepted.
I drive by a Jaguar store every day, nothing in their lineup has made me go inside and look except a bright blue XF Sportbrake. I agree nothing of value has been lost, and they need a total rebranding.
Who are these people that have money to buy a new car and pick an F pace?
I don’t know how to save them, electric crossovers aren’t it, but the current bland/generic-BMW lineup has got to go. I believe that this new Jaguar is more similar to who bought them in the good old days of the brand than whoever they’ve been targeting for the past 10 years.
The last time this topic came up I said that the F-Pace exists primarily as a service loaner for LR owners. Utterly garbage cars. So much so that the local dealer is now pushing Volvos on people.
I have fantasies similar to Mr Klockau's concerning GM about taking over JLR-Volvo after 2008 and turning it into a well differentiated automotive juggernaut.
No one should trust me with large amounts of capital.
F Pace, especially in SVR form but even Not That, is quite nice tbh. Idk that it’s necessarily class competitive anymore, but they are decent cars. Still look great in and out.
I was just in one a couple months ago and found myself enjoying it quite a bit.
LR service loaners are typically Disco Sports which DO suck shit.
Everybody I know who has had an F-Pace really liked it. For what it is (an SUV) I think it’s still one of the best looking there is. It’s a minor Callum masterpiece. The question is, was it the right product for Jaguar? In hindsight, probably not.
When David Woodhouse was in charge of Ford & Lincoln styling I asked him if it was hard to make an SUV look elegant (I think the Nautilus and Aviator aren't ugly). He grimaced and said it was a challenge.
The F-pace SVR is a depreciation monster and available very reasonably, with a CPO warranty. If I was shopping for a s/o who wanted a “luxury” crossover it would be high on my list.
Lots of good stuff here, but I disagree on 6. It wasn’t the keyboard warriors turning this into a culture wars issue. It was Jaguars marketing folks who did that. The ad was meant to appeal basically to a demographic that doesn’t exist (25 year old, university grad, blue haired Starbucks baristas?), and was intended, yes designed to, piss off Jaguars historical clientele. They said they expected the new cars to appeal to basically none of their previous customers. So those out of touch idiots went back to 2016 to appeal to a faction that just doesn’t exist anymore, and that is no longer in its ascendancy, as it was then. The perceived manliness of the traditional Jag customer obviously offends them, so they set out to get rid of thr lot. Bud Light marketing, but done on a company wide level. Brilliant.
Whatever the marketers intention, that doesn’t excuse the truly vile commentary and remarks I’ve seen made over the last couple of days.
Using avant-garde and androgynous people in advertising is nothing new. Do you think when Citroen used Grace Jones in the eighties to sell cars it was a deliberate attempt to rile people up? Jaguar’s historical clientele, whoever they may be, has deserted them.
Disagree. There was the ‘British Villains’ campaign, the trolling of Mercedes campaign (where Merc did and advert showing off their advance ride control using a chicken, and Jaguar repsonded with an ad porttaying a Jaguar eating a chicken) and they’ve shoved the V8 into basically everything. It didn’t work.
The market changes. You cannot stand still. How long ago did Jack’s father buy his Jaguars? Again, they tried this - XJ40, X300, X308, X350, X358 were all externally very similar variations on a them. Eventually those customers age out. That’s why X351 was such a shock - it had to be. They couldn’t keep redoing the original XJ of 1968.
Disagree. The Jaguar marketing folks knew that it was the reaction they would get, and chose that direction anyway. They are choosing a path that by their own words will alienate a very passionate fan base, so they will reap what they sew.
If I walk into a biker bar and start yelling “All bikers are fags”, I should not be surprised if a beating follows. Is it right for them to beat me? In an ideal world, no. Am I at the cause of the beating that comes my way? Definitely.
Which is really unfortunate in my opinion. Or maybe fortunate, since it let me pick up a nearly new X351 for less than a third of its retail price.
The XJ isn't the obvious choice in the segment, it wasn't chock full of fancy tech like the S class or A8, but it's a joy to drive in a way you won't find in those cars either.
The thumbnail of the @PositivFuturist tweet was a very blurry Tom Hiddleston, who, when unblurred, does not look like ReviewBrah (John Jurasek), who is now regularly broadcasting “VORW Radio International,” "Voice of theReportoftheWeek" on shortwave.
somebody tell me im wrong so i can bask in the delusion that everything is okay and getting better over time and history isnt getting battered into the ground for a worthless cause
it really makes me think that the pendulum swinging back is going to go so far in the other direction that well have oswald mosley running a car company in the future
surely there must be some limit to how progressive it can get (he said knowing full well there were no brakes on that train)
I came here to read the mockery directed at the Jaguar marketing department, bonus for the BUF reference. Mosley looked like a pre-war Jaguar executive as imagined by central casting.
They fixed the bug where you couldn’t go to a reply more than three levels deep. There were 3-4 weeks where the app worked decently, even if I did need to use the browser to edit comments.
As of yesterday, the app is clipping comments past line two. It’s infuriating.
It's still pretty bad when the threads get really deep. Click "return to thread" and it doesn't bring you back to where you were. Infuriating. I wish it were possible to turn off all the thread collapsing and simply read everything inline.
Why not? Most men can easily reach their own dicks so why wouldn't they be able to swat the asses of women sitting on their dicks? Perhaps maybe if she was in some kind of weird cab forward position it might be a stretch.
I don't think any American truck companies still make cabovers, but she'd more likely recognize the name Peterbilt than asking her to act like a Jeep FC.
Sorry, I'm a square. 10% of a generation of women who won't appear online without filters or in public without an hour's worth of makeup want to get slapped hard in the face? Young women today are broken.
I realize I’m the prototypical Boomer (redneck, Southern Baptist, retired military, etc.) but any intelligent observer has to see the (rise of the) FICW as a canary in the coal mine to the ‘Merica we knew—and loved. Just finished reading “Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber. It’s actually a scholarly look at the issue by an anthropologist. The stats are amazing—and terrifying. Lots of Julia Morrises out there.
It’s a shame what has happened to the English car industry in general.
Jaguar has a history matched by few other manufacturers. They could be an Anglo version of Porsche if they wanted. And I mean that in both ways: they could sell a non-trivial number of good sports cars and use their motorsports history to sell boatloads badge-engineered SUVs.
On a similar note, I saw that Morgan is bringing the Plus Four to the US. I’m not crazy about a 4cyl turbo, but otherwise I dig it. They’re offering a lot of customization and the pricing wasn’t horrible for 2024 dollars.
Not only would I have to speak German, but I also wouldn't be able to marry the woman I love if we followed the rest of that culture led by eugenics enthusiasts. I won't have it.
My grandfather's family would like to have a word with you about that, but they can't because the Nazis killed all of them.
I think the totalitarian left continues to be a threat to our freedom, however, the nonsense we are living through now is exponentially orders of magnitude lower than anything experienced under the Third Reich.
