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Jaguar is perhaps one of the most respected British car makers. It is also one of the few traditional British makers to have survived the dark years of British Leyland and arrived in the 21st century. Since 1989, Jaguar has been owned by U.S. automaker Ford Motor Company. Ford has for the most part avoided direct involvement in the company, but Jaguar has utilized Ford technology in recent designs such as the XK8.

The Ford era ushered in an era of nostalgia at Jaguar. The car that is most symbolic of this is Jag's "S-Type". The car was meant to hearken back to the classic lines of the Mark II, one of the icons of Jaguar's "sports saloon" heritage. Unfortunately, the car's design was more like a cartoon of its inspiration. Execution was rather tame and conventional, instead of exciting.

While browsing the net the other night, I discovered Jaguar's promotional site for its advanced design concept. Called the CXF, its is a prototype for the the to-be-launched Jaguar XF, a 4 door sports sedan. The car is meant to break with every trapping of Jaguar tradition -- burled woods, cream leather, &c -- while at the same time honoring the brand's spirit of speed, modernism, and design excellence.

The CXF is distinctively like no car ever produced by Jaguar. The exterior uses a stretched, athletic shape that is erotically fast without sacrificing elegance. It hearkens slightly to the XK, although one might be inclined to view the latter as more having a kinship than being an inspiration for the former. Yet the radically different shape does have some subtle Jaguar "notes". The CXF has an overall arc shape that is like a metaphor for the leaping cat logo. It also has a subtle horizontal curvature when viewed from each end. But again, these are subtleties. The interior is almost spartan in simplicity, and yet is flowing, elegant, and radically modern. Overall, the car exhibits what Julian Thomson, Chief Designer for Jaguar Advanced Design, calls a more "aggressive" side of the brand.

Does it succeed? I think it does, though that is not the same thing as me liking the car. I'm not yet sure how I feel about the CXF. I can say this: I do get excited when I look at the car. It is a breathtaking change with the past. It cannot be confused for the milktoast of the S-Type or the suburban boredom of the X-Type. It makes every other luxury car on the market or planned for the market look boring, conventional, stone age. I wonder though if it breaks too far from the Jaguar mould, whether the Jaguar base will embrace it as a "true" Jag. Yet even if the brand loses some of the traditionalists, I suspect that the design of the CXF is so advanced that it will prove a formidable opponent for other luxury automobile companies.

The CXF's design concept website can be viewed here.

"I tried to write shorterbut I ran out of time"~Mark Twain

"I tried to write shorter
but I ran out of time"
~Mark Twain