Not enough snow this, or any, winter? Try a weekend in Houghton
Up North residents have a choice during winter: we can complain constantly about cold and snow from October until April, or we can put on the hat, coat, gloves and proper boots and get out there and enjoy it.
If enjoying winter sounds appealing, you might find a trip to Houghton, Mich., appealing, especially during Winter Carnival weekend, to see how a town can enjoy celebrating the worst that wintertime can throw at us.
Winter Carnival in Houghton was two weeks ago, so you missed it for this year. But every hotel, motel and presumably igloo on the Upper Peninsula was booked at double the usual rate for a three-day minimum anyway. So you could always book a room now, for next year. Better still, take the 4 ½-hour drive to Houghton on any weekend before the spring thaw — that is, presuming there IS a spring thaw — and enjoy the Houghton-Hancock area and the Keweenaw Peninsula in general under mellowere, less-crowded conditions.
The Upper Peninsula is not unlike Northern Minnesota, where hardy mining folk once populated the area to establish the roots of the region’s heritage. On the Upper Peninsula, there was more copper mining than iron, and there is more snow than just about anyplace you can imagine. A bit north of the Houghton-Hancock area, there is a tall pole with the markings of the different annual snowfalls emblazoned all the way up.
Hard to imagine how the folks on the U.P. — who jovially refer to themselves as “Yoopers” — got along before the term “lake-effect snow” came along. Before that trendy name, people just put up with the daily snow, which can range from a trace to a blizzard — and sometimes both, alternating by the hour. Maybe shoveling it all or plowing it is an easier task, now that they know it is lake-effect snow.
Prevailing storms that blow across the Up North region of Minnesota from the northwest may or may not drop snow on the Iron Range or the North Shore, but those weather systems pick up enormous amounts of moisture as they pass over Lake Superior, and they eagerly wait to find a chunk of land to drop it on. The first chunk is the Keweenaw Peninsula, that little finger on the north side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior’s South Shore.
For the last few winters, we’ve heard snowmobilers, skiers and winter-lovers complain that there hasn’t been enough snow. We’ve had to curtail the John Beargrease Sled Dog marathon or cross-country ski races some years. You don’t hear people claiming there isn’t enough snow in Houghton, where too much is just about enough. The snowfall accumulation for this winter was 165 inches when I visited Houghton, but that didn’t count the heavy-duty blizzard that hit that weekend, pushing it over 175. By now the area might well be nearing 200 inches.
Snowmobilers are everywhere, and downhill skiing on the incredibly steep slopes of Mont Ripley, which is directly across the river from Houghton in Hancock, comes close to approximating what it might feel like to jump off a 30-story building with long, skinny slabs of fiberglass attached to your feet.
Michigan Technological University, universally known as Michigan Tech to hockey fans all across the country, is located in Houghton. The comparatively remote location is the butt of jokes by those who travel there for games on stormy weekends, but the area proves that one person’s isolation can be another’s solitude.
Winter Carnival is Tech’s annual “homecoming,” with alumni returning by the hundreds to wander around the dorms, frat houses and campus buildings to examine the elaborately designed and usually enormously complex ice sculptures. They are finished in an annual all-night party called, simply, the “All-nighter.” That, alone, is worth the trip.
There is the mandatory mall up over the hill on Hwy. 26 south of Houghton, but the short and simple downtown area has its own charm. The parking meters are positioned right next to the store fronts instead of at the curbs, reportedly so snowplows can simply take care of the sidewalks as well as the streets. Downtown Houghton consists of a one-way street heading west, with shops, bars, an office-supply store, hardware and clothing stores, and tattoo and tanning booths, plus a couple of motels, and one of the great surplus/outdoors stores.
If you turn right at the end of the street, you are on the bridge crossing over to Hancock. You have to go up and around to come back a block up a steep hill on the one-way heading back to the east. Above that, it’s all residential. The hill continues its steep incline, with more residences as you climb. Most of them have short driveways, to ease the burden of shoveling. Others have long driveways, requiring a lot of work. And still others are unshoveled, with cars piled so thoroughly with snow that you know they aren’t moving until April.
One young man, shoveling furiously on a long driveway, identified himself as a Michigan Tech student and said he lives in the house with five guys, but he said the shoveling isn’t rotated fairly because only two of them have cars. So those two shovel. A lot.
