IF you already drive a BMW 3 Series, Audi A4 or Mercedes-Benz C-Class - and lots of you do - then Jaguar hopes the fat tyres of its new sports saloon, the XE, will be crunching the gravel on your driveway before long.
The storied British marque - paired with Land Rover these days, with both companies owned by the giant Indian conglomerate Tata - has high hopes for the XE.
It represents the most serious challenge yet to the ubiquity of the German premium brands, who have had it all their own way for years with only each other to worry about.
Lexus, Toyota's premium off-shoot, has thus far been the strongest competition to the 3 Series/A4/C-Class triumvirate with its IS saloon.
It is a desirable car, beautifully built and sharply styled, but Lexus's hybrid dogma means it is destined to remain a niche choice in a market still addicted to diesel.
Niche isn't part of Jaguar's thinking. It wants to be considered as a serious premium manufacturer, and that means going toe-to-toe with the Germans and stealing a large slice of the lucrative market they have created over the last 30 years.
That is why £1.5 billion has been invested in a new factory in Solihull, brand new engines and an all-new chassis and body which, in a class first, is built mostly from aluminium; few other cars described as 'new' can claim to be as clean-sheet as the XE.
But that by no means assures Jaguar success. Competing with the Germans is no easy task for the simple reason that each of the saloons Audi, BMW and Mercedes will sell you is an excellent car. Without exception they are lovely to drive, nice to look at, thoroughly engineered and solidly built.
Stack their specifications up on a spreadsheet and you'll also find that they are amazingly similar - price, dimensions, boot size, engine power and performance... all are incredibly closely matched.
The overwhelming majority of cars in this class are bought by companies. This means CO2 emissions take on enormous importance; the lower the figure, the less onerous the benefit in kind tax rate levied on the company car user.
Also of relevance to the companies who lease these cars - they never buy them outright - are servicing costs and frequency.
On top of that they are highly sensitive to the rate at which a car depreciates. Generally speaking, the car which holds on to more of its value after a typical two- or three-year period will be cheaper to lease.
All of this means that if the XE is to stand any chance of giving Jaguar Land Rover a return on its investment it needs to appeal to the head as well as the heart; it needs to persuade the company car driver that it is a credible alternative to the Germans while also convincing their employer that it will make financial sense.
So in this very particular and demanding context, where exactly does the XE sit?
The good news for Jaguar is that straight out of the box it may have come up with a best-in-class car.
More time at the wheel of the XE would be needed to give a more definitive judgment but two days' driving around Loch Lomond in Scotland was sufficient to prove that the XE is deeply accomplished.
For a start, it looks fabulous, a perfectly proportioned low-slung saloon which neatly evolves the design language established for the Jaguar of the 21st century by the larger XJ and XF saloons.
There are heavy hints of the wonderful F-Type sports car, particularly around the taillamps. A long, sculpted bonnet, a bold grille which gapes like the open mouth of a Great White and a coupe-like profile are other elements which combine to make the XE the catwalk star of the executive saloon world.
Open the driver's door and the impression doesn't fade. The driver sits low, with a steering wheel from the F-Type in front of them. The transmission tunnel is relatively high and the sweep of the dashboard and the doors' window line means you feel cocooned in a very passable impersonation of a sports car. The XE certainly feels more sporty from here than the competition.
Front seat passengers will have no complaints about space or comfort, but taller back seat passengers won't be so thrilled if they are six-footers. Legroom in the rear isn't as generous as you'll find in, say, a C-Class and the XE also loses an inch of headroom because of that sleek roofline.
The XE's boot is also a little smaller than that of the C-Class and 3 Series, the Jaguar's 455 litres playing the Germans' 480 litres.
However, the real moment of truth comes when you push the start button, twist the automatic gearbox's selector to drive - it rises from the transmission tunnel in now-trademark Jaguar and Land Rover fashion - squeeze the throttle and ease the XE on to the road for the first time.
It takes less than 100 yards to tell that this car has been sprinkled with automotive fairy dust.
The controls - steering, brakes and throttle - are exemplary, each perfectly matched and weighted.
The steering is light, direct and accurate, the ride supple, the throttle responsive, and the car signals, oh-so-subtly through the driver's seat and the steering wheel, what is going on between the tyres and the road.
It might be the case that none of this sort of texture and nuance matters to you; in that case, you will probably regard the XE as a very easy, undemanding car to drive, and Jaguar can still chalk up a happy customer.
But anyone who does enjoy the craft of driving and who wants to listen to what the car is telling them will find the XE a satisfyingly fluent companion.
Of course, the BMW 3 Series has been doing this sort of thing for 40 years, but even it doesn't have quite the same balance of body control and supple suspension as the XE.