Blair's critique of the British left, The Road to Wigan Pier, which portrays socialists as not really caring for the working class, is still applicable today. Perhaps if someone at the Harris campaign had read it they might understand why I saw not a single Harris campaign sign in Macomb County, Michigan.
It's just weird how only the Germans figured out how to succeed.
The car industry is dead throughout rest of Europe (except @ Ferrari) and has just crawled along since the 70s. Sometimes you get a couple great products, but nothing's ever clicked at the brand or country level.
Did Germany have lower energy costs? Real question, there's a theory floating around that reducing the input cost of energy (used everywhere) has compounding knock on effects for economies in general.
I've only heard/read in passing that it was labor relations.
That is, the German policy of "Mitbestimmung" (which basically gave unions seats on management) kept Germany from having the labor unrest of France or Italy during the post-war period. France has something similar, but I don't think it's as deeply-implemented. FWIW, it obv has its issues, as the joint-corruption between VW and its union showed a while back.
Anyway, over time, it supposedly gave the Germans advantages in build quality, inventory management, product planning, etc. What I've read about Italian auto labor in the 70s makes it sound like an absolute carnival of crazy... witness the "AlfaSud," which was basically a make-work program in Mafia country, using - I think - ungalvanized Soviet steel.
But there's not a definitive write-up I've ever seen to back this up. I'm just pulling this together from things where I've seen it mentioned, but was not the topic.
FWIW, in some ways, it seems applicable to Japan and maybe Korea as well.
Strangely, I think I've heard that about Germany too. That they had excess generation because they went nuclear after the oil crisis, perhaps. And have hydro too.
I can't find anything to support this now, of course (did look fo prices over time but can't see anything obvious).
I could swear at one point hetzner rental servers used to advertise they were cheaper because they had dedicated hydro dams that weren't needed for grid production and so their data centre was running on cheap unneeded power.
That particular fact was a revelation to me, as well.
Worry not, however. Ola Källenius recently assured The Verge’s Nilay Patel that Mercedes Benz would always be the leader in screens - more screens, bigger screens, better screens.
I've also heard argued that Germany has never * really * recovered from reunification, esp. with the East -> West drain that was facilitated by the 1:1 currency conversion.
I've been to Germany a lot since the 90's and there's still a very palpable difference between East and West.
Jaguar is hindered by its relationship with Land Rover. The two brands would complement one another in a market where people buy meaningful numbers of luxury cars and SUVs, but that is not the market that we have.
Does the Morgan Plus Four still have sliding pillar front suspension? I think I'd rather have a Caterham in size XXL.
Morgan however does not offer a manual in USA, auto only , which seems to be entirely missing the point of this car. I guess they missed the part about USA enthusiasts s really liking manuals. A lesson lotus learned the hard way when it hey launched the first evora here auto only. Idiots
Otherwise the Morgan is great, something like 2300lbs by need aluminum chassis nice modern wishbone suspension plently of power. I wonder why we you can get it without dreaded eps.
Agree 1 million percent. Automatics are bad enough, but for gosh sakes stop making your “shifter” look like some sort of loser electro toy joystick clitoris or a dial or buttons or literally anything more than what automatic gear selectors ever were (yes i know there have been variants prior to modern clown world, but for the most part it was prndl in a line). Just have a normal knob, or better yet a column shift, since you really arent “shifting” anything. Your dumb transmission already makes the sports car worse (but… its FASTER!!!), you neednt have it also make the interior look worse too.
True, but if you have no understanding of the underlying data, which she most certainly does not, those templates are only going to make you look foolish.
Look at her job history. 'Digital specialist'? WTH is that? I'm surprised she made it to program manager, because she apparently has 0 technical skills. She's not even certified by any of the project manager organizations.
She obviously wasn't hired for her skills or her brains, but just to fill a check box.
So let me clarify something, these 'program manager' jobs aren't something that you have to have experience for, they exist so that someone is assigned to harassing people for 'when will you be done' and calling meetings and bitching about budget and slip, only to 'report out' to management. There are NO skills needed for these 'jobs'. Hence the 'arts' degree she holds is fine.
These are not the 'technical manager' you're thinking of where you have GROWN into the position and have people reporting to you whose job you may have to conceivably have done in the past or have to jump in and do from time to time.
The perversion currently in effect at GM is that the former employee can and does wield an outsized control of product policy, internal politics, and probably is better compensated for having no responsibility, no ownership and no direct reports. I HATE IT!
I have worked as a project manager on a few major projects. I have a PMI cert and number, all that stuff. It was required for some of the contracts that I used to do (especially state & medical ones). That's what a project manager or program manager is supposed to have, and they're supposed to manage the entire program. From start to finish.
Somebody who just calls people up and yells at them, ain't a program/project manager. Now if management is letting them call themselves that, well, I guess they're going out of business.
I'm not sure why she didn't also list that she can read in her tagline. As far as I'm concerned MS Office suite competency, or at least the ability to find and watch a YouTube tutorial to then implement, is a condition of employment, not a superlative.
[Slaps Rapide trunk] "It's like a better looking, faster, and less reliable Ford Fusion!"
Kidding aside, I have no domain knowledge of how bad depreciated aston maintenance and repair is. Perhaps it's wishful thinking to guess that the Ford dalliance made them slightly less unreliable. I lack both numbers and anecdotal complaints, as my fellow auto-masochism enjoyers tend to prefer the Germans
That's why it's important to see what part number cross references to good ol FoMoCo and also was on an F250 or Taurus. I know it's not possible for everything.
I didn't say i planned on owning either one. Have zero intention to ever do so unless I win the lottery that I never play. I just think Astons of a certain era are better looking, sexy cars. Neither is a good financial proposal.
The sheer incompetence regarding Jaguar's current owners makes my head hurt.
"Hi! We bought Jaguar! We're complete morons! We killed the elegant sedans and now you can get a stupid electric combover designed for fat people! Oops wait we're killing that too! You can't buy anything! Here's a stupid new logo! Durr!"
Jaguar’s current ownership - Tata - is responsible for transforming Land Rover into one of the most desirable, sought-after brands in the world. It is the default conveyance in many of the planet’s moneyed enclaves, which means that all of the wannabes and pretenders want one.
Set against that, they can - and perhaps have - light Jaguar on fire and still remain far in the black.
Perhaps JLR stands for “Just Land Rover.” Or soon will.
Lucky in the sense that Tata bought Jaguar after Ford had dumped metric shitloads of money into it, paying for new drivetrains, new all-aluminum designs, upgrading the Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich and switching the Halewood plant from Fords to Jaguars and Land Rovers, and getting their quality control somewhere in the big league ballpark. Well bought or lucky.
Then Ian Callum came along with a disastrous redesign that just made Jags look bland. The Bertone B99 showed how Jag could keep it heritage, and modernize. I still recall seeing my first XF in traffic. It registered as a new Infiniti or something.
Alan Mullaly gets most of the credit, no pun intended, but it was Ford treasurer Neil Schloss' idea to mortgage the entire company, including the blue oval logo, to get through that era.