Restaurants serve a fairly basic fare, and pasties are a staple of many shops, restaurants and grocery stores, which are mostly located up over the hill at or near the mall on Hwy. 26.
While there are assorted fast food and other light restaurants, the town’s main hotel, the Best Western at Franklin Square, has a very good restaurant and late-night lounge. Another small Finnish restaurant, the Suomi Café, is a couple of blocks west. It’s been renovated, though. No longer does it have the lighted sign by the clock that used to read: “Today’s special: Meat, potato, vegetable, $5.95.”
Never needed changing.
Driving to Houghton, you take Hwy. 53 south out of Superior, cutting east quite promptly on Hwy. 2, through Ashland and on across the border into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Just past Ironwood, you turn off onto eastbound Hwy. 28 and continue on it to Bruce Crossing, where you make the 90-degree turn left onto Hwy. 26. Stay on it, and you go right on into Houghton, and you can appreciate the rising hills, the increasingly snow-draped fir trees, and the stark, clean white of the contantly refreshed snow cover.
In the spring, summer or fall, the Keweenaw Peninsula — pronounced “KEE-wa-naw” — is beautiful with lush foliage. You can drive up and around the whole peninsula, to Copper Harbor and along Lake Superior on the western side of the peninsula. Fall foliage viewing is unexcelled, especially along the mountainous ridge at the northern tip.
But it should be illegal to visit there in the spring, summer and fall until you’ve made at least one trip there in winter. Bring your snowmobile, warm clothes, maybe a 4-wheel-drive vehicle, and enjoy the worst, or the best, that winter has to offer. Then later, you’ll appreciate the scenic non-wintertime there, and you might appreciate winter closer to home a lot more.
Escape makes it easy to…escape the insecurity of winter storms
The opportunity to drive up to 100 new vehicles each year means road-testing so many varied cars and trucks that I don’t really care what’s coming next. Except for a couple of weeks ago, when it mattered a lot, and it turned out to be the ideal, extreme conditions with which to challenge the new Ford Escape.
After attending the media preview for the Chicago Auto Show, I then had to leave Chicago on Thursday and drive to Houghton, Mich., for a hockey series. There is a lot of hockey on the Upper Peninsula, but a lot more snow. It snows there virtually every day, and it can fall with enough force on any given part of the day or night that I didn’t want to be caught in the wrong vehicle while trying to return to Duluth around midnight on a Saturday night.
Ford’s corporate public relations officer had earlier told me that he wanted to get me another try in a new Ford Escape in the heart of winter. Two weeks ago in Houghton, Mich., it was the heart, and maybe the soul, of winter.
I’ve reported on the Escape at its introduction and again after a short test-term chance to road-test it. But I wanted the foul-weather perspective. The Escape is an all-new compact SUV, and I wanted to prove to myself that I had not made a mistake voting for it for Truck of the Year. It didn’t win, being beaten out by the considerably more expensive Acura MDX, which I ranked second and considered an excellent vehicle. But the Escape is a better mainstream choice, simply because of its $20,000-range price.
Those who don’t need the heft of a full-size SUV, and who basically use SUVs the way most people use station wagons or minivans, would be better off with more compact SUVs. The Escape is aimed at challenging compacts like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, with the Nissan Xterra, Subaru Forester and the smallest Jeep Cherokees also players in an ever-expanding segment. Designed by Mazda, the Escape is built by Ford, alongside the companion Mazda Tribute.
A bright yellow Escape got me out of Chicago around noon on a Thursday. Amazingly, heading north on I94 westbound, I could then continue north on Hwys. 141 and 41 in varying combinations, up the Wisconsin shoreline of Lake Michigan, all the way to Houghton. I estimated it would take eight hours. I didn’t estimate driving through all four seasons.
It was 48 degrees and foggy in Chicago when I left. As I drove north, the fog intensified, and it started drizzling rain on the way up I94 to Milwaukee. As I continued north toward Green Bay, the fog lifted but it got colder. Quite a bit colder, and the rain slowed to drizzle, then turned to freezing drizzle.
