How I Would Tweak The New Jaguar 00 Into Something I Might Actually Buy

Collapsing on the couch after the big Thanksgiving meal, we inevitably ended up at a channel with one of those holiday movies where grown child stars from long-canceled sitcoms where you predict the ending correctly in the first five minutes. The one playing was a modernized interpretation of The Sound of Music, updated with current themes but not so much so that people that knew every song from the original would feel uncomfortable with it.

Design is the same way, and it’s summed up an acronym attributed to famed designer Raymond Loewy: MAYA. It stands for “most advanced, yet acceptable”, and it means you can introduce new things to buyers, but it can’t be so far off from what they know and expect that they won’t embrace it.

Recently Jaguar unveiled a new aesthetic for their cars at an event in Miami, and the reaction to the new look was similar to how people might respond to a director’s cut of The Sound of Music where Julie Andrew’s character dies at the end. Few people seemed to be able to relate to this drastic change of the Coventry Cat’s style.

Naturally, the people at Jaguar pontificated about the details and meaning of the look in a manner similar to how then-BMW design chief Chris Bangle talked up his “flamed surface” approach to the design of the 2002 E65 7 Series. I remember listening to Bangle’s description in period and finding it quite intriguing, ultimately understanding what he was trying to do with moving BMW design in a new direction.

Of course, fifteen minutes after he was done talking, I looked at the E65 sedan again and realized that I still disliked it. The public seemed to agree if you look at the sales drop from the much-loved E38 this BMW replaced.

Later, toned down iterations of Bangle’s style were more to my liking (and the public’s) on cars like the F01 7 Series and the E61 5 Series, an example of which I actually bought. The cars kept the basic premise of Bangle’s concept, but someone with an E39 5 series or a 1974 2002 could relate to it enough to write a check. As Lee Iacocca knew, there was nothing more important than a car’s ability to make you do just that.

I think the same situation exists with this new Jag. Unarguably it’s a striking look and something that could set this struggling brand apart, but a few modifications might make it less of a Hallmark movie where the lead characters kill each other.

Well, That’s…Different

Let’s say I decide to design a new human being. In my concept, I make the head twice as big as what is considered normal. I tell anyone that will listen that it makes perfect sense since the face is the “focal point of the person” and the “link to the soul”, where “90 percent of our interactions take place”, so that it should be made larger. What would you say? Well, you’d tell me that I make a good point, but I’m full of shit: it looks stupid.

It’s the same thing with this new Jaguar. I could go back and get the quotes from Miami presentation to put here, but why? They can describe their intent until they’re blue in the face or play an Emperor’s New Clothes type game castigating me for not seeing their vision. I might indeed be a philistine but ultimately, it makes no difference. The fact is that I’m not going to purchase this vehicle.

For Jaguar to exist in a vacuum where the vaunted E-Type never existed is impossible, and Coventry seems to acknowledge this by making their new concept pay tribute in a very, very small way to this piece of history (as they did with essentially all of their post-XKE coupes of the last sixty years) without going full-on retro and making what looks like a restomod that nobody under seventy years old will relate to. I do not believe that this this is the “retro futuristic E-Type” some critics have claimed it to be but it’s indeed a striking take on Sir Lyon’s idea of a long-nosed sports car. Still, they’ve made what I see as some major missteps in this interpretation.

At work I’m constantly trying to keep the client happy with the aesthetic of what I’m creating- even if they make crazy demands- while still ending up with a product that I know their customers will like. With this Jag, maybe I can keep the designer’s overall intent while avoiding a sales crater like that Bangle 7 series was?

Besides All That, Did You Like It?

Look, we know that the whole “copy nothing” mantra a Jaguar is to move away from the past with a different look, but so much of the dislike many have voiced with this look has nothing to do with it being very un-Jag-like: it just the damn thing doesn’t look good at all. The whole idea of launching it in Miami almost seems like they want it to be purchased based on cachet alone, like the Derelicte line of Mugatu clothes from the film Zoolander.

Enough chin scratching: let’s not waste any time getting to the hit list that most observers have made:

-The blunt, tall nose with broad amount of sheet metal between the tall headlights and front spoiler has no place on a sports car.

-A nearly flat hood the size of a basketball court seems almost totally horizontal, and the chamfered edges to transition into the side and essentially straight vertical face is something that worked on the 1980 F-Series Ford pickup but not a sports coupe or sedan.

-Why are the sides so tall and featureless? And why does it look like the whole center of the car is just one constant extrusion with no variation? Again, that works for the flanks of a pickup bed, but here? Even the base of the side windows is straight as a rod.

-The sort of cartoonish “cab backward” approach to pushing the windshield back so far is not doing the favors the designers likely thought it would in recalling the E-Type.

-Would it kill them to not have the giant rear vent detailing not cover so much of the back of the car? Maybe it’s needed for ventilation or something, but for many observers it recalls the rear of a city bus, and even those cover up much of this with advertising for local gentlemen’s clubs.