I was going to respond but figured it was a waste of my time... it says a lot of someone's substance and character when they leap over substantive discussion and right into "you're a racist!"...
Sir Morris Leyland’s comments are an ongoing series of whines about how bad India and Indians are, interspersed with Eeyore-esque boohooing about how the world is unfair.
Ask him point blank if he hates Indians and India? I’m not sure he’d be able to say “no.”
I guess the problem is, "whats the value proposition?"
As an example, as gorgeous as the F Type is, when compared against other cars new or used, would you buy an F Type with the amount of money needed to buy that particular F Type?
I wouldn't, but would love to hear from others who have or wish to
A friend bought an F-Type V6 in May. By mid-July he had a GR86. Legitimately it spent more time broken than it did driving. A shame, because I thought it was a good looking car.
Im torn between F-Type, C7, and a 997 as the Boxster replacement. F-Type would be the cheapest to buy, most expensive to own. 997 is the car I dreamed of as a kid. C7 would be the best to own.
I went into the Jag store to buy the F-Type of my dreams. Brg on tan, with the base 6 and a manual transmission. Just like I’d built on their website. It all came crashing down when the salesman told me they had just discontinued the manual transmission. This was 2018?
It was heartbreaking. I was actually sitting in a F Convertible in the dealership, waiting for sales guys return , trying to convince myself that the external beauty, and the engine/trans combo, would make up for the “Japanese bland” interior. It wasn’t terribly expensive. $75k? So much less then a 911, and right around Corvette money. Though I must say that the fake v6, with two empty cylinders, always bothered the purist in me.
Hopefully without opening an old wound, were there no used ones from the prior model year available in the colorway you were intending to buy? Or were you disinclined to purchase used/CPO at that time?
Spot on, you’d have to look past the interior which makes no sense in a lux gt.
Also it needs the new twin turbo inline 6 from the Land Rover, and a manual option.
In short f type was great looking car nice suspension and then crap interior with Meh motor.. assuming the buyer is too stupid to know or care cost 50% of sales
Used, they are great values. Seems like you realized that in another comment reply. Manual V6s in the low 30s. Low mile V8 Rs in the 40s. You telling me you'd rather have a Mustang? Or spend more on a DB9 that'll cost $12k a year to keep going?
Fans of old British movies and classic TV like Minder and The Sweeney know that Jaguars were the happy choice of villains, wide boys, and spivs — but no one’s going to choose a new Jag to blag anything, that’s for sure. They’ll be missed, but hopefully they commit suicide before they can produce the chunky, charmless thing recently seen in camo and previewed in an Autocar rendering this week.
Up North: White Range Rover Sport or Velar (NEVER the “full fat” Rangie) on black wheels with blood red “guts,” all the better to accentuate the owner’s orange spray tan.
You are both wrong, I am advised. The Audi A8 is the blagger's motor du jour, at least in England, and much stolen for the purpose. Discreet, quick (V8s only need apply), tough and with 4wd if a quick detour through the park is required. The cars you have mentioned are for drug dealers, a different kettle of skipjack.
once you take away all the historical and visual notes of a company like jaguar what are you even left with as its not like being an ev is at all unique to anyone at this point and what powers it lends a strong sense of identity
their management seems like a good candidate to slap and choke but not at all sexually
>shover her head in toilet
>call her ugly
>pee on her
none of those are zero what the FUCK and i bet thats the same woman too
seriously how are some of those things even turn ons women are mental
Alright, against my better judgement I spent a ridiculous amount of time on Twitter yesterday talking about this Jaguar thing. Here are my considered thoughts.
1) The rot didn’t start last year, or even five years ago. It started decades ago. Their ‘gentleman’s club on wheels’ retro aesthetic has been a millstone around their neck for decades, and in the eyes of Jaguar fans any car that didn’t subscribe to this look was ‘not a Jaguar’.
2) They tried to be a British BMW twice. One under Ford with the S-Type and X-Type, and latterly under Tata with the XE and XF. It didn’t work in the first instance because the cars were perceived as too retro with younger buyers and in the second instance because the cars were dull, had poor interiors and failed to keep pace with the competition.
3)They haven’t helped themselves with their shameless continuation cars which no-one under fifty cares about.
4) They didn’t race the F-Type in GT3. Paint it purple and white, job done. Speaking of the F-Type, it was oddly positioned; sized like a Boxster and priced like a 911 without the practicality of either. The fact they kept mucking about with powertrains and tenuous limited editions in search of sales proves this. And the facelift was awful.
5) If you’ve seen the leaked images of the cancelled X391 XJ from four years ago, you know nothing of value was lost. I saw all the future Jaguars (including the J-Pace) in about 2019 for a Mr Tata presentation and with one notable exception it was all more of the same. These cars have all now been cancelled.
6) The ad that landed yesterday is tonally problematic (is a perfume ad? A clothing ad?) and seems to have bought out the very worst of the ‘car community’. I’ve seen a lot of truly disgusting and bigoted commentary about it. If half the people trying to turn a short internet spot into a culture war issue had actually bought a bloody Jaguar, then maybe the company wouldn’t be in this position.
7) The LR side of the business has been keeping the J side afloat very handsomely. For every car Jaguar sold Land Rover sells at least two and recently maybe three, at much higher transaction prices and with very healthy margins.
8) Anyone hoping for a return to ‘retro’ is in for a rude shock. Gerry doesn’t do heritage - he is very much influenced by Modernism.
9) It’s a thirty second internet spot. Let’s see what the concept looks like when it’s revealed in a couple of weeks time at Art Basel in Miami.
Yes, purple and white!
Did you catch the Chris Harris emergency podcast on this topic? (I linked elsewhere in the thread)
I did not, because I stopped listening to him and his rich out of touch toffo mates a while ago.
While I will concede his co-hosts are a bit “middle class,” surely the wealthiest - Neil Clifford - is also the most likeable?
This is partly a me issue, with my class warrior chip firmly on my shoulder. But there's only so much 'how to spend a hundred grand on two cars' or 'what Ferraris are going to go up in value this year' I can take. It just got boring and irrelevant for me, and I have too many other podcasts filling my limited listening time.
Finally some good news.
Podcasts as a whole format need to end.
When I was a kid my dad listened to talk radio in the car endlessly. Either sports talk, live sports broadcasts, or NPR/political radio. I vowed never to be like him and listen to talk radio.
What do I listen to 80% of the time? Podcasts. Ugh.
Any good design or automotive podcasts you like? I like podcasts as they’re one of the few sources of information where you can hear ideas fully discussed along with some thoughtful original ideas. All it takes is a great interviewer who listens and reacts to the interviewee, and an interviewee who can cogently expound on a subject.
There’s Looking Out, which is co-hosted by my friend Joe Simpson (design strategist at Volvo). It covers more transport and mobility as opposed to just talking about design, although they do cover that as well. Crown Unfiltered is only on Youtube and there’s been no new episodes for about two years. I’ve not listened to it so comment as to its quality.