No problem. The Escape never flinched, with its front-wheel drive that makes it surprisingly stable even in 2WD setting and with higher-performance tires than a self-respecting “Yooper” might have mounted. It also entertained me well, with its firm bucket seats and its six-disc in-dash CD changer offering my random assortment that ranged from Mark Knopfler, to Emmylou Harris, to Bruce Springsteen, to the soundtrack from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”, to the slick guitar blues of Guy Davis, to Sheryl Crow, all led off with a compilation of two early Gordon Lightfoot albums.
As the rain turned to sleet, though, I flipped the switch on the dash and engaged the 4-wheel drive, seamlessly even at 50 miles per hour.
Cutting inland a bit, it started to snow — that neat, post-card-style light powdery snow that is such a vibrant part of the ideal winters of our memory. As I crossed the border into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it didn’t take long before my memory of that light, pretty snow was pretty well erased. In its place was a heavy, pelting, driving snow — the kind that makes it worthless to flick on your high beams because the flashback gives you less visibility than the low beams. The Escape’s foglights helped at least to widen the arc of light from the very good low lights.
Driving got more and more treacherous, but the Escape breezed along, and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, and the adrenaline high that comes with focusing in totally on the conditions at hand.
As the snow turned to whiteout conditions, I passed a snow plow at 45 or 50 on a wide stretch of road, and when I got by, I realized that there was no way to judge what lane I was in except to cast frequent glances at the plowed ridges — the very high, plowed ridges — on either side of the road. When a large truck approached, we’d both sort of lay claim to what we thought was our proper lane, and as we passed, I’d hang on until the blowing wake from the semi could settle down.
One time I inadvertently guessed a tad wrong, and the right-side wheel dropped off the edge of the pavement onto what I’m assuming was the shoulder. No problem, I just eased it back on and the Escape never missed a beat. That, again, is one of its key assets. In larger SUVs, and those with the rear wheels doing the driving, or as the predominant axle of a 4WD system, such a move can lead to a sudden correction, at which time the rear would really like to be passing up the front, and an overcorrection to straighten out can turn a serious situation into a more severe one. With the Escape’s front-wheel-drive
Stopping a couple times for gas and a hamburger, I rolled into Houghton at 9 p.m., with what had approached a kinship with my Escape. I mean, it wasn’t exactly an Antarctica crossing by ski or dogsled, but it helped visualize it.
Snow and ice chunks seemed permanently fused to the running-board rail and the crevices in the front, and the wheelwells, but the agility and secure handling of the Escape made the 20 mile-per-gallon fuel economy, on regular gas, more impressive.
It occurred to me that one of the easiest jobs in the world would be a weather forecaster in Houghton. Each night, you could peer into the camera and say: “Chance of snow tomorrow, 3-5 inches.” That would be pretty accurate, every day. And to get to work, the Ford Escape might be the ideal vehicle — truck of the year or not. Of course, I would mount Nokian Hakapeliitta tires on all four corners, and it would be even better, although I had no trouble with the stock tires, even on ice.
After two days of effortlessly climbing the steep avenues and briefly touring the Houghton area, my midnight drive back to Duluth was similarly a piece of cake — although, as with any piece of cake, the true appreciation is if you can handle the icing.
Never underestimate an experienced woman driving a Porsche
[[[‘[[CUTLINE:
Drivers were encouraged not to pass at the Porsche test-drive at Texas World Speedway’s road course, although every once in a while one might encounter another and elicit a wave to pass. ]]]]]
FORT WORTH, TEXAS—Test-driving cars, and even test-driving them on a closed race track, is not the same as racing them. Nor should it be. At the same time, competition brings out the best in people, and in cars, it turns out.
While attending various and assorted new-vehicle introductions, I have become acquainted with Denise McCluggage, a legendary automotive and auto racing writer and columnist, now at Automobile magazine, who has been at the top of the art of writing for a lot of years. She also is a driver of no small reputation, and has driven hot cars and race cars around some of the great tracks of the world. Somebody said she was in her 70s, and I don’t know that. Not that age matters, because as an automotive journalist, she is a charming elder statesman, and one of the most-sought conversationalists, whenever auto folks gather.
We renewed acquaintances at Texas World Speedway last week, when Porsche assembled 25 or so selected automotive writers to test the five varieties of sports cars wearing the Porsche crest. We all drove 10-lap segments and then changed cars. On my second turn, I was driving a silver Boxster, and having a great time sashaying around the nine turns of the little road course set up inside the speedway’s oval.
