Massive attention was paid to refinement and the cars dynamic and ride abilities, such as prop angles and speeds, damping, traction and steering and testing was the most extensive to date with hundreds of vehicles built pre-production, not only consisting of the usual engineering mules, underbody mules and confirmation prototypes built at the midlands sites, but also hundreds of genuine Halewood track-built cars, too. Such high volumes of vehicles are certainly not desirable, most firms strive to reach virtually impossible zero-prototype development, but as proven with Toyota’s recent recall problems, this is never quite feasible. Such was Jaguar’s desire to build a dependable and class leading car, the firm would have to shelf this ambition to get this car right.

The car was tested globally, from the sub-zero, snow clogged roads of Timmins to the deserts on the same continent, from the potholed roads of native Britain, to high speed rings in Italy. Millions of miles of development ensured the X400 would be well judged and dependable on the road. During this time, most electrical gremlins were ironed out of the car, one of the remaining bugbears of the cars design would be the transfer case however, the component passing through many revisions before and after ‘job-one’ production, and having become less rearward biased.

Most comments regarding the Mondeo sister-car were positive, citing just how capable that car also was, and in the end, that just 19% of the cars origins were shared, many of which were perfectly suited components such as HVAC units hidden from view and which in no way detracted from the X400’s Jaguar heritage.

Many felt the car was built as a Jaguar, looked like a Jaguar and drove like a Jaguar.