Frank Stephenson’s YouTube channel, when he can be bothered.
"Emergency podcast?"
That’s what CH called it.
The travails of JLR (emphasis on the J portion) are a frequent topic of conversation on his podcast w/ friends. They convened for an “emergency” session to commiserate yesterday.
I was waiting for your insight!
Your servant.
Agree on 1-8. With 9, who cares what they reveal? It'll be a $100k EV that has no real customers.
4. F-Type. You forgot that it also outweighed either by a thousand pounds.
Well-said. A few years ago, my dad and I were waiting to exit a parking lot behind a row of cars, when he pointed to a newer XJ and asked what it was. When I told him it was a Jaguar XJ, my dad (who is not really into cars and has little success in identifying the various makes and models at my club races) was almost appalled, "That car just looks like everything else on the road, when I was a kid if you were looking at a Jaguar, you knew it!"
Also, and this is just my perspective, here in the "flyover" states, I think the pre-Tata Jaguar sedans gave off a blue-blood air, which might've made them unappealing to would-be buyers who didn't want to be perceived as pretentious. Those people spent $70k on a Yukon Denali instead. For my generation, Jaguar is probably a lot like Cadillac - a brand that used to serve a very specific niche and do so quite well, but who has now lost sight of who they are and who their customer is supposed to be.
I think this is astute - I know Jack has written about this kind of blue-collar luxury phenomena before. The boss doesn’t drive a $70k Jaguar or BMW. He drives a $70k GMC to show he’s still one of the guys.
Hard agree that Jaguar is like Cadillac. The answers were clear a decade ago. Now’s it’s too late. In my mind a Cadillac should be able to stand next to Bentley and Rolls Royce.
I’d like to think Cadillac could’ve stood head and shoulders above Bentley and Rolls, had they had a real renaissance man at the helm while those two were being purchased by the Germans. Instead, GM decided to chase BMW, a marque that was producing maybe 15k cars a year back when Cadillac was still the world standard.
I’m not really sure what sort of person bought a Jaguar when that name still meant something, but I imagine it was the same kind of guy who a few years ago would choose a Viper over a Corvette.
Cadillac, at the time you are talking about through today, uses the same engineering specifications and playbook as Chevrolet.
They struggled in the early 2000s to make a credible Lexus competitor, and frankly struggle today to make a credible Kia competitor, blackwing excepted.
"struggle today to make a credible Kia competitor"
savage
I saw an SUV the other day and thought it was a Caddy but it was a Chevy
Have any CelestiQs been delivered? I been trying to find out.
And if Cadillac had just built their concept cars they might have been able to stand next to RR and Bentley.
Ummmm…paging Tom K
and that 70K GMC SUV can tow the boat/horse trailer/side by side/dirt bike trailer on the weekends
I drive by a Jaguar store every day, nothing in their lineup has made me go inside and look except a bright blue XF Sportbrake. I agree nothing of value has been lost, and they need a total rebranding.
Who are these people that have money to buy a new car and pick an F pace?
I don’t know how to save them, electric crossovers aren’t it, but the current bland/generic-BMW lineup has got to go. I believe that this new Jaguar is more similar to who bought them in the good old days of the brand than whoever they’ve been targeting for the past 10 years.
(Hello from a Mondial coupe owner 👋)
The last time this topic came up I said that the F-Pace exists primarily as a service loaner for LR owners. Utterly garbage cars. So much so that the local dealer is now pushing Volvos on people.
I have fantasies similar to Mr Klockau's concerning GM about taking over JLR-Volvo after 2008 and turning it into a well differentiated automotive juggernaut.
No one should trust me with large amounts of capital.
F Pace, especially in SVR form but even Not That, is quite nice tbh. Idk that it’s necessarily class competitive anymore, but they are decent cars. Still look great in and out.
I was just in one a couple months ago and found myself enjoying it quite a bit.
LR service loaners are typically Disco Sports which DO suck shit.
Everybody I know who has had an F-Pace really liked it. For what it is (an SUV) I think it’s still one of the best looking there is. It’s a minor Callum masterpiece. The question is, was it the right product for Jaguar? In hindsight, probably not.
When David Woodhouse was in charge of Ford & Lincoln styling I asked him if it was hard to make an SUV look elegant (I think the Nautilus and Aviator aren't ugly). He grimaced and said it was a challenge.
I think the Navigator is a great piece of work.
The F-pace SVR is a depreciation monster and available very reasonably, with a CPO warranty. If I was shopping for a s/o who wanted a “luxury” crossover it would be high on my list.
Lots of good stuff here, but I disagree on 6. It wasn’t the keyboard warriors turning this into a culture wars issue. It was Jaguars marketing folks who did that. The ad was meant to appeal basically to a demographic that doesn’t exist (25 year old, university grad, blue haired Starbucks baristas?), and was intended, yes designed to, piss off Jaguars historical clientele. They said they expected the new cars to appeal to basically none of their previous customers. So those out of touch idiots went back to 2016 to appeal to a faction that just doesn’t exist anymore, and that is no longer in its ascendancy, as it was then. The perceived manliness of the traditional Jag customer obviously offends them, so they set out to get rid of thr lot. Bud Light marketing, but done on a company wide level. Brilliant.
Whatever the marketers intention, that doesn’t excuse the truly vile commentary and remarks I’ve seen made over the last couple of days.
Using avant-garde and androgynous people in advertising is nothing new. Do you think when Citroen used Grace Jones in the eighties to sell cars it was a deliberate attempt to rile people up? Jaguar’s historical clientele, whoever they may be, has deserted them.
It’s being revealed at Art Basel and they chose the most Art Basel possible looking people for the ad. Makes all of the sense in the world to me lol.
As usual, I have no idea what the issue is with it and am deeply confused by people who are personally offended by those that don’t look like them.
Thank you for your always insightful commentary on this!
Citroen was historically weird, its less at odds with the brand image.
Imagine Citroen running ads with Hulk Hogan in the 80s.
"Jaguar’s historical clientele, whoever they may be, has deserted them."
That relationship was a two-way street though.
Disagree. There was the ‘British Villains’ campaign, the trolling of Mercedes campaign (where Merc did and advert showing off their advance ride control using a chicken, and Jaguar repsonded with an ad porttaying a Jaguar eating a chicken) and they’ve shoved the V8 into basically everything. It didn’t work.
Did people like Jack's father buy his Jaguar due to ads making fun of Mercedes and them offering a V8 on performance or limited edition trims?
The market changes. You cannot stand still. How long ago did Jack’s father buy his Jaguars? Again, they tried this - XJ40, X300, X308, X350, X358 were all externally very similar variations on a them. Eventually those customers age out. That’s why X351 was such a shock - it had to be. They couldn’t keep redoing the original XJ of 1968.
Disagree. The Jaguar marketing folks knew that it was the reaction they would get, and chose that direction anyway. They are choosing a path that by their own words will alienate a very passionate fan base, so they will reap what they sew.