Suddenly, in my mirrors, I spotted a yellow Boxster S, which had 250 horsepower to my base Boxster’s 217. Obviously, the S could catch me on the straight chutes, so I had to hit the curves perfectly to protect the integrity of my lead. Not that we were racing, mind you (wink-wink). With a couple laps to go, I thought maybe I should pull over and wave the yellow car past, but I hit every turn just right on my last lap to stay just enough out front. When I slowed down to enter the pit area, I was both surprised and impressed that Denise McCluggage was driving that yellow Boxster S. I was impressed that she had reeled me in, albeit with a faster car.
A few minutes later, I was in the yellow Boxster S, and having great fun, sailing through the turns. Pro driver Richard Spenard, accompanying me, gave me a great little tip. I was cutting Turn 3 wide purposely to set up for a sweep through the quick 4-5 left-right combination, and Spenard said: “Cut in closer to the cone on Turn 3, all the way to the fringe.” So I did. And to my amazement, I came out of the turn so much faster that I zapped through the 4-5 combination and startled myself as I headed into Turn 6 with how much more speed I was carrying. I would guess 20 miles per hour more.
That’s the magic of road-racing. If you take one turn right, it can allow you to go much quicker through the next sequence of turns. But you might have to experiment — or get expert advice — to learn it. Halfway through that run, I was gaining ground on a green Porsche Carrera Cabrio ahead. That Cabrio was a classy car, but I had noted its twitchy handling, so it didn’t surprise me that the less-powerful but superb-handling Boxster S could run up to challenge it.
I didn’t try to force a pass, but when we pitted, again I was surprised — but also quite satisfied — that Denise was driving the green car. This time she had more power but I had the livelier-handling car, and reeled her in.
At the end of the session, with all drivers rotating through all five cars, I finished in the most powerful monster of them all — a dark red Porsche 911 Carrera Turbo with a 6-speed manual transmission. I had started the day in the similar silver-grey Turbo with the Tiptronic automatic, and been greatly impressed with its upshifts but also with its downshifting capabilities on auto-pilot. I went down the straightaway and hit about 110 miles per hour in that one before hitting the brakes and diving into the turn, but the automatic was always already a shift or two ahead of me.
Still, the 6-speed was almost a full second quicker in acceleration to 60, and I love stick-shifts. So I had been looking forward to the 6-speed finale.
With about five laps remaining in my stint, however, I botched a shift, going for third and finding fifth, and Spenard said that happens when you try to shift with the car careening through a tight turn. The car slowed abruptly, and as I accelerated again, I noticed the silver-grey Turbo closing up behind me. So I got back on it, hard, and the car fairly leaped ahead at every urging. But the silver-grey car kept closing in. “Hmmm,” I hmmm’d.
I can’t believe that car can beat THIS car, no matter who is driving, because we’re flying. I was coming around on my next-to-last lap, and I downshifted into second to sweep around Turn 7, then accelerated across the track to the far right side, upshifting as I clipped Turn 8. I was headed toward 9 and my final lap when Spenard said, “You hit fifth again.”
Amazingly, the car had so much torque that it pulled smoothly in fifth as I started down the straightaway. However, the Turbo with the Tiptronic also had hit the turn properly and had much more velocity, so we waved it past. As it passed, I glanced over. It was Denise McCluggage, driving effortlessly, in her Porsche with the automatic transmission. And she blew me away.
I was totally impressed with the precision that makes Porsche such a sports car icon, expensive or not. And I was totally impressed with the Tiptronic’s performance in that other car, and realized the Tiptronic never misses a shift. But mostly, I was impressed by Denise McCluggage’s driving. But then, she’s older than I am, so she’s got a lot more experience.
2002 Explorer seems to have grown hefty since introduction
(Note to Sandi Dahl: I’m sending you just one column this week…Hope it’s enough. Photos too…here are the cutlines:
1/ The 2002 Ford Explorer looks the part of being a thoroughly redesigned version of Ford’s top-selling SUV.
2/ The tailgate opens and the third-row bench seat fold down for maximum storage capacity.
