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X marks the stop


The decision means that Jaguar will be left as a more defined luxury brand with the contracted range consisting of the XF sedan, all-new XJ sedan and the sporting XK coupe and convertible twins.

"It was not a totally unexpected announcement and will leave a range that is very much focussed on true luxury and performance," Jaguar Australia boss David Blackhall says. "There is certainly not a large model range left but it is new and fresh."

Blackhall says that Jaguar Australia has secured enough X-Type stock to carry the sales through to the end of production, good news for dealers as the often derided X-Type still accounts for almost 40 per cent of all Jaguar sales in Australia.

The decision to end production at the Halewood plant in England comes as Jaguar's global sales have fallen 28 per cent in the last 10 months and will result in at least 300 of the plant's 2000 employees being made redundant.

"Ceasing production of the X-Type early, with further redundancies and downtime, is necessary to protect our other investment plans," Jaguar chief executive David Smith said in announcing the end of the X-Type.

First added to the Jaguar garage in 2002 the X-Type was the love child of Ford's takeover of the British luxury icon being cobbled together off an existing Mondeo all-wheel drive platform and skinned to give a family resemblance to its more traditional luxury siblings.

While the X-Type was initially acknowledged to have good handling there was little else which won favour as the car took Jaguar in search of a mass market it had never previously catered to.

In its eight year production run more than 350,000 of the X-Type cars were sold globally.