depressingly, it is the same bloody thing. While wonderful new models have emerged from all Jaguar's competitors, the company's best offer with the X-Type is a new front mesh grille, choice of four seat styles and a six-speed automatic gearbox. This is called "a subtle facelift".

In other words, they have given up. Ford - Jaguar's owners, who have put the company up for sale - must calculate that any prospective buyers would cancel the X-Type as their first move.

Unhappily, however, potential purchasers of the company are as hard to see as customers for the X-Type. Nobody seems eager to write a cheque for either offering.

So it looks like curtains.