-There’s zero reason to not have a rear window on this car (or almost any car, really). Sure, you have backup cameras but so what? It makes the interior darker and more sheetmetal is the last thing this car needs.

Jaguar might respond to this as the characters in Spinal Tap once said to a particularly crushing review, “that’s nitpicking isn’t it?”

Hey, I do give props to the wheel designer that seem to really be into the rolling stock on the 1984-86 Trans Am:

At the very least, I’d like to see if changing some of these details might make something less controversial but still distinctive. I can’t speak for the Jaguar team, or the social elite that seems to be the target, but what would I do to make it into something that, five years from now when it’s depreciated to the price of a loaded new Hyundai, I’d actually buy instead of the Taycan station wagon I want now? Let’s give it a try.

Innovative Glass Rear Window!

The biggest issue to me by far on this Jaguar concept is the overall profile resembles the customized Lincoln in the movie The Car. As our own Mercedes Streeter said when she first saw the leaked renderings, could that have added any more sheet metal between the beltline and the rocker panels? The answer is no, they couldn’t, but we could find a way to make it better. Here’s the original:

Taking a cue from the E-Type, XJ6 and other Jaguars That People Liked, I’ve tried to break up that side mass by raising that character line above the rocker panel, which in turn makes the side profile seem much lighter. As with the old E-Type, there’s a dip in the beltline around the “B” pillar to break up that long, long straight stretch of unbroken line on the concept as it stands (which even seems at odds with the shape of the current side windows).

Also, it’s already been discussed how the original E-Type barely pulled off have a windshield set so far back, and this new concept definitely doesn’t make it work. You can see that I’ve moved it forward to balance the look better; keeping a long hood but still adding more cabin space to make the rear seat at least partially useable.

Here is the original from the front view:

The raised character line on the side continues around front, as the lower grille up front will rise up to make the massive slab of body-colored facade smaller. I’ve pulled the top of grille outwards slightly down lower; I’ve also tapered the sides in to make it more of a parallelogram shape.

In front I’ve brought the headlights down as well, and now the bonnet makes a more gentle curve down to the top of the lights and grille. It looks less like a coffin stuck to the front of the car, or one of those car-shaped VCR rewinders if you’re old enough to remember those dumb, boxy looking things.

I did this for a more pleasing look but the end result looks surprisingly like an homage to the old E-Type which, oddly enough, I swear was not my intent.

I’ve still kept the nose tall enough that Jaguar could have an enormous frunk up there, maybe similar to what I proposed on a Fisker Karma-based concept a little while back:

In back I’ve done some extensive modifications to the original:

We’re of course adding a damn rear window. The raised lower character line continues across the back of the car and makes that weird grille shape smaller, plus it adds a discreet area for the number plate (by the way, that PI NKO plate is available now on regtransfers for only 12,000 pounds).

Note that the city bus grille is much smaller and the taillights follow this line and wrap around the side of the car a bit which, again total coincidence, ends up being much like the early E-Type. The side window glass goes higher up into the cant rail to get more glass area and make the greenhouse appear taller and better proportionally to the thick lower section of the car.

I like it when cars end up with unintentional retro detailing that looks good and not tacked-on nostalgia (though oddly enough with the kamm tail it looks more like our rusting old S30 Datsun 280Z 2+2 than a Jag).

It is worth noting that the production version of this next generation Jag will supposedly be a four door. I’ve shown the modifications on the two-door version of the concept for visual consistency, but here are how adding extra doors might look:

The end result of all of these modifications is still not exactly something that sets my heart soaring. Still, I like it much better, and it still has a unique style that the team was obviously going for that should set Jaguar apart from the Porsches and Ferraris that will undoubtedly compete against; a good thing since I don’t see anyone passing up on either of those brand’s cars to buy this thing in its current form.

Remember That Cats Have Nine Lives

To be clear, the production version of this new Jaguar might be different in a number of ways from what is being shown now, but it’s doubtful that the final product will stray too far from this direction. Like any new design, it takes time to get used to something totally new. The more you look at the new Jaguar concept, the more you see that is actually quite intriguing, but there are still elements that set your teeth on edge which ruin the whole visual experience. I think it’s possible to preserve the “good” parts of “unique” while eliminating those that turn people away.

I don’t envy those that have rebrand and restyle a company with nearly a century of history and multiple entries in “World’s Most Beautiful Car” books. Jaguars have inspired the design of lesser cars for years from the FD RX-7 all the way to our boy Stephen’s “Swamp Thing” Buick Park Avenue, and whether we like it or not they will continue to influence studios across the globe. For ages, the Jaguar has built up a lot of equity in their name being synonymous with grace and beauty; the irony is that even when they launched cars undeserving of that description (like the XJ40 and XJ-S) the public and press seemed to accept them as gorgeous.

I really hope that’s not going to be the case here.

Images via Jaguar unless noted

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