I always appreciated that it was a poor man's Jaguar. And it was in an era when there weren't many good handling American sedans.
Funnily enough, my mother owned a 2004 Jaguar X-Type 3.0, so bought the year after my fil got his LS-V8. My fil was a Ford exec and they both got new Ford products every two years. Oddly, that thing turned out to be a tank. She gave it to my nephew after she couldn't drive anymore, and as a gift for getting his BBA. He drove that right up until last year when he finally got rid of it as it became too expensive to keep running. Almost dead reliable up until the last couple of years.