Decades of mis-management and lack of investment under state ownership and as a fledging public company took their toll, but after nine years under the wing of the Ford Motor Co, Jaguar reckons it can regain poll position. New models will put it head-to-head with the big German luxury car-makers, but Jaguar's chairman Nick Scheele is optimistic, predicting sales will reach a record of 50,000 this year and then leap four-fold in as many years.

``Ford has committed massive investment in this premium brand but it will get a good return. Jaguar has traded in the black since the final quarter of 1994,'' he said in an interview, speaking at the car maker's headquarters in central England.

Jaguar has cost Ford nearly 4 billion pounds in acquisition cost, investment andaccumulated losses in the early 1990's, but Scheele says Jaguar is very profitable at the operating level now and comfortably in the back as a stand alone company.

The leap forward will come with new models to give it a range to compete across the board with BMW AG, Daimler-Benz AG's Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen AG's Audi, which will stretch Jaguar's range from its current large executive XJ saloons and the sporty XJ8 cars.

The first glimpses of its newly-named S-Type will come in October before full launch early next spring. The car, once coded X200, will compete directly with the BMW 5-series, Mercedes E-class and Audi A6, while a new X400 ``baby Jag'' is set for a 2001 launch into the small executive market of the 3-series, C-class and A4.

That's why Scheele is predicting sales just shy of 200,000 in 2002, made up of 100,000 X400s, some 30 per cent of S-Types and the rest from the current XJ and XK8 ranges, implying a fall in sales of these present two series. ``Clearly some canabilisation isinevitable, and demand for the XJ saloon will diminish,'' Scheele said. But he adds his 200,000 target for 2002 is based on sales, while actual plant capacity is higher.

Jaguar's base plant at Browns Lane, Coventry, in the English West Midlands is running near to its capacity of 52,000-53,000 cars a year, while capacity at Castle Bromwich nearby in Birmingham which will build the S-Type is 70,000.

The Ford plant at Halewood on Merseyside, which is being converted to produce the X400, is scheduled to make 100,000 cars a year, but capacity is well above that number as Ford has built 200,000 Escort cars a year there in the past.

All this is a long way from the dark days of December 1989 when Ford paid 1.6 billion pounds for Jaguar only to see sales evaporate in recession, and then have to tackle head-on the three critical issues at Jaguar of poor quality, poor facilities and a hefty cost structure.

Scheele says the asset value of Jaguar was 300 million pounds, so Ford paid 1.3 billion pound for thebrand. Good value? Well annual sales soon halved to near 20,000 after the take-over, and there were no new models in the pipeline.

Jaguar made a lot on money in the late 1980s after its 1984 float following on from 16 years of state ownership on the back of high sales in the US and a weak pound against the dollar, but all this came crashing down in the early 1990's. Scheele started at Jaguar in early 1992 to help the recovery with the launch of the mainstream XJ range in October 1994, and then the sporty XK8 in 1996, and one year later all Jaguars were powered by a new V8 petrol engine built at Ford's Bridgend plant in South Wales.

Scheele believes the two most easily recognised Jaguars were the 1960's E-Type and the Mark 11, highlighted by the British TV Jaguar-driving character Inspector Morse. failure to replace the latter in the late 1960s was the biggest strategic blunder made by Jaguar, a fault he hopes to remedy with the S-Type. The S-Type cost $800 million to develop, will be the first Jaguar toshare a platform with future Ford models and prices are likely to start around 5-series level at 24,000 pounds.

For the X400, the competition could be even hotter, the three German's control two-thirds of this small executive car market in western Europe, then there are new entrants like Fiat's Alfa Romeo 156 and a strong showing from Volvo.

Still Scheele is optimistic that the Jaguar brand, with its elegant, long low sporting appearance that Jaguar founder William Lyons instilled in the car from the start, has maintained its cachet.