Start with what the Jaguar X-Type is: a 4-door Sedan (automobile) / saloon / 5-door Station wagon / estate with Petrol engine, built from 2001 to 2009, in the decade of stability control, dual-clutch gearboxes and the first serious hybrids. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Simon Butterworth, Tadeusz Jelec, Wayne Burgess under the direction of Geoff Lawson (designer) / Geoff Lawson (saloon) / Ian Callum (estate).
How it came about
The Jaguar X-Type is a compact executive car that was manufactured and marketed by Jaguar Cars from 2001 to 2009 for a single generation. Internally designated "X400", the X-Type was produced in four-door saloon car and five-door estate car body styles, becoming Jaguar's first estate car to enter series production. The X-Type has a front-mounted engine and either front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, and was Jaguar's first front-wheel drive car. It was also the first Jaguar with a diesel engine or a four-cylinder engine.
The X-Type is considered a large family car by EuroNCAP and a compact car by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The X-Type was developed during the period when Jaguar was owned by Ford as a division of its Premier Automotive Group (PAG) (1999–2010) — and marked Jaguar's entry into the critical compact executive segment. The programme aimed to double the marque's worldwide sales — requiring expansion of engineering resources, factory capacity, marketing capability, sales support and service. At launch, Autocar called the X-Type "the most important Jaguar ever". With annual projections of 100,000 sales, the X-Type recorded a production of 350,000 over its eight-year manufacturing run.
The hardware
The engine is Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. Drive goes through a 5-speed Manual transmission / manual Ford MTX-75 transmission / MTX-75 / 6-speed Manual transmission / manual MMT6 / 5-speed Jatco JF506E transmission / Jatco FPD Automatic transmi. The wheelbase is 2710 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Jaguar line-up the Jaguar X-Type has a clear place: it handed the line to the Jaguar XE; the factory was Halewood (Halewood Body & Assembly), United Kingdom. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Honda Fit, the Porsche Cayenne, the Honda Accord. Its Jaguar stablemates include the F-Type and the Vanden Plas.