The first time I met Jim Padilla, the future of Jaguar looked pretty good. We were in Scotland getting ready to drive the first XJ models to come out of the fabled British brand's tenure as part of the Ford Motor Company empire, and Padilla was on hand as the person responsible for leading Jag's conversion to a modern company.
The business plan seemed to make perfect sense: use some of Ford's vast storehouse of currency to fix up one of the most cherished and desirable brands in the history of the automobile, and then expand it into new quadrants of the luxury car galaxy.
So, over dinner in Andrew Carnegie's Skibo Castle north of Aberdeen, the future of Jaguar definitely looked bright.
In the decade that followed, I didn't see much of Padilla, as he had moved on to various jobs around the Ford global empire, but I sure was keeping close tabs on Jag.
It seemed that things started to go off the rail a bit with the S-Type, which was meant to follow in the tire tracks of the legendary Mark II, one of the most beautiful sedans in the history of the automobile. Though it was infinitely better mechanically, the new model just didn't seem to have the same sense of style, and it wasn't enthusiastically received.
A couple of years later came Jag's move downscale, to the X-Type. It certainly seemed to make sense, since BMW and Mercedes and a whole bunch of other luxury brands that Jag wanted to compete with were already operating in that segment. Here again, things didn't go right, mostly because the X-Type seemed too far away from my favorite description of the brand's aim -- to make people feel elegant. It also didn't help that the all-wheel-drive X-Type was based on Ford's down-market Mondeo line, which had been a failure in North America under its Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique names.
So here we are, ten years on from that dinner in the Highlands of Scotland, and Jag has not made the strides that everyone thought it would.
Ford is once again trying to turn it into a profit centre, or at least not a loss centre, and one of the people most directly responsible for that is Padilla.
As the president and chief operating officer of the entire Ford Motor Company this time around, Padilla has responsibility for all of the Detroit firm's worldwide affairs. But watching him answer media questions on a TV show called AutoLine Detroit one recent Sunday morning, I could clearly see that Jag still has a large and tender spot in Padilla's heart.
His take on how Ford can save Jaguar is typically uncomplicated. ''Jaguar has to go back to the fundamentals that made it great -- beautiful, fast cars,'' is the way Padilla put it, and he will draw little disagreement from anyone who loves great automobiles.
Padilla told the host of AutoLine Detroit, John McElroy, that he had recently spent some time in England with Mark Fields, the man in charge of Jaguar and the other Premier Automotive Group brands, to see what the team has in mind. In Padilla's view, they ''have the right idea.''
The business plan seemed to make perfect sense: use some of Ford's vast storehouse of currency to fix up one of the most cherished and desirable brands in the history of the automobile, and then expand it into new quadrants of the luxury car galaxy.
So, over dinner in Andrew Carnegie's Skibo Castle north of Aberdeen, the future of Jaguar definitely looked bright.
In the decade that followed, I didn't see much of Padilla, as he had moved on to various jobs around the Ford global empire, but I sure was keeping close tabs on Jag.
It seemed that things started to go off the rail a bit with the S-Type, which was meant to follow in the tire tracks of the legendary Mark II, one of the most beautiful sedans in the history of the automobile. Though it was infinitely better mechanically, the new model just didn't seem to have the same sense of style, and it wasn't enthusiastically received.
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| Jaguar X-Type Estate |
So here we are, ten years on from that dinner in the Highlands of Scotland, and Jag has not made the strides that everyone thought it would.
Ford is once again trying to turn it into a profit centre, or at least not a loss centre, and one of the people most directly responsible for that is Padilla.
As the president and chief operating officer of the entire Ford Motor Company this time around, Padilla has responsibility for all of the Detroit firm's worldwide affairs. But watching him answer media questions on a TV show called AutoLine Detroit one recent Sunday morning, I could clearly see that Jag still has a large and tender spot in Padilla's heart.
His take on how Ford can save Jaguar is typically uncomplicated. ''Jaguar has to go back to the fundamentals that made it great -- beautiful, fast cars,'' is the way Padilla put it, and he will draw little disagreement from anyone who loves great automobiles.
Padilla told the host of AutoLine Detroit, John McElroy, that he had recently spent some time in England with Mark Fields, the man in charge of Jaguar and the other Premier Automotive Group brands, to see what the team has in mind. In Padilla's view, they ''have the right idea.''