If I walk into a biker bar and start yelling “All bikers are fags”, I should not be surprised if a beating follows. Is it right for them to beat me? In an ideal world, no. Am I at the cause of the beating that comes my way? Definitely.
There was no doubt Grace Jones was a woman
The teaser image looks a bit brutalist.
The ad succeeded in the sense that it has people talking about the brand.
" If half the people trying to turn a short internet spot into a culture war issue had actually bought a bloody Jaguar."
Yet it is the Jaguar fans who are most agitated by the ad. Jack's owned an XJ. So have I.
How to make a relevant Jaguar product today:
X351 XJ interior and exterior
Model S plaid drivetrain
License or copy Tesla infotainment
Done.
This is exactly what Alex Roy said. X351 didn’t sell because the 7 series and S class have that segment well stitched up.
Which is really unfortunate in my opinion. Or maybe fortunate, since it let me pick up a nearly new X351 for less than a third of its retail price.
The XJ isn't the obvious choice in the segment, it wasn't chock full of fancy tech like the S class or A8, but it's a joy to drive in a way you won't find in those cars either.
Oh no argument from me. I think X351 is an exceptionally good looking car, and I would definitely take one over the alternatives.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/british/how-jaguar-made-superbowl-ad
The thumbnail of the @PositivFuturist tweet was a very blurry Tom Hiddleston, who, when unblurred, does not look like ReviewBrah (John Jurasek), who is now regularly broadcasting “VORW Radio International,” "Voice of theReportoftheWeek" on shortwave.
3 times, maybe 4, I have requested a column on the XJ6. For fucks sake already.....
Back to finish reading this Thursday's Wednesday column on Tuesday.
Seconded! I vaguely remember something written a long time ago, but it's time for an update.
Thirded. Does part of the story involve an HK?
That Jag logo and—even worse promo video—is like something that gets dropped on April Fools Day. But way worse.
I saw the video earlier and my first thought was “yeah this ad is Olympics-level dumb, but the real tragedy is the logo.”
come out ye black and trans
COMMENT OF THE DAY
knew it was a banger
Of what, and by whom?! 😂😂
Tell yer wife's boyfriend how you won a Clio for this aa-advert
Makes the Smart Car logo look masculine.
Whatever product they end up debuting probably won't be as hard assed as a Brabus Smart Fortwo, much less the old roadster.
the smart roadsters looked a thousand times better than the fortwo
its kinda like a kei car but not quite
Smart roadsters made sense in dense Euro streets. Way better looking than plastic clad CUVs.
Was the roadster ever for sale in the U.S.?
pretty sure it wasnt but i think there might be a used one in canada due to our more lax import restrictions
Nope
I just saw the roadster parked up the street from me in Toronto a month or two back.
It’s pretty bad but it did get a lot of attention which was the plan
was this some kind of humiliation ritual for them
ding ding ding
son of a bitch
somebody tell me im wrong so i can bask in the delusion that everything is okay and getting better over time and history isnt getting battered into the ground for a worthless cause
[comment deleted once i realized this was the weekly open thread]
already memorized it and agree with it
i look forward to sponsoring you for US citizenship
MKUltra shit
You would think it is, but I’m guessing it’s just a warmup for the humiliating release of their EV.
it really makes me think that the pendulum swinging back is going to go so far in the other direction that well have oswald mosley running a car company in the future
surely there must be some limit to how progressive it can get (he said knowing full well there were no brakes on that train)
And call the guy in a dress “Shirley!” 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I came here to read the mockery directed at the Jaguar marketing department, bonus for the BUF reference. Mosley looked like a pre-war Jaguar executive as imagined by central casting.
So did the Tate LaBianca murders.
I HATE this app. I have to delete a comment to edit it. I know we have spoken of this before but please fix it.
What I wrote was the new Jaguar logo would work better for a mattress company.
I hate the app!
They fixed the bug where you couldn’t go to a reply more than three levels deep. There were 3-4 weeks where the app worked decently, even if I did need to use the browser to edit comments.
As of yesterday, the app is clipping comments past line two. It’s infuriating.
PLEASE DO NOT USE THE APP
Use an open-source browser (Brave, Chrome/Chromium, for Firefox) like Sir Tim Berners-Lee intended.
Can confirm. Chrome on Android works fine you Electron App Eloi.
...and on the imac.
It's still pretty bad when the threads get really deep. Click "return to thread" and it doesn't bring you back to where you were. Infuriating. I wish it were possible to turn off all the thread collapsing and simply read everything inline.
They did fix the comment truncation.
You can edit in a browser
I didn’t see reverse cowgirl anywhere on the list…hmm
You can't slap 'em during that! I mean, *I* can, I have a 36.5 sleeve.
It depends on what you’re slapping. I have the same problem. I’m 6’2” but the upper body of someone 6’4” and lower body of 6’.
Why not? Most men can easily reach their own dicks so why wouldn't they be able to swat the asses of women sitting on their dicks? Perhaps maybe if she was in some kind of weird cab forward position it might be a stretch.
"weird cab forward position"
lmao
imagine telling your girl to lean way over like a peterbilt (i know its not a cabover)
There was a woman named Em who had been a gymnast in her youth and she once did something that I've never experienced since.
Em was a special girl. Very smart but raised in a culture that didn't recognize it. She liked the male appendage.
I once complimented her and said that she was orally talented. She literally pouted and said, "Talented? No, I'm gifted."
I don't think any American truck companies still make cabovers, but she'd more likely recognize the name Peterbilt than asking her to act like a Jeep FC.
less likely to understand being told to fart on your balls like a jake brake
BRUH (I'm cackling)
I mean their FACE, Rabbi Kamasutra. I can slap women in the face if they're sitting facing away from me.
Sorry, I'm a square. 10% of a generation of women who won't appear online without filters or in public without an hour's worth of makeup want to get slapped hard in the face? Young women today are broken.
"Young women today are broken"
chronic understatement
the men are pretty screwed up too tbh
An hour using a trowel at times.
My Mom had less makeup on for her showing than some women I’ve seen in public!
Wtf does FICW stand for. I attempted to look it up. Pretty sure it's not some financial insitute.
Financially Independent Childless Women. Got it now.
Yass!
It would be fun to see FICW after a female name on Linked In.
I realize I’m the prototypical Boomer (redneck, Southern Baptist, retired military, etc.) but any intelligent observer has to see the (rise of the) FICW as a canary in the coal mine to the ‘Merica we knew—and loved. Just finished reading “Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber. It’s actually a scholarly look at the issue by an anthropologist. The stats are amazing—and terrifying. Lots of Julia Morrises out there.
Conversely, MANY competent of men un/underemployed.
huh i wonder if theres a correlation there
It’s a shame what has happened to the English car industry in general.
Jaguar has a history matched by few other manufacturers. They could be an Anglo version of Porsche if they wanted. And I mean that in both ways: they could sell a non-trivial number of good sports cars and use their motorsports history to sell boatloads badge-engineered SUVs.
