Ed's Blog: Jaguar's new jigsaw

Jaguar's new XE is a new beginning for the Indian owned and funded British brand. It promises to deliver Jaguar access to the lucrative mid-size prestige marketplace, which the company says will account for more than 1.7 million sales globally by 2017.

With a market share of that segment comes the ability to rebuild both scale and profit margins.

But the XE holds another key to Jaguar's future prosperity — the ability to leverage its suspension and chassis component sets over a range of vehicles.

In addition to new body styles within the XE's own segment, the XE's aluminium-intensive structure, double-wishbone front suspension and Integral Link independent rear suspension will all eventually be leveraged across the Jaguar portfolio.

XE Program Director Nick Miller confirmed motoring.com.au's assertion the platform would be well suited to replace the current structure for both the XK and F-TYPE sports cars when they are up for renewal.

Ironically, according to the Jaguar exec, the flexibility of the component set is a function of its strength.

“It [the XE's platform] certainly has a lot of features of the F-TYPE in terms of the front double wishbone… the stiffness of the front suspension and strut towers — the targets are exactly the same as the F-TYPE so we've delivered the same attribute stiffness,” he told yours truly at this week's launch of the XE in London.

“People talk about structural stiffness of a car, and it is really important, but as important is the attachment stiffness, where you actually bolt on [the suspension]. Because there's no point spending all that money on an aluminium, really stiff suspension, if the bits you bolt it onto all move… It's only as stiff as the weakest link in the chain.”

Miller says the XE's suspension and attachment stiffness better than matches cars of a class above the XE. He draws particular attention to the new Integral Link rear suspension.

“It's from the segment above. So that can deliver [be used in] cars bigger than the XE.

“It's all about the sophistication of it and the way it's been designed — it allows us to isolate verticals [forces]… from the left to right, front and rear.

“What that means is you can make the rear suspension super stiff for the handling and lateral stiffness, but you don't destroy the ride because you can actually make the [suspension] bushes [tuned for] ride."

According to Miller, the XE's rear contact patch stiffness is “about two and a half times that of the competitors in the C/D segment car”.

“But the actual bushes that we use for vertical control, are 30 per cent softer,” he stated.

“So that [suspension] combination is almost a bit of a utopia, you know?” Miller enthused.

“It allows you to get fantastic handling but if gives you that really nice Jaguar DNA, which is, you know, a unique combination in this particular segment.

“You do get that style of suspension in say a [BMW] 5 Series and also the 7 Series — because it uses the same rear suspension — but nobody else has put it in this segment of a car.”

That's potentially great for the XE (after all, at this stage we only have Miller's word that the whole thing actually works) but what's it mean for Jaguar and the Brit brand's future product portfolio?

Simple, included in the circa billion-pound development cost for the XE are many of the component sets Jaguar requires to build the next-generation XF, sports cars such as the MkII F-TYPE and even the next range-topping XJ limo.

With the capability of these components comes consumer satisfaction, with satisfaction comes scale and the ability to maximise margins, which in turn drives better profits. It's simple really…

Someone more poetic than yours truly might sign this off with the suggestion that the big cat is almost ready to once again pounce…