1992 Jaguar XJS - Scent of a Woman

When most people think of the car in Al Pacino's 1992 tour de force, "Scent of a Woman", they think of the Ferrari Mondial t that Charlie and the Colonel test drive on their weekend jaunt through Manhattan. However, that ugly Ferrari, serisouly, a Mondial t and not an F40, 348 or even a 456? was not the most important car in the film. That dubious distinction belongs to another very expensive European and veddy British make, a 1992 Jaguar XJ-S. 

To appreciate how wonderfully cast that bastion, or should I say bastard, of British engineering was in "Scent of a Woman", we have to take several steps backward in time and look through the lens of the automotive time period the movie was set in. Lexus had a little more than a toehold in this country at the time and certainly no Cadillac or Lincoln could have fit the bill as the car an imperious, maligned authority figure would drive. BMW and Mercedes were for the bourgeois nouveau riche as well. Even if they were vastly superior automobiles. In the early '90's Jaguar still represented "old school money" in ways that few other "motor cars" of that time period could. And with that, everything good, bad and indifferent that that implies. 

Introduced in 1976, the Jaguar XJ-S had the unenviable task of replacing the legendary but very old XKE. While certainly not the roaring sports car the XKE was, the XJ-S quickly became the embodiment of wealth, privilege and entitlement despite the fact that it was a plodding, floaty, underpowered mess of an automobile. The XJ-S was also so out of this world unobtainable that it seemed only "Old Money" could afford one. What's more, Jaguar's were almost as well known for being unreliable as they were for being status symbols.

"Scent of a Woman" is the story of Charlie Simms, a teenage boy attending "The Baird School", an elite and exclusive college prep school. Unlike many of his classmates, Charlie is not "made" and attends the school on scholarship. To earn money for a trip back home to visit his family for Thanksgiving, he takes a job babysitting a retired, blind, Army Colonel. Before that happens, though, Charlie is witness to several students setting up a prank that will damage the Jaguar belonging to Mr. Trask, the school's despised headmaster.  

Again, there were few cars then, and the same is true today, that captures the essence of wealth and power like a Jaguar and in particular, an XJ-S. Mr. Trask's Jaguar was held in such high regard that it even made the bratty frat boys at "The Baird School" swoon with jealousy. It made for a perfect foil for the malicious prank that's at the center of "Scent of a Woman". 

Argue all you want that "Scent" was an Al Pacino movie and in many ways, of course, it was. However, the film is more about character, ethics and principle than anything else. The film is also highly flawed much like old Jaguars and is, candidly, totally unbelievable. We believe that it is a great film because Pacino is so wonderful in it as is the entire cast; Pacino won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. How else can we possibly buy into the elaborate stunt pulled upon Mr. Trask and his Jaguar let alone Charlie's absurd reticence and then absolvement in front of the entire student body at the film's end? Pure Hollywood. This is to say nothing about the irascible Colonel Frank Slade. As big and unlikeable an asshole as the world has ever known. Yet, somehow, we not only like "The Colonel", we, the audience, absolutely adore him in the same way we adore old Jaguars.

By the way, the woman The Colonel dances with in the famous tango scene is named Donna. "Donna", in Italian, means "woman".