2005 Jaguar S-Type Test Drives

An Aging Design Retains Some Luster

Jaguar's S-Type still has high points. Can it keep the competition at bay?

Jaguar sold about 46,000 vehicles in the U.S. last year.

That's a 16% fall from its sales in 2003. Or, in a bleaker context, Volvo, its stable mate in the Ford Motor pantheon -- among its European holdings, Ford owns Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo -- sold about 100,000 cars. Add in the hot-selling Volvo XC90, Volvo's crossover, and the total comes to about 140,000 vehicles. Volvo's sales in this country are more than triple Jaguar's, and there's little doubt this trend will continue. Jaguar has repeatedly said it doesn't need crossovers to compete with the likes of, say, Toyota Motor's Lexus subsidiary, Audi, BMW and DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes-Benz subsidiary, its chief rivals. Meanwhile, said competitors can't move fast enough to either expand their crossover lines or create them (think Audi).

The real trouble is that Jaguar can't move into that space because it is already occupied by Land Rover. Oddly, though, this wasn't an issue for Volvo, which created the XC90 at the prodding of Ford.

Why can Volvo have a crossover and Jaguar can't? While you're asking, you might wonder why Jaguar can't have a real BMW 3 Series-fighter? The X-Type isn't a terrible car, but it's based on a Europe-only Ford Mondeo sedan chassis that's fairly old. And Volvo's brand-new S40 sedan is at least as good. Add into the mix a newly revised 3 Series, which arrives in June, a tweaked IS coming from Lexus, a revised Audi A4 already hitting the market and a quite sweet C-Class Benz, and Jaguar simply can't compete at this end of the spectrum.

True, an X-Type wagon is now here; we predicted this would happen three years ago and it's finally come to pass. But this is three years too late. Jaguar is responding now to a fight that started when the company first brought out the X-Type. The competition has already moved on to wage other battles.

Consider: Lexus sold about 76,000 ES 330 sedans last year. Jaguar sold about 21,500 X-Types. These cars sit in the same price ballpark but customers clearly aren't racing to Jaguar dealers to get the X-Type.

More painfully, Jaguar only sold 10,975 S-Types in 2004, a 26% fall from 2003. The $44,895 S-Type 3.0, the subject of this review, sells against Audi's A6, BMW's 5 Series and Mercedes' E-Class, as well as Lexus' newly revised GS sedans. All of those vehicles are either newly revised or entirely new.

The S-Type recently received a facelift at least, which Jaguar hopes will staunch some of the bleeding the competition has caused.

There's just one problem: The S-Type didn't get a total exterior makeover when it got better guts, so whether buyers will notice that the S-Type is actually revised is an unanswered question. Which is too bad, because we came away liking this car a great deal. The gist follows.