3/ Instrumentation is complete and well laid-out from the driver’s point of view, and audio/air controls are clearly set apart.
4/ The Eddie Bauer version Explorer takes the new vehicle’s upgraded looks to a fancier level, but the feeling is more massive and the anticipated good handling might be bothersome. ]]]]]
Before getting a new 2002 Ford Explorer to road-test, I must point out that I was totally impressed with everything Ford did when it redesigned the Explorer.
At the introduction to the Explorer and its sister ship, the Mercury Mountaineer, in Arizona, I drove the Explorer on the roadways north of Phoenix, and I later drove the Mountaineer on some handling courses in Phoenix, against some pretty impressive competitive sports-utility vehicles.
I came away thoroughly impressed with the Mountaineer’s handling, and I must admit, I wondered a bit why Ford didn’t have any Explorers available to also drive on the little road-course they had laid out to show off the new vehicles’ handling characteristics. The Mountaineer stayed remarkably flat through the tightest turns, although that is flat for an SUV, not for a sedan or sports car.
Recently I got a new Explorer to run for a week, and I was puzzled at first, and then a little curious.
The Explorer I drove was a fancy Eddie Bauer Edition, which is the loaded-up top-line version, with the 4.0-liter V6 jacked up to 210 horsepower, and the five-speed automatic transmission.
It also had all the Eddie Bauer goodies, which include trim items and upgrades to set off Ford’s relationship with the outdoor-equipment and clothing company.
The base price of an Explorer Eddie Bauer model is $34,655, and the way this one was decked out, it came to a sticker price of $37,325.
Along with the standard features that make the Eddie Bauer version cost more, the test vehicle came with chrome steel wheels ($245), side-curtain air bags ($495), the third-row bench seat, which folds down for expanded cargo room ($670), black running boards ($395), and the rear-seat auxiliary heating and air-conditioning with separate, ceiling-mounted controls ($610).
The vehicle was impressive, with a blue-green color called “Estate Green,” and “medium parchment” interior colors on the leather seats and interior touches.
The four-wheel drive can be changed from full-time (automatic), to 4WD high, and 4WD low-range at the touch of a button on the dashboard.
The challenge to the new Explorer is that, while it was well into development and the start of production when the problem with Firestone tires and frequent rollovers first came to light last fall, it had to try to overcome those problems even though it wasn’t specifically designed with that in mind.
What was a greater objective to Ford was to distance the new Explorer upscale from the last one, to make room for the all-new 2001 Escape, which is smaller and more compact, with the same interior room, however, as the previous Explorer.
The question, of course, became why would anyone want to pay extra for a heavier and less fuel-efficient SUV if a smaller, more agile and more efficient one could be obtained for less money from the same showroom?
Ford executives assured me the Escape would not intrude upon the Explorer’s impressive segment. And the Explorer is the No. 1 selling SUV in the marketplace.
So it was with all those things in mind that I experienced the new Explorer at its initial introduction. The most impressive feature of the vehicle is the redesigned chassis, which has an ingenious method of running a sleeve through the side chassis members to house the axle shafts carrying the power from the rear differential to the wheels. That allowed Ford to lower the new Explorer, and make it more stable.
All of that, I reasoned, were lucky strokes that would also conquer the top-heavy feeling that could enhance the inherent rollover qualities of all SUVs larger than compact.
And that is why I was disappointed with the extended road test.
When I first climbed aboard, the Eddie Bauer Explorer felt big. Very big. Almost massive. It felt more Expedition-like than Explorer-like.
But when I drove the Explorer, it also felt less-stable than the vehicle I remembered driving through the mountains near Prescott, Ariz., at intro time. In fact, it felt more top-heavy than I had recalled.
That puzzled me. Why would it feel stable and flat in the introduction drive, and top-heavy when I got it in my own familiar territory?
And then I remembered that the Explorer was not available on the handling course. Just the Mountaineer.
Now, I don’t know whether Ford decided to differentiate between the Explorer and Mountaineer, and gave the Mountaineer better, firmer handling for a more stable feel. But it seems that way, in my memory bank.
That flies against the usual logic, in which the Ford gets sportier handling and the Mercury versions — whether Sable to Taurus, or other companion vehicles — but it may be the case.
