X Type across the USA

X-TYPE ACROSS THE USA.
 
Of all the encouragingly daft souvenirs I’ve accumulated over the course of this three and a half thousand mile, X-Type enhanced lunge across America -diminutive mouth organ earring (Nashville), severed baby alligator head (Russellville), fake Elvis Presley driving license (Memphis), whole rattlesnake walking stick (Oklahoma), fetching bear carving for the wife (Grand Canyon), real scorpion entombed in sucky sweet (Flagstaff) and herpes simplex B (Las Vegas)- pride of place must go to the Death Row Marv’ deluxe box set.
 
Grey faced Marv’ sits about 7″ high, fully wired into his own electric chair. Just add batteries, kids, and ‘Watch Marv convulse as the switch is thrown, then hear him say “Is that the (choke) best you can do, you (groan) pansies?” and see his eyes glow red as he fries.’ Unsurprisingly, I unearthed Marv’ in Texas; the state wherein senator George ‘dubya’ Bush put executions on hold during the presidential elections for fear of upsetting the apple pie image. No wonder my mum warned me never to trust a man with small hands.
 
What, however, would you feel about a man with a small Jaguar? To date, road presence and power have always been an integral ingredient of the Jaguar saloon allure. Particularly in America, where current XJ and XK status sees the marque riding rough-shod over anything comparable BMW or Mercedes have to offer in the prestige pecking order.
 
But nowhere else in the world are status and size so inextricably linked as in the USA. So -in a land where even a home-grown car badged ‘compact’ would require the services of motorcycle outriders to successfully negotiate a British motorway, and a 70’s motoring magazine once dismissed the first Maserati Ghibli as “the ideal shopping car for the woman in a hurry…”- can this overtly English iteration of a compact sports saloon acquire the sales bolstering trappings of the former without the sheet metal acreage of the latter on display?
 
A coast-to-coast cruise through the thick of contemporary American car culture should provide some answers. Provided, that is, we’re not too badly side-tracked by a somewhat rigorous sightseeing schedule en route: Passing through almost anywhere in the States without at least an exploratory peek feels sacrilegious when every American city you care to mention has, at some point, been tantalisingly deified in either song or movie…
 
Except, of course, Mahwah. Though it’s surely no accident that Jaguar’s New Jersey headquarters lurk in a sprawling Newark suburb aurally twinned with the inevitable accompaniment to the air-kissing greetings of the long-term posh.
 
From here, heated leather upholstery fully ablaze under ice blue, 8.00am skies cold enough to transform every puddle into a threat to Bambi’s equilibrium, we aim the 2.5 V6 Sport firmly south. America’s ubiquitous TV weather channel has suggested that we can forget about a planned itinerary due west through the heart of the Rockies; we need to cover about 600 miles a day to catch a celebrity lush Jaguar lash up in Los Angeles next weekend, and that leaves little time for over-taxing the X-Type’s permanent 4-wheel drive with assorted snow drift exhumation.
 
Extracting ourselves from New Jersey on rush-hour hectic Interstate 78, the Adriatic blue X-Type with a missing headlight washer cover (Jaguar are keen to stress that this is a very early, pre-production car) attracts less attention than I’d expected. But then, to the bleary eyed, BMW bolstered business types around us only the front of this car would openly yell Jaguar. And, since we’re resigned to breaking the paltry speed limit right out of the box, a glimpse of rapidly receding, trademark rounded hips atop twin exhausts clearly proves insufficient hallmarking to alert the half-asleep.
 
Hershey, a name on the lips of every outsized American, hoves into mid-morning view. But we’re not stopping at the USA’s home of chocolate because, despite my best intentions, I’ve ridden the Hershey highway before. Furthermore, I’ve eaten the chocolate, and neither are experiences I care to rekindle. Besides, I’ll never cease to be amazed by the havoc the smallest flake of errant chocolate can wreak on a car interior; within seconds of crotch contact meltdown, trousers and upholstery instantly transform into what resembles the very birthplace of dysentery.
 
For now, though, the as yet untarnished X-Type interior proves sensorialy satisfactory in entirely familiar Jaguar fashion; the whiff and creak of leather, the gleam of wood and flash of chrome, even the idiot-proof stereo controls beloved of the instruction manual-shy. But Randall’s handle is notable by its absence -all X-types will offer the 5-speed manual shift fitted here as standard- and the irritating intrusion into elbow airspace of a centre armrest clearly aimed at those helming automatic variants disrupts an otherwise fine driving position.
 
