• by Karl Greenberg , December 14, 2009

Jaguar North America is hoping to claw its way back up into the higher branches of the luxury-car Christmas tree. The company, owned by India-based Tata Motor, has promoted Sharon Corrigan to VP/marketing, replacing Paul Faletti, who recently left the company.

Corrigan, who joined the company in 2001 after 18 years with Ford, was most recently VP of retail operations. That position will be taken by Pat Ward, who is new to the Irvine, Calif., company.

Gary Temple, president of the Jaguar's North American unit, said in a release that the new team is "very dealer- and customer-focused." Corrigan and Ward will report to Richard Beattie, EVP, marketing and sales.

Ward, a veteran of General Motors and Jaguar Land Rover, was recently SVP of sales and marketing for supplier JCB, Inc.

The company's advertising has been focused on print. But the new XJ sedan, which was introduced at the Los Angeles Auto Show, will be in Jay-Z's latest music video. The video will also be at www.Interactive. Jaguar.com.

Jaguar, which Ford sold to Tata Motors along with Land Rover last year for around $2.3 billion, is a far cry -- at least in terms of sheer numbers -- from its halcyon days between 2001 and 2003, when it broke 100,000 units per year worldwide and 45,000 in the U.S., partly because of a new near-luxury car X-Type. The company last month sold only 1,153 cars, albeit up 33% from the year before. But in September 2003, the company sold nearly six times as many vehicles. Half of those sales were, however, of the X-Type car.

This means the victory was pyrrhic -- because while the X-Type built Jaguar sales, it did so by pushing the brand down market with a car that was ridiculed as a gussied-up Ford. Around the same time Mercedes-Benz tried the same move with a hatchback, the C230, with similarly maleficent results for the brand.

It didn't help that Jaguar couldn't shake the image that even its premium cars were using Ford parts. Now the company is hoping to move back to a premium high-performance aerie that had been its perch for decades, but become more of a thorn in BMW and Mercedes' sides. This year the company unveiled its new XJ at the Saatchi Gallery in London, with managing director Mike O'Driscoll saying Jaguar would return to its roots.