At any rate, I liked nearly everything about the new Explorer except the hefty feel and non-flat handling. The only other explanation that might bear investigation is whether Ford softened up the fancier Eddie Bauer edition, and whether you can select a more stable-feeling ride from the more standard, and less-costly, checklist.
From a looks standpoint, I think Ford designers did a great job in creating a new-look, flatter front end, with the headlights and grille integrated nicely. The Eddie Bauer contrasting color strip, which runs along the wheelwells and lower sides of the vehicle, also enhances the look.
Climbing aboard, I also thought the seats were supportive and comfortable, and the view from the driver’s seat is well-planned.
You have a complete instrument package, easily read and different enough to be attractive. It is amazing how many different vehicles can put the same old instruments together in an infinite number of ways to make them look fresh and new.
On the steering wheel, Ford has grouped the cruise-control switches on the left side, leaving plenty of room for the remote audio adjustments on the right. Overdrive on the five-speed automatic can be disengaged by a button on the tip of the steering-wheel-column mounted shift lever. That’s handy when you’re coming off a freeway ramp and want to be in fourth gear for city driving.
The center dash area is outlined in a greyish woodgrain plastic.
At the top are the audio controls, which include a 6-disc, in-dash CD player. Under that are the heat-air vents, and below those vents are the heat-air conditioning control switches.
On the left side of those controls there is a vertical row of three switches, with the top one an information switch to give you readouts of different things. Under it is a set-up switch, and below that is a reset button.
On the right side, symmetrically stacked, are the 4×4 switches, with the top one leaving you in automatic four-wheel drive for all-around driving, while letting the Explorer itself decide where most of your power should go. The middle one of the three buttons locks the 4×4 into high range for highway driving with both axles locked in tandem, handy for severe weather, or higher speed off-road or rough-road usage. The bottom button is for low-range, which serious off-roaders know is to allow steep hill climbing, and, more importantly, steep declines, without having the feeling the vehicle is going to run away from you.
The rear seats are also comfortable, and the back seat isn’t bad. One of the reasons — the best reason — for making the Explorer larger is to house that third row seat. And it folds flat to leave you all the stowage you need.
The engine is Ford’s tried and true 4.0 V6, which was upgraded several years ago to include a beefed-up lower end, and overhead camshafts atop each bank of cylinders. That allows for higher revving, and mates perfectly with the five-speed automatic transmission, which will hold itself in a gear while you run it up to near the redline.
Performance is quick and strong, all the way up through the revs.
An optional engine now available for the first time in the Explorer is an even stronger 4.6 V8, also with overhead cams.
The V6, along with its 210 horsepower peaking at a high 5,250 RPMs, has a solid 255 foot-pounds of torque, which peak at 3,000 RPMs, a good split, with low-end torque coming in for pulling power, and high-end revving to easily reach the horsepower peak.
Everything is in place to make the new Explorer a worthy next step up the technology ladder to sales success, and the price goes up commensurately.
But if I were to buy one, the first thing I’d have to do is lower it some more, put on lower-profile tires, and alter the suspension with stiffer, firmer shock absorbers.
A vehicle this good should be able to handle– you should pardon the expression — all the responsibilities of being a new-age SUV for the future. To say nothing of the present.
If you don’t need the extra heft, and size, the new Explorer makes the new Escape seem like an even better vehicle.
Jaguar sends new X-Type into the intense sports-sedan scramble
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ Jaguar’s just-introduced X-Type carries retro traces of historic Jag sedans into bold projections for the British company’s future.
2/ From the rear, the X-Type style completes its run, and drew a lot of looks on the streets of downtown Paris.
3/ Clear, straightforward instruments, a high-tech, 7-inch touch screen navigation and information system, and real wood and leather dominate the X-Type interior.
4/ A new X-Type paused alongside the Jaguar XJ on the lawn inside the castle of Chateau de Chailly. ]]]]]
Jaguar cars have established a lot of tradition in the automotive industry. The proud British company always has built Jaguar sedans and sports cars with so much style and class they seemed excessive, but with eccentric electrical and mechanical ills that are nearly as prominent as their assets in reputation.
When Ford Motor Company took over the faltering Jaguar company, the automotive world waited with interest to see what the result would be. The result, so far, has been impressive. Ford has realigned some of the archaic manufacturing and marketing concepts, but it also has left Jaguar a lot of leeway in developing and building its own vehicles.
