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Jaguar XJ spied
By
Tim Pollard/Georg Kacher
13 December 2006 10:45
Jaguar XJ: the lowdown
No, it’s not the all-new XJ. As you’ll spot from the familiar curves and statesmanlike shape, Jaguar’s luxury car isn’t about to get all radical overnight. Instead, next spring we’ll see a gentle facelift to bring a dash more style to this, the most conservative of limos on sale today. CAR Online’s exclusive spy shots captured the XJ testing near Jag’s Coventry HQ. Minimal disguise hides a clutch of styling tweaks that won’t be seen until the Geneva Motor Show in March 2007 – but we can reveal the changes over the next three pages.
What is new, then?
Jaguar’s exterior facelift is threefold: the front gets a redesigned bumper and grille; prominent chrome side gills (like those on the Range Rover, and Jag’s own Portfolio-spec XJ) will be added just behind the wheelarches; and the rear bumpers and bootlid get a freshen-up. Although disguise panels conceal the nose of the car, Jaguar will add a much deeper grille design to distinguish the refreshed model; this is a major change for Jag design – and the XJ’s front redesign will pave the way for the new, rectangular shield grille to be seen on next year’s new S-type-replacing XF. The XJ’s traditional round headlamps remain, however.