On a similar note, I saw that Morgan is bringing the Plus Four to the US. I’m not crazy about a 4cyl turbo, but otherwise I dig it. They’re offering a lot of customization and the pricing wasn’t horrible for 2024 dollars.
I'm also excited about the Morgan. Won't be in a position to buy it unless my life improves, but I like the idea.
my alloy-bodied bucket seat remote shifter--all optional--4/4 was under $1800 in '66 at the factory.
In CPI terms, that would be $17,270 in October 2024.
never stops blowing me away just how far things have inflated
just imagine rover v8 or ls swaps
so much nicer to think about
Or England as a whole honestly.
[USER WAS EXTRADITED AND ARRESTED FOR THIS POST]
Oi m8 u got a loicense for them brackets?
or even the rest of the west
West was lost at stalingrad
This may be controversial but I think the bad guys lost World War Two.
because speaking german would somehow be worse than the nonsense were living through now or something
Not only would I have to speak German, but I also wouldn't be able to marry the woman I love if we followed the rest of that culture led by eugenics enthusiasts. I won't have it.
My grandfather's family would like to have a word with you about that, but they can't because the Nazis killed all of them.
I think the totalitarian left continues to be a threat to our freedom, however, the nonsense we are living through now is exponentially orders of magnitude lower than anything experienced under the Third Reich.
Yeah, maybe the Nazis would have killed my entire extended family instead of just 1/4th.
What a weird way to spell Constantinople.
It's been a long fall from 1945 to now. They'd have fared better in the long run if Sea Lion had worked.
How in the hell was Orwell so prescient?
He was a socialist who wrote how-to books.
Blair's critique of the British left, The Road to Wigan Pier, which portrays socialists as not really caring for the working class, is still applicable today. Perhaps if someone at the Harris campaign had read it they might understand why I saw not a single Harris campaign sign in Macomb County, Michigan.
Surprising, since I would guess that St. Clair Shores, Roseville, and Warren would lean reasonably blue.
So King Edward VIII and Queen Wallace? And that brings us right back to the rimming….
Supposedly she did ALL THE STUFF.
It's just weird how only the Germans figured out how to succeed.
The car industry is dead throughout rest of Europe (except @ Ferrari) and has just crawled along since the 70s. Sometimes you get a couple great products, but nothing's ever clicked at the brand or country level.
It's got to be something about industrial policy.
Succeed except for all the closing the factories part.
Well, until now that is. Germany seems committed to un-employing as many auto workers as possible, as quickly as possible. It's insane.
Not as insane as all of the western regimes trying to un-employ farmers.
Actually we're just trying to change from farmer-farmers to solar farmers!
sure glad we can eat sunlight
i think the trick to success is not to shoot yourself in the foot at every possible chance
that might help
And not taking your shoe off to get a better aim, as my dad used to say...
Did Germany have lower energy costs? Real question, there's a theory floating around that reducing the input cost of energy (used everywhere) has compounding knock on effects for economies in general.
I've only heard/read in passing that it was labor relations.
That is, the German policy of "Mitbestimmung" (which basically gave unions seats on management) kept Germany from having the labor unrest of France or Italy during the post-war period. France has something similar, but I don't think it's as deeply-implemented. FWIW, it obv has its issues, as the joint-corruption between VW and its union showed a while back.
Anyway, over time, it supposedly gave the Germans advantages in build quality, inventory management, product planning, etc. What I've read about Italian auto labor in the 70s makes it sound like an absolute carnival of crazy... witness the "AlfaSud," which was basically a make-work program in Mafia country, using - I think - ungalvanized Soviet steel.
But there's not a definitive write-up I've ever seen to back this up. I'm just pulling this together from things where I've seen it mentioned, but was not the topic.
FWIW, in some ways, it seems applicable to Japan and maybe Korea as well.
"labor unrest of France or Italy during the post-war period"
...AHEM!...
The Soviet steel in Italian cars is a made up thing repeated ad nauseam by Jalopnik level auto scribblers.
Strangely, I think I've heard that about Germany too. That they had excess generation because they went nuclear after the oil crisis, perhaps. And have hydro too.
I can't find anything to support this now, of course (did look fo prices over time but can't see anything obvious).
I could swear at one point hetzner rental servers used to advertise they were cheaper because they had dedicated hydro dams that weren't needed for grid production and so their data centre was running on cheap unneeded power.
Merkel started shutting down nukes after Fukashima and then their erstwhile 'ally' blew up their cheapest, most easily accessible energy source.
Why didn’t an American political leader warn them it was a bad idea? Oh, wait.
I can't embed images, so I'll leave the link here.
This twitter post lives in my brain: there are no low-energy rich countries. If you want prosperity, you need lots of cheap energy.
https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1824828288260346062
Ah, but which direction does the causation run?
I think we know lol.
Ask Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Venezuela...
It’s dead in Germany too.
https://econolog.substack.com/p/everything-must-go (part 1)
https://econolog.substack.com/p/made-in-germany?utm_medium=email (part 2)
Chinese companies owning that much of M-B is terrifying, although I don't know why I didn't already suspect that.
That particular fact was a revelation to me, as well.
Worry not, however. Ola Källenius recently assured The Verge’s Nilay Patel that Mercedes Benz would always be the leader in screens - more screens, bigger screens, better screens.
The Best or Nothing.
Thanks for posting that. MSM reported "oh, BTW, Germany's government collapsed" with absolutely no context. Nice to gain some understanding.
You can tell a lot about an economy based on the health of the local commercial banks’ balance sheets…
I've also heard argued that Germany has never * really * recovered from reunification, esp. with the East -> West drain that was facilitated by the 1:1 currency conversion.
I've been to Germany a lot since the 90's and there's still a very palpable difference between East and West.
Maybe the best industrial policy is to have no industrial policy.
As Glenn Reynolds often writes: insufficient opportunities for graft.
Alas no manual in USA which seems to miss the point entirely. The cup is ok
Jaguar is hindered by its relationship with Land Rover. The two brands would complement one another in a market where people buy meaningful numbers of luxury cars and SUVs, but that is not the market that we have.
Does the Morgan Plus Four still have sliding pillar front suspension? I think I'd rather have a Caterham in size XXL.
The Evoque and Velar should be Jags. The Defender, (full size) Discovery, and (FS) Range Rover should be LRs. The rest of the LRs shouldn’t exist.
HE'S RIGHT, YOU KNOW
But they can sell the Evoque and Velar for more with a Range Rover badge on the car, which is why they did so.
Be honest, if you were looking for a midsize SUV … F Pace or a Velar for a few thousand bucks more?
Morgan however does not offer a manual in USA, auto only , which seems to be entirely missing the point of this car. I guess they missed the part about USA enthusiasts s really liking manuals. A lesson lotus learned the hard way when it hey launched the first evora here auto only. Idiots
Otherwise the Morgan is great, something like 2300lbs by need aluminum chassis nice modern wishbone suspension plently of power. I wonder why we you can get it without dreaded eps.
