Jaguar X-Type Estate 2.0D SE review
Jaguar X-type 2.0D SE Road Test
Test date 30 March 2004
Price as tested £25,865
For Looks, ride comfort, refined engine
Against Performance, interior plastics
Small Jaguars date back further than the luxury barges it made its reputation with. The last genuinely small feline saloon before the X-Type was the 1935 2.5-litre. 7230 of them were made before 1948, when the company decided that the way forward was with more luxurious saloons and exotics.
It took forty years, and the success that BMW enjoyed with its 3-series and Audi’s big-selling A4, to convince Coventry otherwise. With access to Ford’s excellent Mondeo chassis, it offered a choice of 2.5- and 3.0-litre V6 powerplants and four-wheel-drive – the X-Type was born. We loved the car’s faithful-to-roots chassis compliancy and competitive price, but were less sure about the styling and packaging inside and out.
The range was to bring more firsts for Jaguar. The front-driving 2.0 V6 X-Type saloon would have been a huge disappointment for Jag traditionalists had it not preserved the four-wheel-drive car’s excellent handling. As it turned out, it was a veiled success, offering a refined engine and good road manners, but lacking outright poke and the bargain tag it needed.
But the real kick in the teeth for the purists came when Coventry took the decision to add this car to its books. This X-Type is a small, front-wheel-drive estate car driven by a four-cylinder diesel engine; in all four of those considerations, it is an affront to everything that Jaguar used to stand for. In the same breath, it is also the most impressive X-Type yet, and could prove the most popular.
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