The Cat Lands on Its Feet

摘要

As anyone who survived high school can confirm, reputations are stubborn things. They linger and then haunt, and to shake a bad one requires a sustained act of transformative will. That, or a few hundred million dollars. Which as it happens is the ap- proximate amount of cash Ford Motor has sunk into salvaging Jaguar's once-shaky rep since it purchased the aristocratic British marque in 1989. The bulk of the reclamation project focused on Jaguar's overall quality control, which, as they say over there, royally bit. In fact, Jaguar's giddy unreliability was so infamous it became, in a perverse way, celebrated — a badge of honor for anyone bold enough to steer a Jag off the showroom floor. Brave souls, they. Chunks of the engine clattered onto the highway in midcommute, wheels spun loose, and nodes of the electrical system blew, popping like Chinese firecrackers. The year Ford acquired the automaker, Jaguar ranked far in the cellar in J.D. Power & Associates's quality study, alongside the Lost Boys of the auto industry: Merkur, Sterling, and Yugo. And yet, like drooling hounds, besotted owners adored their Jaguars despite the flaws.