Little wonder that Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. want to get their hands on Jaguar.
How can you not love a car company that refers to the trunk lid as the boot, the windshield as the windscreen and the hood as the bonnet, and advises those desiring to work on their cars to ”wear clean overalls and gloves.”
Jaguar isn`t so much a car as an experience.
Perhaps the only styling that`s older is that of the VW Beetle. Yet after all these years, the Jaguar look is still distinctive, even if the rounded headlamps are now rectangular on the new Jaguar Sovereign. People still turn and admire the machine.
Horror stories? Jaguar has had its share. Mention electrical problems and Jaguar owners wince. Quality control? Until Sir John Egan took over as chairman a few years ago and started to turn things around, quality control was almost nonexistent.
For years, buying a Jaguar was somewhat akin to marrying Liz Taylor: You knew going in that it probably wouldn`t work, but the attraction was that you were among only a handful of people who had the chance to give it a try.
Egan`s major stumbling blocks now are price, forced heavenward by the rising value of the pound against the dollar, and suitors like GM and Ford who would like to become his stockholder chums-and perhaps his boss.
Judging by the 1990 Sovereign we test-drove, Egan has the product line pretty well under control.
Sovereign is a name used by Jaguar everywhere in the world except the U.S.-until now. The Sovereign four-door sedan represents some juggling of the sedan lineup for 1990. Sovereign, at $43,000, takes the spot of the $44,000 1989 XJ-6, while the `90 XJ-6 has been priced at $39,700 and moves down to become the entry-level sedan.
The realignment is aimed at Egan`s price problem. It helps that the XJ-6 and Sovereign are priced in the same ballpark as the new Lexus LS400 from Toyota. While $50,000-$70,000 BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes probably will take it on the chin from Lexus, Jaguar is at least price-competitive.
The Sovereign is built on a 113-inch wheelbase and is 196.4 inches long. It seats four adults in cushioned leather seats.
The car is powered by a new 4-liter, 199-horsepower, in-line 6-cylinder engine, replacing last year`s 3.6-liter 6-cylinder. With the new engine comes a new 4-speed, electronically controlled automatic transmission.
Those who drove a Jaguar in the past could fault the 3.6 and the automatic for noisy operation. The new engine-transmission combination is smooth and quick, yet very quiet. You don`t have to break off in the middle of a sentence with your passenger until the shift from second to third is completed and the commotion dies down.
The quietness complements power, or at least adds to the impression that you`re moving awfully fast. Jaguar boasts a 0-to-30-m.p.h. time of 3.4 seconds. That`s impressive. Note that`s 0-to-30, not 0-to-60. The luxury car owner wants to move quickly from the light, to pass without hesitation, to merge onto the expressway and immediately be in the flow of traffic, and that means a burst when you press the pedal, without waiting for momentum to build after the speedometer has reached 45.
The Sovereign is EPA-rated at 17 m.p.g. city and 22 highway and escapes the gas guzzler tax.
Complementing the engine and transmission is the independent suspension system, with upper and lower wishbones; anti-dive geometry, which holds the front end level in hard braking; telescoping shocks; antiroll bars; and automatic road leveling. All contribute to above-average road-holding manners. You feel weight in the wheel, but no heaviness in corners and turns. Standard equipment includes power four-wheel disc brakes with the antilock feature; power steering; adjustable steering column; alloy road wheels; trip computer; cruise control; power windows and doors; rear-window defroster; heated door locks, exterior mirrors and windshield washer nozzles; air conditioning; power leather seats; AM-FM stereo with cassette; hydraulic ride leveling; and power sunroof.
Notable items include a rear-window defroster that may be the quickest we`ve experienced in years; air and heat controls for rear-seat occupants;
under-hood warning messages in five languages including Japanese; form fitting automatic shoulder belts that fasten around the torso when the key is turned on; and the heat feature for the locks, mirrors and windshield washer nozzles. Some annoyances are the location of the hood release under the dash, hard to reach and harder yet to pull open; location of the turn indicator lever too close to the instrument panel, so that it`s not always easy to reach on the first swipe; a deep trunk that loses stowage capacity to a full-size spare; and location of the emergency brake lever immediately against the driver`s right leg.
Notes
In the new-products department, an outfit called DeckSlider of Florida has come up with a plywood sheet housed in a welded frame that slides into or out of your pickup bed to make loading and unloading easier. It sells for $275 to $290. For details, call 1-800-782-1474.
Innovations Research Co. has come up with Park Guard, an alarm that bolts to the front of your reserved parking space and sets off a siren and verbal message: ”Warning, move your car or it will be towed,” when someone dares violate your hallowed ground. It retails for $189. Call 1-800-346-3251.
Some interesting items spotted at a parts show included Mobile Tele Note, a pad that fits on the steering wheel hub so you can take notes while on the car phone, $14.95; EverStart from Johnson Controls, which is two batteries in one, so that when your power source goes dead this winter and the car won`t start, rather than find cables and go through the trouble of jump-starting, you turn a knob on the battery and the backup unit starts the car, $129.95;
and ”Knuckle Buffer,” a set of plastic knuckles to clip on your car door to keep other doors from banging into yours, $4.95.
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Sunday: Test-driving the 1990 Lexus LS 400.