As to equipment levels, I’ll reserve judgement: Clearly, our hybrid has been deliberately force fed almost every option in the toybox. But a quick, abacus armed canter through the price list appears to add a commensurate £6275 to the 2.5 Sport’s £24,000 price tag. And I can’t help feeling that the base offering might feel a tad barren without much of what I’d hoped to see fitted as standard in a Jaguar…
 
Turning south west onto I-81 we ease into Gettysburg, past the site of 1863’s decisive Civil War dust-up, for all-round refuelling. Recently emerged from under feet of snow, the grass still has the bleached, bullied look of a lawn the morning the wedding marquee comes down. And it strikes me the trouble with battlefields as tourist attractions is that, in the absence of a battle, you’re left with nothing to look at but a dirty great field. So the only Gettysburg address of real interest today is the one dispensing sufficient quantities of pizza to instigate a little light, afternoon lolling and dribbling in the passenger seat.
 
By the evening of this first day were making somewhat better time through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia than Messrs Laurel and Hardy managed. This is rugged, bear laden, deciduous woodland boasting all the winter colour and charm of a giant brush salesman’s sample bag upend all over the hills. Neighbouring states are none too complimentary about the resident population either, pointing out that most local bar talk invariably includes the pithy phrase “You can divorce me, but you’ll always be my sister…”
 
It’s dark by the time a pin stuck in the map pulls us off the Interstate into Bristol, on the Tennessee border. I own furniture older than Bristol; a sprawling, ribbon development the locals don’t even know their way round, where cheap hotels cost too much and there’s nothing to eat but junk food served without alcohol. And our decision to head south in search of fair weather has brought us from the cloudless skies of New Jersey into rain so heavy the individual droplets can barely be bothered to separate before landing. So that worked then.
 
I’ve always found it hard to suspend my disbelief at ‘Duel’, Steven Spielberg’s first movie about a long distance tiff twixt clapped out car and vast, orange truck. Not any more. Particularly not in the rain. The kind of morning that leaves you drowned rat drenched just getting from hotel lobby to X-Type leather sees the bungalow sized power plant and spray free vantage point afforded these vast trucks making far better Interstate time than the surrounding shoals of three box biffabouts. And a big Mack, Peterbilt or Kenworth kicks up a bow wave that would pass muster on a Blue Riband ocean liner. Overtaking requires commitment verging on blind faith. Lingering alongside causes temporary blindness and, should you find yourself almost alongside the cab in a trucker’s blind spot sufficiently renowned to reap its own radio advertising slot, there’s a very real danger of an impromptu, 60 ton sideswipe.
 
Mercifully, by the time a sign trumpeting something called Dollywood lures us off the Interstate in search of breakfast, the rain has passed. Even more mercifully, Dollywood appears closed for further off-season, silicon enhancements. but we do come across a proper, old fashioned stainless steel diner; the impending gleam of a proper, old fashioned coronary you can buy beckoning in the now bright sunlight. Gentlemen, start your angina.
 
By now we’ve travelled far enough south for every radio station on offer to sport both types of music, country and western. Loathing both, we give Nashville a wide berth and make haste for Memphis as, over the airwaves, old people in wheelchairs clutching stray puppies hurtle over cliffs to the strains of a cheery banjo… The road is now all but empty of conventional cars; this is the land of the pick-up, the NASCAR fan and the touch of sunburn twixt hair line and collar. Tennessee Interstate driving lacks interest, the only potential hiccup to progress the very real danger of being lured off route by the sight of paint drying nearby.
 
Far from a National guitar, the Mississippi delta actually shines like the flanks of a mothballed battleship. But we’re delighted, nonetheless to catch a glimpse of the huge river’s sluggish progress south. It means Memphis. Which means beer. But where is everybody? But for the traditional fistful of meandering Special brew exponents, the streets are utterly deserted. Turns out all the tourists are in the foyer of the posh, Peabody hotel watching the ducks…
 
Every evening at 5.00pm, after a hard day’s dabbling in the foyer fountain, the strains of the King Cotton March punt half a dozen ducks into Pavlovian progress along their own red carpet and into a lift. But how, I mused, will they reach the buttons? “Oh, I think they have someone do that for them” explained an earnest bystander, the scars of his irony by-pass still throbbing at his temples.
 
Everyone else is in Beale St, a downtown, Carnaby Street sized strip the pavements of which are inset with brass musical notes bearing the names of famous musicians long since moved away. All, that is, except for the Rev. Al Green who still preaches in front of a four-piece rhythm section at the Full Gospel Tabernacle every Sunday; everybody say ‘Yeah’ etc… Even Beale St seems strangely subdued, but it does at least offer beer, a heart stopping rack of ribs, a game of pool (3-0 to the old timer) and a selection of bad covers bands.
 
