2010 TG Awards: Luxury Car of the Year

You can forget America - the next 100 years is all about China. As odd as it might seem to anyone who has grown up in a world dominated culturally and politically by a particular superpower, empires do rise and fall.

Sometimes they rise and fall, and then rise again. The Forbidden City, which dominates Beijing, proves that whatever China represents now, it more than represented in the past. As a statement of political and architectural ambition, it makes Buckingham Palace and Westminster look like a bunch of garden sheds on a Thames-side allotment. 

Words: Jason Barlow
Photography: Lee Brimble

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This feature was originally published in the Awards issue of Top Gear magazine

There are 980 buildings in the palace complex, and more than 8,700 rooms. Built in the 15 years between 1406 and 1420, and spanning the Ming and Qing dynasties, more than a million workers were drafted in to construct it. With Tiananmen Square at the southern end, the axis that runs through the city north to south is thought by experts to have forged a link with Xanadu, Kublai Khan's fabled summer retreat.

Just how good does this car look here in the Forbidden City? Companies like Ferrari, Rolls-Royce and Porsche are all having a bonanza in China, a territory that prizes authenticity in its imported luxury goods above all else. But it's the latest XJ that really looks precision-tooled to do the business in Asia's biggest market. Authentic, no doubt about that. But also authentically appealing to the one place that counts above almost all others as the 21st century gathers momentum.

Of course, all concerned vigorously deny it. The XJ is still British through and through, and part of its considerable charm is the wit and humour evident in its execution. We gravitate towards people, TV, films and art that make us smile, so why not a car? Only Jaguar has figured out how to make a car welcome you as you get into it. But the fact remains that Jaguar's biggest car shrewdly bundles all this stuff together in a package that works in the parts of the planet the West's horrible recession never really hit. 

The Secret-Squirrel reveal of the XJ, some 18 months ago now, laid the foundations for this. It was hard to know whether we were there to look at a new car or had been parachuted into an episode of Spooks. First, there was a rendezvous. Then we were driven to the venue, a massive English stately home. It was when they ushered us up to a roof-top turret that I really began to think my number was up. Exactly how often had I been rude about Jaguar in the past?

Before I could figure that out, a pair of undisguised XJs crunched across the gravel, Merchant Ivory-style, only this time they might as well have been teleported to Earth from a passing UFO. Rarely has a new car slackened so many jaws. The front end, kind of elongated XF meets Maserati Quattroporte, was consistent with some of the advance intel. But the rest of it was a gigantic departure, especially the flowing rear three-quarters and, most controversial of all, that cigar-tube rear end.

At last, a genuinely ambitious Jaguar, a blast from the future rather than the past, and previewed - oh, the irony - in a stately home with a long gravelled driveway. Humour, you see. "You've got a major eye on Asia with this, haven't you?" I said to design boss Ian Callum at the time. "Not really," he replied. I still don't believe him.

Anyway, we've driven the XJ a lot since then - in the UK, the US, France, the Atlas mountains, as well as around China's legislative and historical capital - and not only do we love it, we love it enough to anoint it our luxury car of the year. That rear end still isn't working for me, but in a sector of the market that's otherwise hidebound by generally conservative design solutions, the XJ cuts the sort of swathe through urban and motorway traffic that makes you wonder what other car companies think they're playing at.

As for the interior, well it doesn't just feature an incredible in-car entertainment system, it is the entertainment. Wood and leather, those staples of the luxury car since forever, get a drastic new lease of life in here. For such a huge car, the sense of intimacy the driver experiences behind the wheel is quite something. The top of the dash curves round the cabin, the transmission tunnel is high and features the same brilliantly simple rotating gear selector as the XF, and the multi-function wheel looks and feels fantastic. 

Then there's the way it literally comes to life. The main instruments are digital on a TFT screen, which can be tuned to show the satnav map, music choice, and manual gear selection if you're in that mode (bigger and redder in sport mode). There's dual-view on the main screen, so that the passenger can watch a DVD leaving the driver undisturbed. There's soothing ambient lighting. Even the storage compartments can be specially trimmed inside. Of course, you get used to all this loveliness quite quickly. Until you get into something else then back into the XJ and realise that it really does feel like the future.

It handles like the future, too. It has an ally chassis clothed in ally body panels, so it's much lighter than its main rivals. This isn't just one of those idle bits of information, it's something you actively experience as you hustle along - it handles very sweetly indeed, and though it leans a bit as you commit to a fast corner for the first time, it checks any further body roll. Only when you get stupidly ambitious with it is there the tiniest murmur of complaint, but dynamically it's still way ahead of the German big guns. Because it weighs a lot less, several hundred kilos less in some cases.

The various engines and transmission are also sublime. The 3.0 twin-turbodiesel has 443lb ft of torque at 2,000rpm, which is one of those stats we've all got used to, but that remains strangely magical nevertheless. It'll average about 35mpg.

Swapping that for the supercharged 503bhp, 5.0-litre V8 obviously brings us all closer to Peak Oil but, hell, you'll have fun getting there. This is a truly extraordinary car, a vast limo which monsters the road if you want it to, but whispers menacingly around Mayfair equally beautifully. Or the Forbidden City, if you happen to be there.

Jaguar's people would probably prefer us not to use the word regal to describe the XJ. But it is. After all those years cocking about, the company has genuinely entered its imperial phase, dumped the signifiers of the old Empire and embraced the new. While we brace ourselves for interesting times, at least Jaguar is finally fit for the job.