I missed that detail. The configurator showed the BMW auto shifter, but I figured there would be the option. How unfortunate.
Also, the BMW shifter looks out of place in everything including BMWs. Both Morgan and Ineos dropped the ball on at least redesigning the knob.
Yeah in Europe you can get it with a manual, but alas so far not here.
Rest of car seems pretty nice
Agree 1 million percent. Automatics are bad enough, but for gosh sakes stop making your “shifter” look like some sort of loser electro toy joystick clitoris or a dial or buttons or literally anything more than what automatic gear selectors ever were (yes i know there have been variants prior to modern clown world, but for the most part it was prndl in a line). Just have a normal knob, or better yet a column shift, since you really arent “shifting” anything. Your dumb transmission already makes the sports car worse (but… its FASTER!!!), you neednt have it also make the interior look worse too.
You touched a nerve there lol.
"Skilled in Microsoft Word"
Jesus Christ.
And Excel!
I’ll bet $10,000,000 she has no idea how to create a pivot table.
In fairness to her, the newer versions of excel have pivot table templates that are offered whenever you create a new workbook
So if she can read english...
True, but if you have no understanding of the underlying data, which she most certainly does not, those templates are only going to make you look foolish.
fuck, you stole my lead off comment. this is like saying "proficient at walking"
“Showers every day”
And can count to 12!
get a load of this mathematician over here
born with two extra fingers and thinks hes better than the rest of us that can only count to ten
Actually it's a 3 Mile Island horse...
Why did the thing with three legs, 17 eyes and a beak cross Rt. 76 in Harrisburg, PA?
To get to the other side.
ermmmmmmmm actually experts say theres no benefit to this and its actually harmful because reasons. glad i can clear that up for you.
I don’t want to sit next to those experts.
you're over 18, they dont want to sit next to you either.
There's more to this than one might expect for a parent of young ones
“I wipe my own ass!”
Look at her job history. 'Digital specialist'? WTH is that? I'm surprised she made it to program manager, because she apparently has 0 technical skills. She's not even certified by any of the project manager organizations.
She obviously wasn't hired for her skills or her brains, but just to fill a check box.
So let me clarify something, these 'program manager' jobs aren't something that you have to have experience for, they exist so that someone is assigned to harassing people for 'when will you be done' and calling meetings and bitching about budget and slip, only to 'report out' to management. There are NO skills needed for these 'jobs'. Hence the 'arts' degree she holds is fine.
These are not the 'technical manager' you're thinking of where you have GROWN into the position and have people reporting to you whose job you may have to conceivably have done in the past or have to jump in and do from time to time.
The perversion currently in effect at GM is that the former employee can and does wield an outsized control of product policy, internal politics, and probably is better compensated for having no responsibility, no ownership and no direct reports. I HATE IT!
I have worked as a project manager on a few major projects. I have a PMI cert and number, all that stuff. It was required for some of the contracts that I used to do (especially state & medical ones). That's what a project manager or program manager is supposed to have, and they're supposed to manage the entire program. From start to finish.
Somebody who just calls people up and yells at them, ain't a program/project manager. Now if management is letting them call themselves that, well, I guess they're going out of business.
Management is telling them that's that's all they have to do. Agree on the rest.
I'm not sure why she didn't also list that she can read in her tagline. As far as I'm concerned MS Office suite competency, or at least the ability to find and watch a YouTube tutorial to then implement, is a condition of employment, not a superlative.
The Jaaaggg thing is sad, but if I was going that route, I'd rather have an Aston anyways.
discount Rapides are available, DB9s are not expensive (for what the retail price once was)
Can anyone who has driven either of those please stand up, please stand up?
(Stands up). They were kinda disappointing. Like a more expensive, yet worse driving Corvette.
Unless you have a youtube channel specializing in fully depreciated luxury cars and can write off the repair costs, why would you buy either of those?
[Slaps Rapide trunk] "It's like a better looking, faster, and less reliable Ford Fusion!"
Kidding aside, I have no domain knowledge of how bad depreciated aston maintenance and repair is. Perhaps it's wishful thinking to guess that the Ford dalliance made them slightly less unreliable. I lack both numbers and anecdotal complaints, as my fellow auto-masochism enjoyers tend to prefer the Germans
I don't think it's about unreliability so much as normal parts have insane costs. As in, possibly more expensive than Ferrari.
[mcconaughey_TrueDetective_EyesWide.jpg]
That's why it's important to see what part number cross references to good ol FoMoCo and also was on an F250 or Taurus. I know it's not possible for everything.
You like getting laid?
Is a 12 year old Rapide going to make that happen?
Rapide won’t but a DB9 is still cool
I'll change my mind for a Quantum Silver manual DBS but that's it.
You say this.
I wanted something silly like a DB9. I started researching.
Oil filters are $70 a pop at the dealer, not free at FCPeuro.
Parts availability is laughable.
The interior on the early models isn't great.
The X150 XKR is 95% of the sex appeal with 10% of the hassle. There are a lot of forum posts with people cross shopping coming to the same conclusion
My X351 does much of what a Flying Spur does besides look ugly, and is again a bit more practical.
I'm not saying either set of cars is equivalent, but they scratch many of the same itches, and the jaaaags manage to be a bit more sensible.
"I wanted something silly like a DB9"
you and me both but damn you need to be okay with consciously dumping too much money into it relative to what youre getting out of it
im not even sure if an ls swap would make it worthwhile
An LS would ruin the whole thing, but I'd agree the maintenance costs are probably going to be a bit unreasonable relative to what you get.
yeah i figured it was going to be something like that wit there not being any real way to cut maintenance costs
I didn't say i planned on owning either one. Have zero intention to ever do so unless I win the lottery that I never play. I just think Astons of a certain era are better looking, sexy cars. Neither is a good financial proposal.
The sheer incompetence regarding Jaguar's current owners makes my head hurt.
"Hi! We bought Jaguar! We're complete morons! We killed the elegant sedans and now you can get a stupid electric combover designed for fat people! Oops wait we're killing that too! You can't buy anything! Here's a stupid new logo! Durr!"
Hold on.
Jaguar’s current ownership - Tata - is responsible for transforming Land Rover into one of the most desirable, sought-after brands in the world. It is the default conveyance in many of the planet’s moneyed enclaves, which means that all of the wannabes and pretenders want one.
Set against that, they can - and perhaps have - light Jaguar on fire and still remain far in the black.
Perhaps JLR stands for “Just Land Rover.” Or soon will.
Or perhaps some sort of miracle occurred and LR became desirable in spite of what Tata did.
They just got lucky!
Lucky in the sense that Tata bought Jaguar after Ford had dumped metric shitloads of money into it, paying for new drivetrains, new all-aluminum designs, upgrading the Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich and switching the Halewood plant from Fords to Jaguars and Land Rovers, and getting their quality control somewhere in the big league ballpark. Well bought or lucky.
