Jaguar S-Type: the forgotten Jag that transformed the company’s fortunes

Anyone who works in the car business will tell you that, thankfully, the industry is full of petrolheads. It always has been and it still is.

At Jaguar in the mid-1990s, there were two designers who fitted that description perfectly. The late Geoff Lawson and the inimitable Wayne Burgess, who was very much his prodigy. Both loved cars, both loved guitars and neither was afraid of putting a big cat among the automotive pigeons.

So when they were briefed to come up with a new ‘baby’ Jaguar and the design brief was simply ‘a new, smaller Jaguar saloon’, they were given free reign.

It was a car that Jaguar needed urgently. When the company was taken over by Ford in 1990, Jaguar was in a critical condition. It had two models, the XJ and the XJS, both of which were pensionable and it was only fierce brand loyalty that kept the receivers at bay.

While the Ford takeover was regarded by some Jaguar traditionalists (and employees) as a not-very-good thing, the reality is that without the Blue Oval, Jaguar would never have survived. And when Ford got its feet under the table, things started to evolve quickly.

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