NO MORE MUDDLING ABOUT; Jaguar delivers three new X-Type models in six months; drops one.(Jaguar Cars Inc.)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

Jaguar has struggled of late. After a lifetime of catering to the snooty, it introduced the X-Type four years ago and tried to go mass-market. That sent the company into marketing chaos-okay, maybe just a slight decline. Buyers in the old guard felt slighted and buyers in the new guard didn't know what to think. X-Type sales stalled right out of the box.

Jag sold just 21,542 X-Types last year, despite a powerfully accessible lease deal and heavy marketing. Competitors outpaced Jag handily with their own entry-level luxury models: BMW sold more than 100,000 3 Series, Mercedes 70,000 C-Classes, Cadillac 57,000-plus CTSs and Audi 47,000 A4s.

Rather than cry into their crumpets, the Jaguar team has added three X-Type models over the last several months-the Vanden Plas, the Sport and the Sportwagon-and dropped the entry-level 2.5 sedan. Jag says it is "a new packaging strategy,'' taking traditional Jaguar values of sportiness and luxury, and exploiting them in separate models. Before this it was just the X-Type, either 2.5 or 3.0. The 3.0 becomes the new base model and these three extrapolate from there.

As you'd expect, the Sport model is a bit firmer and faster through corners than its stablemates, though just barely so. We guess most buyers will be drawn as much by the sport-styled seats, svelte body kit and 18-inch wheels as by the stiffer springs and shocks.

The Vanden Plas adds traditional British luxury cues like burl walnut veneer and VDP-specific seating surfaces.

But it is the Sportwagon that is the biggest step for Jag. The Sportwagon is the company's first production wagon. You could even argue it's Jag's way of doing an SUV without doing an SUV-and without cutting into PAG partner Land Rover's SUV sales.