A corkscrewing, rollercoaster stretch of road hugs the shore of Loch Long for several miles. It would give the chassis of any car, even a focused sports car, a through workout; the XE barely breaks sweat. It's impressive, given that cars like the XE, in much the way of a Swiss Army knife, have to be tooled up to face all sorts of conditions.
Part of the secret lies in the XE's suspension, which is the most sophisticated in its class.
Intensive use of aluminium, which accounts for 75 per cent of the XE's body weight, means the Jaguar is not only lighter but also stiffer than its more conventionally constructed rivals.
This means Jaguar has given itself a firm foundation from which to hang some fancy - and heavy - suspension, with the XE getting double wishbones at the front and so-called integral link set-up at the back.
It is this combination that means the XE can both smooth out a road's imperfections while also giving keen drivers the level of interaction they crave.
An XE highlight is its brand new all-singing, all-dancing engines.
Part of a range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel powerplants called Ingenium which will soon start to find their way into other Jaguar and Land Rover models, it gives the XE the firepower to creep beneath the 100g/km CO2 threshold - a decisive advantage over competitors which not only means it can avoid road tax but also leave the user with a lower benefit in kind tax bill.
At launch, only diesel flavours of Ingenium are available, in either 161bhp or 178bhp guises.
Jaguar expects the more powerful unit to be the most popular choice. It's a fine engine, every inch a modern diesel, with oodles of easy torque and the sort of smooth, quiet character that would make it supremely easy to live with.
Petrol Ingenium units arrive later; for now, unleaded duties fall to heavily reworked versions of a Ford-derived 2.0-litre four-cylinder, with either 197bhp or 237bhp, and the F-Type's 3.0-litre V6 supercharged lump which sits under the bonnet of the high-performance S model.
Despite the launch 2.0-litre petrol motors being a stopgap until their Ingenium replacements arrive, no-one should feel short-changed by choosing them. These are strong engines, usefully quick, smooth and with a pleasingly rorty note under acceleration. The Ingenium engines will undoubtedly be more economical and emit less CO2, however.
The S, meanwhile, is a seriously quick car. Its silken combination of 335bhp and 332lb/ft gives the XE a top speed limited to 155mph and a 0-60mph time of 4.9 seconds, an acceleration figure which also hints at just how relentlessly it can gather pace.
Gearboxes are either six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic and the XE is rear-drive-only - for now - with Jaguar's new 'all surface progress control' promising "unrivalled all-weather capability".
Jaguar, as with Land Rover, has lagged behind the competition when it comes to the all-important 'infotainment' controls in its car.
The XE addresses this head on with a new system called InControl. It doesn't do anything particularly different than the equivalent kit in a German car, but the interface looks swish, a phone is easy to connect via Bluetooth and sat-nav and stereo control is intuitive.
It is a great effort, and light years ahead of the clunky and slow effort found thus far in Jaguars and Land Rovers.
Other advances include a head-up display that uses lasers - a world first - a plethora of safety kit and park-assist options and an app which allows drivers to use their smartphones to lock and unlock the doors, check how much fuel is left, turn the climate control on and pinpoint the car's location - handy if you can't remember where you've parked...
The XE is a fabulous effort at taking on the Germans, an achievement all the more impressive when you remember that Jaguar doesn't have the same consistent expertise in this sector that BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have honed over decades.
The Jaguar feels like it is the sweetest driving of the bunch. To these eyes it is also the most handsomely styled.
It doesn't have the same dizzyingly broad range of engines that you will find in a German manufacturer's brochure - there is no BMW 330d rival, for example - but Jaguar has wisely opted to focus on the insatiable 2.0-litre diesel section of the saloon market.
The XE is undoubtedly a pivotal car for the British marque, but it is merely the first of three important launches in the near future.
A new XF saloon will, on the evidence of a sneak preview at Loch Lomond, give the 5 Series/A6/E-Class headaches; and an SUV, thus far dubbed F-Pace, will give Jaguar a foothold in the fastest growing sector of the lot - though whether it will also dent Land Rover sales remains to be seen.
Sir William Lyons, Jaguar's founder, said that "the car is the closest thing we will ever create to something that is alive".
It is a quote that the good people at Jaguar are fond of repeating, and while it applies most neatly to the F-Type it is a mantra that seems to have also infused the design and execution of the XE.
But for Jaguar, building a great car, as it has, isn't enough, even if it does feel "alive"; it needs to persuade enough people that they should forsake their excellent 3 Series BMWs, A4s and C-Classes.
That means telling them about the XE, raising its profile and coaxing potential new customers to take a test drive; do that, and Jaguar has a chance of recouping that £1.5 billion investment and becoming not only a major premium manufacturer but also staying alive.