Wednesday morning, and Graceland beckons. Surprisingly, Elvis’ southern genl’man, plantation style mansion -harking back to the good old days of whoppin’ slaves and pickin’ cotton- is about the most tasteful building in Memphis. On the outside. Inside, a riot of early 70’s designer excess is typified by the canary yellow and navy blue TV room festooned with his logo; a lightning bolt and the letters TCB (Taking Care of Business). There are three TVs, because Elvis heard that LB Johnson watched the news on three channels simultaneously, “and there in the corner you can see Elvis’ stereo, on which he played all his favourite records…” No shit.
 
We’re not allowed upstairs on the basis that it was Elvis’ private domain and must remain so. Hogshit: We’re not allowed upstairs because they don’t want us photographing the potty on which the King is said to have perished.
 
Elvis suffered from a legendary, deep-fried portion control crisis. Now it’s the turn of the rest of America. A typical light lunch deep in the bowels of Arkansas brings us exactly four times the amount of food any mortal could manage at a sitting, the ubiquitous offer of a doggy bag, and further debate as to the future of a small Jaguar in a land where the perception of gratification through sheer size has clearly reached epidemic proportions.
 
Until stirred out of somnambulance by the foothills of the Ozark Mountains just short of the Oklahoma border, Arkansas remains utterly flat. The principal crop appears to mud, and said agricultural excitement is only alleviated by thousands of acres of the kind of swampland through which you expect, at any moment, to glimpse struggling chains of striped pyjama clad blokes barely outstripping a pack of baying bloodhounds. Even the central reservation sports mile after mile of its own, mini swamp. Taking time out from advertising noxious nosh at the next exit, Arkansas Interstate billboards boast huge pictures of pretty girls and the caption “Do you know who murdered me?” Judging by the looks of the local population, a simple game of spin the bottle should solve that one…
 
This is hunting country. And you’d be hard pushed to identify one single species of wildlife that would risk venturing out, day or night, without first donning a day-glo orange donkey jacket. They drive pick-ups here for lunch lugging; you’ll see far more wildlife making its way across Arkansas strapped to the fender of a Dodge than on its own four legs.
 
When duelling, it’s always important to choose your weapons with care. Hence, in a scrap between my backside and an Oklahoma Interstate I would not, with hindsight and oval shaped haemorrhoids, opt for sports suspension in my Jaguar. Even on the rare occasions when I-40 manages a half decent road surface, fist deep drainage gullies gouged across the surface thump and jar with increasingly aggravating monotony for hundreds of miles at a stretch. And it isn’t until we turn north short of Oklahoma City to pick a reasonably well preserved stretch of the legendary Route 66 that the X-Type’s stiffened undercarriage comes into its own.
 
It’s also the first time in over 1600 miles I’ve spent any time in a gear other than 5th. The 5-speed manual box feels infinitely slicker than comparable offerings sampled in the S-Type. Good thing too for, despite having 194bhp on tap, frequent stick stirring is very much the order of the day to coax the best out of this smooth revving V6.
 
Checking into a disconcertingly Batesian motel, it’s a relief to discover that the only stuffed bird on display is doling out room keys with the scowl of terminal disinterest smeared across a face all too frequently used for banging in nails.
 
A brief forage for food in small town Oklahoma teaches us that even the family pet sports a tattoo, and that the brightness of the neon flanking the streets is a gross misrepresentation of the night life. No food after 8.00pm. No alcohol anywhere. Nonetheless, it’s something of a treat to be off the beaten Interstate, curled up in a motel room in which nothing has changed since 1939 -including the sheets, listening to the V8 burble of pick-ups aimlessly wandering in search of beer.
 
The next morning brings a freezing gale that would strip the skin off a witch and, as we scurry across the border into Texas, snow. Marvellous. To further dampen ardour aboard, something ill fitting externally leaps to prominence in the fierce crosswind and the next several hundred miles are accompanied by what sounds like an inept jug band rehearsing in the glove-box. And Texas doesn’t help matters much with a landscape that is both the colour of the chinos in which it’s unwise to hurry a trip to the urinal, and so flat you can almost see the curvature of your ECG readout falling away to zero.
 
Memories of a one popular ditty divert us into Amarillo. Huge mistake. This place makes Memphis look like Mardi Gras. Indeed, there are more folk paying aerosol attention to the ten famously planted Cadillacs on the outskirts than in the entire rest of the city. The last person out may not have yet turned off the lights, but it’s hard to disregard the distinct impression that he’s reaching for the switch.
 