The best examples so far are the XK8 sports car, with its fantastic new V8 engine, and the S-Type sedan that offers a middle-range luxury sedan this side of the larger XJ luxury sedan. All of them carried out Jaguar’s concept of luxury and class, and they have done a fair amount to erase the negative side of things by being strong performing and without the problems of decades past.
Now, however, there is an all-new vehicle Jaguar is just introducing, and it could well become the most important car in the company’s history. It is called the X-Type sedan, a moderately priced sedan, starting at under $30,000. The X-Type gives Jaguar a player in the hotly contested sports-sedan bracket, where the targets include the BMW 3-Series, Mercedes C-Class, Audi A4, and Lexus IS300, all of which are among the world’s best vehicles at combining sportiness and luxury.
The X-Type has plenty of room for four adults, and plenty of power from either the 3.0-liter or 2.5-liter V6 engines, and plenty of sporty handling from full-time all-wheel drive. Jaguar calls its AWD system “Traction4,” which may not have the ring of Audi’s “quattro,” but if it works as well, it could be a huge hit in North America, where Jaguar figures the confidence of having all-wheel-drive is what motivates our fascination with trucks and SUVs.
“Back in 1998, said Mike O’Driscoll, head of Jaguar North America, “Jaguar sold 50,000 vehicles worldwide, with 25,000 of them being XJ or XK models to North America. In 2000, we sold 90,000, with 47,000 to North America. Our plan is to grow to 200,000 by 2004, and we project selling 75,000 to 80,000 X-Types, with 30,000 of them to North America.”
That means more X-Types sold in North America than all Jaguar models sold in 1998, and approaching the worldwide number. That seems energetic, but the X-Type’s performance, after brief rides around the twisty roads and small-town ambience of eastern France, seems to support that optimism.
It is always interesting and often exciting to attend the introduction of an entirely new vehicle, and companies have tended to compete with each other in finding unique sites with which to introduce their latest prizes. But Jaguar may have reached a new plateau with the X-Type. I was invited among a group of selected automotive journalists to the media launch of the X-Type, which was conducted in Paris, France, and across the country to Dijon, a large city that might best be known as the name of spicy mustard.
True, Jaguar is based in Coventry, England, but the English know where to go to find liveliness and sportiness as well as class. So off to France we went. It was an educational trip, and the Jaguar engineers were among the teachers, starting with Wayne Burgess, the principal designer of the X-Type.
“The X-Type began with a series of sketches on my desk,” said Burgess. “When you design a new car, your practical objectives include proportion, form, and stance. Of the three, proportion is the most important. If the proportions are right, the car will be a thing of beauty; if the proportions are wrong, no amount of features can make it attractive.”
Interesting. While I long have believed in “form follows function” — meaning everything has to function first, and then add the styling — a week in France, both with and without the X-Type, convinced me to completely accept a new philosophy. That is: When building a functional car, there is no reason why it can’t also have style. Burgess offered another axiom worth remembering when he said: “This is the performance of art, rather than the art of performance.”
After getting a preliminary look at the X-Type parked in front of one of the most sytlish hotels in downtown Paris, we were whisked by private jet to Dijon, where we paired up two to a car and headed off on prescribed courses through the countryside all afternoon. Another journalist and I drove two X-Types. First we chose one with the 3.0 V6 and a 5-speed manual transmission, then we tried the 2.5, also with a 5-speed. Both cars had the Sport package, which nicely balanced the steering feel and upgraded suspension with the power.
Both also were fun to drive, whether hurling them around the tightest of curving roadways, with no shoulders, or cruising through some charming tiny towns where the street picked its way between buildings that were so close together you wouldn’t want to meet an oncoming car at some points. We ended up at the Chateau de Chailly, a fabulous restored castle in the Bergundy region, and the next morning we drove some more, ending at a small race course near Dijon. That, too, was fun, although the course was nowhere near as demanding as the roadways we had taken to get there. The track had nicely defined turns, and was flat, while we were zipping around all manner of turns while going up and down hills and into valleys.
