The undesirable Jags are turning into classics

There are moments when you know with certainty that a thing is wrong. It is below conscious thought. You just know. This is the sound of the self. I experienced certainty the first time I saw the Jaguar S-Type. It was wrong. Deeply, deeply, wrong. The Jaguar S-Type is the worst car ever made. There are technically worse cars. But there are none as psychologically devastating as the S-Type. It sits parked alone in the head-bay of British automotive atrocities. I am interested in cars as objects. Ideas. Automotive design as conveyor of principles – and by extension – a nation's sense of itself. As we’ve said here before. What do you believe in? In this regard, the S-Type was and remains a national disgrace. An automotive Vietnam. A car that killed a nation's sense of identity. If Jaguar were still state-owned, I would campaign for a national enquiry. Forget the Epstein files, I want the minutes of the S-Type styling team. (Lest we forget, the S-Type came from the very same company that only six years prior had pulled back the cover on the Jaguar XJ220.) I will never forget the first time I saw the S-Type undisguised. It was 1998.  A crowded shopping centre. Until then, all I’d seen of the S-Type was a drip feed of spy shots and crude artist impressions delivered once a month in the news sections of car magazines. The S-Type was to be a renewed attempt on a massive industrial scale, to resell an idea of Britain to the world. It was a big deal. I turned to gaze across the crowded thoroughfare. WH Smith. Autocar. Emblazoned across the front cover. ‘S-Type’. I slowly moved to the stand. Denial. ‘That’s just a render … It’ll never look like that’. On reflex, I discarded the ghastly spider-eyed recycling of 1960s design cues gawkily stretched to fit modern crash test stipulations. Bargaining. It had to be the work of some Photoshop wazzock who’d drawn it without turning on his monitor. I held the magazine closer. Yet in 1998, Photoshop car renders did not look this believable. It looked off, and yet, real.  Anger. “It can’t be like that,” I spat out loud. But there are moments when you just know. Depression. The cold mercury slowly seeping into your gut. And then acceptance. She is having an affair. Daddy isn’t coming home. And the S-Type was a tragedy that was coming for all of us. Everyone in the shopping centre carried on as if nothing was happening. But I could feel the ground beneath our feet had already started to shake. Post Ford ownership, Volvo, Aston Martin and Land Rover all survived untarnished and were able to successfully build upon visionary styling work produced under their Ford tenure. Each company created at least one masterpiece during this time. DB-9. MK2 S40. Mk 1 Evoque. Jaguar created the S-Type and then - to pour cancer on top of AIDS - they gave us the X-Type. I live out the same struggle every time I see an S-Type. It’s like trying to see the good in a convicted sex offender. Their charity work, their kindness to animals, that great second album. But the S-Type is a car so ill-conceived, so psychologically sick, it doesn’t matter what angle you try to judge it from. It’s wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. The S-Type was formally unveiled at the 1998 British motor show, coinciding with Rover’s unveiling of the 75. This would be the last time two major British car manufacturers would simultaneously attempt to capture a mainstream section of the market in such a way; defining and marketing their identity as ‘British’. The Union Jack fluttered at unveilings. The music for the S-Type’s launch ad was Shirley Bassey’s ‘History Repeating’. Both cars killed their companies. The year before New Labour had come to power. It was a moment where there seemed a sense of national renewal. Yet by this point, all of Britain's major car manufacturers had been sold off. The pride in our great automotive marks was now shadowed by a deeper truth that they, and by extension ourselves, no longer had real control. A great national industrial postwar failure had become locked in our collective subconscious. A failure that had not befallen our German and French cousins. We carry shame. A new dream was required to answer the trauma of our collective failure. Something ingenious and beautiful that would quieten the rising doubt of who we are. Something we could believe in. Yet instead of giving us a new dream, Britain went with nostalgia. History repeating. The S-Type. For the first year after its launch, there was collective denial. Press and public alike offered themselves up in a shared fantasy where the S-Type was a beauty and sales were rivalling the best of Germany. That month’s edition of Autocar came with a commemorative S-Type pullout. It was a Jaguar, and Jaguars are beautiful, aren’t they? This is our reality, isn’t it? It wasn’t, and behind closed doors, we knew a darker truth. We just wanted to believe in ourselves again. None of the men and women tasked with designing the S-Type intended the crucifixion of a nation's identity. They believed their intentions were honourable. But, like the Manson family, tightly knit groups become detached from reality and start to believe their fantasies are real. At the point when we needed a new dream, the S-Type styling team wanted to take us back to a fantasy of Britain we knew was never really real. Instead of penning a new vision to reflect our gaze back onto ourselves, the S-Type styling team unconsciously penned a vessel of sickness. An object that would forever remind a nation of its failure to self-renew. A four-eyed voodoo doll that told us the ideas factory is barren. Jaguar survived the S-Type for a while. But it was now so burdened with shame that the company could never rid itself of the trauma. The S-Type was the heinous act for which Jaguar would forever hate itself. Every business school and undergrad psychiatry course should carry a module titled ‘S-type: Product as National Psychotic Break'. The S-Type turned Jaguar into a skittish personality, overcompensating with overblown exhaust growls and rude-boy paint jobs. ‘I am not the S-Type. I am not the S-Type.” The truth is Jaguar is the S-Type. And so are you. The S-Type is the black hole of doubt at the heart of all British men. The four-eyed freak that stares flatly back from the cover of Autocar and says, “I don’t know who I am”, and on the glossy shine of the cover, you briefly see yourself reflected back. To purge itself of the stain, Jaguar has resorted to dissociating itself from all recognisable styling lineage and hallmarks. Undergoing a form of electroconvulsive therapy in an attempt to wipe itself  – and by extension ourselves – of its psychosis. The hope is that it can create a renewed self-image for it to move forward with. For all our sakes, we must hope they succeed. The true cost of the S-Type may never truly be known. The economic devastation wrought by this vehicle of sickness must surely run into the hundreds of billions. The psychological toll to the country immeasurable. The horror still lives on. That is why every morning before your kids go to school, you must tell them to fail like an I-Pace, not like an S-Type. Then tell them you love them. And as they close the front door, and you feel the cold creep of the void returning. You must drive to the nearest supermarket car park and sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Until you notice two rows down, that hatchback parking up in that beautiful shade of midnight blue. The overhangs that sit just right. The eyes of the light clusters perfectly balanced with the weight of the hallmark. The communication between objects and space, which speaks of the awareness of the other. And you remember what you believe in. It is a little-known fact that the ‘S’ in S-Type stands for 'Self'.