Then Ian Callum came along with a disastrous redesign that just made Jags look bland. The Bertone B99 showed how Jag could keep it heritage, and modernize. I still recall seeing my first XF in traffic. It registered as a new Infiniti or something.
This, spot on
The B99 looks like a badge-engineered Ford 427 or maybe Interceptor. That's a compliment, BTW.
And in 2008 Ford was desperate for cash to avoid bankruptcy like the others.
Alan Mullaly gets most of the credit, no pun intended, but it was Ford treasurer Neil Schloss' idea to mortgage the entire company, including the blue oval logo, to get through that era.
Tata: when you can't buy from Satan himself!
Oh right because Indian = BAD!
And have you heard that they smell, too?? Saw that on X dot com.
Tata, the company, specifically, is a significant and malignant force in the destruction of the Western IT industry.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/tata-fired-white-us-workers-in-favor-of-visa-holders-suit-says
My (former) company worked with Tata engineering on a project twenty some years ago.
Charged a lot and delivered poor quality work product. My direct experience with their engineers was "copy/paste and don't think too hard."
I thought better of you than that response.
I was going to respond but figured it was a waste of my time... it says a lot of someone's substance and character when they leap over substantive discussion and right into "you're a racist!"...
Sir Morris deserved better than that. Yes, and it says nothing good about Shermans. character.
Sir Morris Leyland’s comments are an ongoing series of whines about how bad India and Indians are, interspersed with Eeyore-esque boohooing about how the world is unfair.
Ask him point blank if he hates Indians and India? I’m not sure he’d be able to say “no.”
Sherman is a pro level troll.
I appreciate the recognition.
It has been an ongoing labor of love to develop my now-powerful below-bridge guarding techniques.
I guess the problem is, "whats the value proposition?"
As an example, as gorgeous as the F Type is, when compared against other cars new or used, would you buy an F Type with the amount of money needed to buy that particular F Type?
I wouldn't, but would love to hear from others who have or wish to
F Type convertible would be pretty appealing as an occasional driver for the money.
Or put another way, I’d rather have an F Type convertible than whatever 911 cabriolet can be bought for the same outlay.
I take it all back! https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2015-jaguar-f-type-r-coupe-15/
550 hp for 26 stacks. A more garage-endowed me would roll the dice with this six-owner well-trodden-former trollop--
assuming the cannabis vape pen odor could be eliminated somehow
Gimme a ragtop F type and I’d smoke cigars in it all summer.
If it’s $26K, it’s cheap enough to just ash on the floorboard.
The ash is good for the carpets!
A friend bought an F-Type V6 in May. By mid-July he had a GR86. Legitimately it spent more time broken than it did driving. A shame, because I thought it was a good looking car.
I don’t find it all that surprising based on other things I’ve heard.
A wrecked chassis and an LS/T56 swap sounds really nice minus the immense headache of wiring the thing to make it work
Everyone who could by an f type wants a 911
I would buy an F-type over any modern 911 assuming I had the $ and garage space for either.
At their current used prices, it's nice 996 or high mile 997 (base or low options S) vs a V8 F-Type R. That's not really a comparison.
Im torn between F-Type, C7, and a 997 as the Boxster replacement. F-Type would be the cheapest to buy, most expensive to own. 997 is the car I dreamed of as a kid. C7 would be the best to own.
I went into the Jag store to buy the F-Type of my dreams. Brg on tan, with the base 6 and a manual transmission. Just like I’d built on their website. It all came crashing down when the salesman told me they had just discontinued the manual transmission. This was 2018?
Holy shit that's really sad.
And that is the time, place, and model config to make buying an F-type make a LOT of sense. Doubly so in that very choice colorway 🤘
It was heartbreaking. I was actually sitting in a F Convertible in the dealership, waiting for sales guys return , trying to convince myself that the external beauty, and the engine/trans combo, would make up for the “Japanese bland” interior. It wasn’t terribly expensive. $75k? So much less then a 911, and right around Corvette money. Though I must say that the fake v6, with two empty cylinders, always bothered the purist in me.
Hopefully without opening an old wound, were there no used ones from the prior model year available in the colorway you were intending to buy? Or were you disinclined to purchase used/CPO at that time?
Spot on, you’d have to look past the interior which makes no sense in a lux gt.
Also it needs the new twin turbo inline 6 from the Land Rover, and a manual option.
In short f type was great looking car nice suspension and then crap interior with Meh motor.. assuming the buyer is too stupid to know or care cost 50% of sales
Used, they are great values. Seems like you realized that in another comment reply. Manual V6s in the low 30s. Low mile V8 Rs in the 40s. You telling me you'd rather have a Mustang? Or spend more on a DB9 that'll cost $12k a year to keep going?
spot on.
i do think when you get into the SVRs or the newer models (60+ or 90+ brand new) you have other options that may lack the lux but make more sense.
For 60 I would sacrifice my country club credibility and try to snag a Camaro ZL1, for 80-90 an AMG GT, but for 40 or less....
Don’t forget the infamous Aston V12 engine tick. The best of the breed were the 2007+ XK/XKR.
Ahhh, I have an empty garage spot waiting for money to accumulate.
Fans of old British movies and classic TV like Minder and The Sweeney know that Jaguars were the happy choice of villains, wide boys, and spivs — but no one’s going to choose a new Jag to blag anything, that’s for sure. They’ll be missed, but hopefully they commit suicide before they can produce the chunky, charmless thing recently seen in camo and previewed in an Autocar rendering this week.
Who has become the purveyor of choice to the villain, wide boy, spiv, etc. demographic?
Well, you called it above, I think: Range Rover. Or BMW. Certainly a depreciated luxury vehicle.
Up North: White Range Rover Sport or Velar (NEVER the “full fat” Rangie) on black wheels with blood red “guts,” all the better to accentuate the owner’s orange spray tan.
But more broadly … Bentley?
Yes! Previous-gen Bentley Continentals.
You are both wrong, I am advised. The Audi A8 is the blagger's motor du jour, at least in England, and much stolen for the purpose. Discreet, quick (V8s only need apply), tough and with 4wd if a quick detour through the park is required. The cars you have mentioned are for drug dealers, a different kettle of skipjack.
Appreciate your expertise.
Pardon my ignorance, but “blood red guts” refers to the seats?
G-Wagon. Official car of RAVs.
We got Star Trek 0 to the ninth power, A FICW and for full circle a whore or are they all.
once you take away all the historical and visual notes of a company like jaguar what are you even left with as its not like being an ev is at all unique to anyone at this point and what powers it lends a strong sense of identity
their management seems like a good candidate to slap and choke but not at all sexually
>shover her head in toilet
>call her ugly
>pee on her
none of those are zero what the FUCK and i bet thats the same woman too
seriously how are some of those things even turn ons women are mental
https://giphy.com/gifs/ljookvhfvUQ0w
they're 50-ish percentage of the pop. "extrapolate on THIS"