“Jaguar must never be boring,” Burgess added. “In the X-Type, we broke from the long, linear look by designing a lot of wedge-shaped drama into the car. The high tail, rather than the conventional low tail, helps aerodynamically as well as vastly improving the trunk space. Moving the wheels out to the corners changes the proportions of masses and volumes above the wheels. With the X-Type, the body is nestled down amid the wheels, rather than sitting up on top.
“The XJ-style grille works, and the twin elliptical headlights accentuate the width. If it seems I use a lot of aircraft terms, it’s because I love aircraft. The intake fluting on the X-Type has been copied from the DeHavilland Comet jet aircraft intakes, for example. We had tremendous collaboration between designers and engineers. We worked so extensively with computer-aided design, and many, many iterations of the design, that when we finally built a model, we had very few detail changes.”
The result is a stylish sedan that looks too luxurious to be called sporty. That’s another bothersome thing to Jaguar executives, who claim that in recent years the tendency toward luxury has caused auto buyers to forget that Jaguar once was a standard of high-performance driving. The challenge was to build a vehicle that could take on the sportiest German sedans, keep the price reasonable, and still retain what everybody at Jaguar calls “Jaguarness.”
Incidentally, in South America, where jaguars roam, they are called “JAG-wars,” as far as I know; but the British, when describing the car named after the leopard-like animal, the name is “JAG-you-are.” Sounds classy, indeed.
Both engines have dual-overhead-camshaft design with four valves per cylinder. The 2.5 has 194 horsepower at 6,800 RPMs and a peak of 180 foot-pounds of torque at 3,000 RPMs; the 3.0 has 231 horses at 6,800 revs, and 209 foot-pounds peaking at 3,000 revs, and variable intake valve timing allows 90 percent of peak horsepower to show up all the way from 2,500-6,000 RPMs.
More subtlely, Jaguar acknowledged that both engines for the new X-Type are built by Ford, off its Duratec line in Cleveland. That’s the engine Ford built for the Contour, and which it sends to Germany for use in the Mondeo, and to Coventry as a base engine in the S-Type, both of which prove it can run at ease on the autobahns.
The Traction4 system is permanent all-wheel drive, with a 40-front/60-rear torque split until slippage of any wheel causes the spinning wheel’s torque to be transferred elsewhere for optimum traction.
Another touch that sets Jaguars apart, in concept and in class, is the wood and leather of the interiors. Those two items mean a lot to the Jag folks. “We use wood in an architectural way,” Burgess said. “The air vents and gauges are held into place by the wood, and if you removed the wood, they would fall out. In the competition cars, if you took the wood out you’d find it was just trim. We are careful to always use wood in an architectural way, and wood doesn’t like compound curvatures. So we design our interiors to be very simple, straight, and symmetric.”
In the base car, you get dark-stained maple. In the Sport model, you get walnut. In our test cars, the walnut was stained an interesting dark grey, which I found unnatural, and I suggested to a Jaguar fellow that I might have to describe it as “barnwood grey.” He got the point, and I could tell from his reaction he preferred a more woodsy color, too. The leather is Connolly leather, a rich and supple fabric that is real, even if you select the comparatively odd red or dark green. We can only presume that those colors aren’t the result of hoof-and-mouth medication.
It was O’Driscoll who said this car is intended to recapture Jaguar’s sporty, performance image. “Because it is the most competitive segment, there is no leeway for error,” O’Driscoll said. “But there are many new customers who have no clue we were at LeMans, or that we are competing in Formula 1. There is a theory that you can’t sell an old car to young people, but you can sell a young car to everyone.
“When you compare price point, all the features, and the great performance, we think we are right in there with the C-Class, 3-Series and A4. We have features like the navigation system, with a voice-activated, 7-inch touch screen on the dash that is so sensitive, it actually responds to your finger before it actually touches the screen. People typically think Jaguars cost $20,000 more than they actually cost. We think the $29,950 base price will seed into the minds that Jaguars may not be priced as high as their perception. All the cars we’re targeting start at about the same price, and if you get them with equal equipment, they’ll rise to around $34,500.”
Jag-you-are intends to add about 25 dealers to the 145 it has in the U.S., which would bring the company up there near Lexus, which has 185 dealers. Jaguar also will do all the maintenance for the new car for a 4-year, 50,000-mile stretch — which should be the final indication of the confidence in X-Type’s excellence.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
Click here for sports