New Mexico proves even more barren but, by contrast, strangely beautiful. The wind drops, the skies, and roads, clear and we dial in 100mph and set the cruise controls for the heart of the setting sun. Never before have I driven for so long -a good hour- without once troubling the ‘cancel’ button. At this speed, life aboard the X-Type becomes almost serene; just the black silhouetted foothills of the southern end of the Rockies ahead, the seamless rush of wind, the occasional bend tight enough to make life at the helm interesting and an ever burgeoning thirst.
 
Nice place, Santa Fe. An excessive TV diet of horse operas as a nipper makes it all the more surprising to learn that, no longer is it the black and white, one hoss town of Colt Peacemaker days; it’s a ski resort. For us, however, cruising into town late in the evening, it’s merely an excuse to ingest huge quantities of Mexican food laced with Hades hot red chilli peppers and lean heavily on the electric window switches as we head off into the High Country the following morning.
 
It’s not, however, until a passing local points out that most of this area sits a good 7000ft above sea level that I finally realise why both I and the X-Type have been wheezing somewhat of late. My rare reluctance to light up a gasper matched by the Jags recalcitrance in 5th when confronted by any kind of gradient. Matters made worse by fuel of an octane count lower than a hillbilly’s IQ…
 
In Monument valley the sun is hot. Is it shining? No its not. But it is spectacular, even in this weather. Vast, gothic cathedrals of rock the brick red colour of the professional boozer’s face spear upwards through heavy clouds scudding so low they mingle with thick tendrils of dust blown off the valley floor. Oh look, it’s snowing again. Can we get back in the car now?
 
I’d have given a whole pound to see the looks on the faces of the first wagon train to emerge out of the surrounding ponderosa pine forests onto the instantly precipitous rim of the Grand Canyon. Imagine clopping two thousand laborious miles across injun territory in a horse and cart, only to be suddenly confronted by a hole in the landscape one mile deep and fourteen wide. Love to see the beefcake in charge frantically trying to lob a rope across that little lot before the lynch mob got busy…
 
If the Grand Canyon could be categorised as nature’s finest hour, then Las Vegas must surely go down as mankind’s most foolish. I simply haven’t the space here to stroll you properly through the vast, twighlight treacle that is ‘The Strip’. Suffice it to say that it’s snapper Barry’s first visit, and at no point during an entire evening does his lower jaw take a break from bulldozing toughened gobs of Hubba-Bubba off the sidewalk. A shopping trip by gondola -complete with Verdi murdering Texan tenor- on the first floor of the Hotel Venice proves the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back and he begs, gibbering, to be driven to Los Angeles this instant.
 
Quite why, though, is beyond me. Smearing south through the clear air, sage brush and head high F-15s of the Mojave desert, I-15 spits the unwary through a narrow pass in the Gabriel Mountains and into a three hour traffic jam shrouded in cheery smog of a fetching yellow hue. Los Angeles is elegantly divided into two camps; a small posh bit which plays host to rich folk busy protecting what is theirs with guns, and a large scary bit full of those busy using guns to relieve them of same.
 
And tonight, finally, with a mere 3474.2 miles wound onto the X-Type’s odometer, we’re firmly wedged in the former camp for a gala charity bash; Jaguar’s ‘Tribute to Style’.
 
Slouching down a red carpet lined with craning paparazzi, it’s hard not to feel gently wounded at the absence of one single flare of flash to punctuate our weary progress; perhaps we should have brought those ducks from Memphis… But this is LA, where celebrity status is everything; men would wear sock suspenders and women not a stitch if they felt it would help their Hollywood careers.
 
Tonight’s celebrities are easy to spot, they’re the people you can’t see for throngs of fawning sycophants. Star attraction is a Welsh girl called Catherine Zeta Jones who, somewhat bafflingly, talks in a cod American accent. She is surrounded by shoals of twittering, wannabe starlets, each boasting anorexic frame and face like a bag of sticks. An upstaged Liz Hurley, almost wearing a dress, wafts disconsolately round in the background, Dennis Hopper is as cool as ever, a bright red 3.0 litre X-Type is auctioned of to an unknown face for $50,000 and my new mate Forrest Whitaker and I share a joke and a smoke outside. Well, in truth, the joke is mine. He just smokes…
 
All in all, then, a more than memorable first outing for the X-Type. If, however, you were to ask me how the Jaguar went down in the USA, I’d find myself hard pushed to draw any conclusions. In fact, the only comment the car elicited throughout those 3474.2 miles came from a stetson’d, mirror shaded highway patrol officer in New Mexico: “I’ve seen a few Jaguars in my time” he confided. “And every one seems to be an impressive heap of junk.” And that, much like calling your loved one ‘heartface’, is a backhanded compliment if ever I heard one.