CAT RESCUE

To some extent the best classics are those which are controversial enough to arouse fierce debate and the X-Type is certainly one of them. With the earliest cars just about to clock up their 20th birthday, it’s also old enough to qualify for classic status, something reinforced by its significance to Jaguar as a brand.

One of Ford’s key aims for Jaguar was to lift production over the 100,000 mark and this was achieved with the S-Type, but Detroit management was keen to raise the bar even further by adding a smaller model to sit below the S-Type and challenge the BMW 3-Series.

All fine in principle but not quite so easy in practice since all the smaller platforms within the Ford empire used a transverse engine allied to front-wheel drive… which simply wouldn’t fly as a Jaguar product. This meant that pretty much the sole choice was the ‘CD132’ platform as found under the 2002 Mondeo, which was comprehensively re-engineered by Jaguar including the addition of four-wheel