Man Maths: Jaguar XJ (X351)

Rather like the Type 00, it was very different to anything we’d seen from Jaguar before – the old XJ styling cues, like twin round headlights and that familiar silhouette, were gone. This new version, the X351, didn’t look like an XJ at all, which was, of course, the entire point.

Design director Ian Callum wasn’t brought in to reinvent Jaguar with a more modern aesthetic – that’s just what he decided would be best. And after years of Jaguar building frumpy pastiches like the S-Type and X-Type, and even the outgoing X350 XJ, he was exactly right. Jaguar, he thought, should stop peering over its shoulder and look to the future instead.

The X351 went out of production six and a half years ago after 10 years on sale. For all that it looked like a whole new thing, it actually shared most of its underpinnings with the car it replaced. But while the older X350 was a mild evolution of earlier XJs in terms of appearance, it was actually completely new underneath with very sophisticated aluminium construction. Compared to its predecessor (the X308 that was in production between 1997 and 2002), the X350’s bodyshell was 40 per cent lighter and 50 per cent stiffer. That platform was still state of the art by the time Callum’s X351 arrived in 2009.

I have driven a few. They’re not pure luxury cars like an S-Class, which means you won’t find the pillowy soft ride you might be expecting. That’s not to say an X351 XJ is uncomfortable, just that its chassis has clearly been tuned as much for the keen driver as the sleepy passenger. Talking of which, unless you choose a long-wheelbase version (with an additional 4.5 inches between the axles), taller backseat passengers won’t want to spend hour after hour in there.

I was surprised to see it’s literally not possible to spend more than £32,000 on an X351, even an XJR with the supercharged 5-litre V8. The vast majority on sale today are 3-litre turbodiesel variants, which would of course be the sensible choice. But in this day and age, and given the V8 isn’t necessarily more expensive to buy, it’d be a shame not to choose the fast, noisy one and to hell with the fuel bills.

I’m pretty confident of one other thing relating to the Type 00 (or whatever its showroom sibling will be called). Given how XJ values have fallen over the years, and knowing what we know about Taycan and e-tron GT residuals, I reckon Jaguar’s new EV is going to ride a precipitous depreciation curve over the next couple of years. A decade from now, someone will write a Man Maths column about it.

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