![]() Ian Callum, previously at Tom Wickersham Racing (TWR) and having recently designed the Jaguar-based Aston Martin DB7, came on board and succeeded him as Design Studio Director. Not long after that, in 1999, Lawson suffered an unexpected stroke and died. If it is, perhaps this is an example of Lawson’s design team knowing exactly what they wanted at the outset, but having to do the dog-and-pony show of iterative processes to lead everyone else there. To me, it looks a little too close to the production model to be an early sketch. Design for the interior and exterior was frozen in mid-1998, and Jaguar engineers set about bringing the design to life.Īllegedly, this is a sketch from Owen early into the X350 project. Taylor knew the interior needed to be much larger than that of the outgoing car, and it also needed to look more modern. Interior design was entrusted to Giles Taylor, who had to work with engineers and exterior designers to arrive at a final set of dimensions. Naturally, Sales and Marketing backed down. So-since the length and width had already been fixed-Lawson constructed a clay model that showed the luggage compartment going halfway up the rear windscreen, just to show how ridiculously impossible this accommodation would be. In one comedic episode, Sales and Marketing decreed that the luggage compartment needed a specific capacity. Sales and Marketing also, reasonably, had their hands in the process. As work progressed over the following few years, Jaguar performed several design studies and sought feedback on the existing XJ from dealers and customers that would then be piped to Lawson, Owen and Boyes. Lawson’s exterior team also included principal designers Tom Owen and Sandy Boyes, and the three of them quickly converged on borrowing cues from the original XJ Series I (1968-1973). So, when development of the X350 began in late 1996, Ford management put pressure on Geoff Lawson, Jaguar’s Design Studio Director, and his team to make something that would look distinctly Jaguar-like. Ford was worried that a break from tradition would alienate existing buyers, who were fiercely loyal and who largely did buy Jaguars because of their styling…without truly being able to compete with the Germans or with Lexus. During this time, Jaguar was wholly owned by FoMoCo, which ultimately signed the checks, and which had perhaps a larger vision for the Jaguar brand than Jaguar itself did. One thing Jaguar was not willing to do was to make its latest flagship a polarizing car, as had been done with the 1999 S-Type, so one way or another, the XJ would have to be an objectively pretty car. Or it could stick with something tried and true, but with an updated flavor. ![]() It could break with tradition and make a clean break from the heritage Jaguar styling. For the X350, Jaguar could do one of two things. In keeping with corporate Ford model nomenclature of a letter identifier and three numbers, the new XJ was codenamed “X350” early into the project. Beautiful, sporty, but compromised The Styling: Why Mess Up a Good Thing? So, Jaguar needed to think very carefully about its upcoming flagship. Interior space was merely adequate for long-wheelbase models, while short-wheelbase ones were rated as compact by the EPA for interior dimensions. But a lot had also happened in the luxury car realm in that time, and the X308 was just plain cramped by contemporary standards. A lot had happened in the interim, including the loss of the traditional Jaguar I6 and V12 engines, in favor of a family of V8s, but there was still clear design lineage back to the 1988 model. ![]() The car had been given an extensive redesign on the same platform twice: first in 1995 and again in 1998, culminating in the then-current X300 XJ. For starters, the basic platform dated back to 1988, in the form of the XJ40. ![]() Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz itself, along with BMW and, increasingly, Audi were cleaning up the market with cars that were conservatively styled, fresh, spacious, and high-tech (or at least the last three, in the case of the contemporary 2002 “E65” 7 Series). Lexus had made a successful foray into the luxury world, in part, by building a better Mercedes-Benz. ![]() By the year 2000, it was clear that the Teutonic way of doing a large luxury car was the benchmark. ![]()
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