RETRO REVIVAL

The ‘X200’ S-Type is one of those ‘Marmite’ cars which really splits opinion. Most of it is down the styling of course, the S-Type having arrived in a period when retro was fashionable and Jaguar's owners Ford were convinced that the way to distance the brand from its competitors was to recall past glories.

In many ways that was a shame and something which was later rectified by Jaguar's reinvention of its style under Ian Callum, starting with the XF – which was ironically enough, based on the platform of the S-Type. Under the ’60s curves, the S-type was in fact a state-of-the-art car and sat on a brand new platform designed from the ground up to provide Jaguar with a mid-range BMW 5-Series challenger and Lincoln with a new LS model.

The popular misconception is that Jaguar was simply handed the Lincoln floorpan