Jaguar SUV Crossover (render by Carparazzi)
Jaguar’s Global Brand Director Adrian Hallmark has declared that Jaguar need to add a Jaguar Crossover / Jaguar SUV to their range.
Jaguar are makers of sports cars and sports saloons. They’ve built a reputation (alright, let’s be pedantic. They built a reputation, lost it and have now regained it) for cars that delight the eye and the senses. Cars that epitomise the grace space and pace tag-line penned for the Jaguar MK X.
Glorious though many Jaguars were before, it was the 1961 E-Type that catapulted Jaguar from the ranks of aspiration to the heights of uber-desirability. They followed that up seven years later with the first Jaguar XJ, which made Jaguar the makers of perhaps the world’s most desirable sports car and the most desirable sports saloon.
We’ll gloss over the decline that characterised the last thirty years of the twentieth century and look instead at the revival under Ford at the start of the new millennium, and the complete transformation under Tata (which we musn’t forget was technically achieved on the back of Ford’s investment) in to a dynamic maker of world-class sports cars and sports saloons.
But it seems the idea of being the maker of some of the most desirable sports cars and sports saloons in the world isn’t enough. Jaguar seem to want in on Land Rover’s territory. According to Jaguar’s Global Brand Director Adrian Hallmark – in conversation with Autocar – Jaguar “…need a crossover and we need to stop being a saloon-based company.”
If Jaguar weren’t a half of the whole that is JLR, we’d agree. The idea of Jaguar putting together a Jaguar Crossover / Jaguar SUV / Jaguar SAV in the mould of an X5 is appealing. Actually, it’s very appealing. And it probably wouldn’t hurt sales of most of the Land Rover Range. But it would probably kill the Range Rover Sport stone dead.
And maybe, with the whole Land Rover Range up for renewal in the next three years, that’s the plan.
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