It’s been six whole days since Jaguar revealed its latest “Copy Nothing” ad campaign ahead of the debut of its big electric car reveal at Art Basel next month, and we’ve gone through the full cycle of Internet outrage and counter-outrage. Honestly, I had to check how long ago it was because it feels like we’ve been talking about it for six months.
There have been some who have guessed that it’s all a ploy. A rug-pull. The ultimate setup to get people to care about whatever Jaguar does next. I don’t know specifically what Jaguar is planning, but I’m not sure that this is misdirection. I think this was a genuine effort to get people to see Jaguar as something new, one I think had some good ideas behind it, albeit one that got caught up in our never-ending Internet culture war.
So my question is stated once, but with two meanings: Is this a real campaign, and if it is, is Jaguar bold enough to stick with it?
Anyone who reads The Morning Dump is probably aware of Volkswagen’s problems. I may not be 100% certain Jaguar is serious about its makeover, but I am, however, 100% certain that Volkswagen is serious about addressing its problems in a severe way that’ll almost certainly involve job cuts in Germany. There was another F1 race in America last night, and yet there’s only one American team. It sounds like F1 is finally serious about letting Cadillac/Andretti into the sport.
Americans are seriously into F1 now, and still seriously into buying anything but sedans, it’s just that they want to pay sedan prices. How’s that going to work?
Jaguar Copied A Lot Of Things, But I Don’t Blame Them
I feel like the discussion around Jaguar’s rebrand is missing a lot of context. While I agree with Jason’s analysis that the specific choice of imagery is derivative and almost offensively try-hard, the rest of the Internet has dog-piled on the company in a way that’s been both predictable and a little disappointing. It’s a lot of stuff like this:
Dear Jaguar, @Jaguar
I am your customer.
My husband and I both drive Jags.
I’m on my 3rd.
NO MORE. #WokeIsBroke #BoycottJaguar #StayInYourLane pic.twitter.com/UQEIqqAxWe— State Spirit (@statespirit) November 20, 2024
First, I’m not even sure how this ad is “woke” and not, as Jason points out, just run-of-the-mill ad agency garbage. Second, the assumed creator of the ad has been subject to a lot of terrible targeting by the usual mix of the usual online miscreants. When hatred is your hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The ad has created such a ridiculous and outsized amount of reaction that some have made the assumption that it’s not serious:
Not to doubt a random person on Threads from Los Angeles (or the others who have espoused this theory), but the way that Jaguar’s leaders are talking about the campaign makes me think they are serious:
Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover said in an interview with the Financial Times that the intended message had been lost in “a blaze of intolerance” on social media and denied that the promotional video was intended as a “woke” statement.
“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Glover said.
“We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently. We wanted to move away from traditional automotive stereotypes.”
In fairness to the critics, it does seem like Jaguar has exchanged one group of stereotypes for another. It’s strange, and off-putting, and not in a way that’s any sort of fun.
In fairness to Jaguar, they had to do this. Jaguar isn’t merely a troubled but well-known organization that’s had a hard time finding success in recent years. Jaguar isn’t the Yankees. Jaguar is the Montreal Expos. They are effectively a non-entity. In the United States, at its peak, Jaguar was selling around 40,000 cars. Last year they couldn’t even sell 9,000.
Do you remember the biggest story about Jaguar this year up until this point? There was a big rumor spread around the Internet in March that the company’s Indian owner, Tata, was killing Jaguar to strengthen Land Rover. This was a misunderstanding due to the brand pausing production in order to shift to building fewer, more expensive niche cars. Think of it as the Rolls-Royce-inization of Jaguar.
Was this the company’s best move? Maybe, maybe not, but there just weren’t a lot of other options. Tata is not a global entity and isn’t in a great position to share platforms. The most profitable new Jaguars were SUVs, and the company already has a very profitable SUV-maker. Jaguar either had to die, which would be a pity, or it would have to find a way to make money selling fewer cars.
While the backlash was inevitable and, in some ways, probably wanted (when was the last time Elon Musk tweeted about Jaguar?). People are acting like Jaguar is a living thing again. I doubt this is exactly the response Jaguar wanted, but it got a response.
As one ad exec who doesn’t work for Jaguar put it in an AdWeek article on the campaign:
“On Monday almost no one was particularly interested in Jaguar. It’s now Thursday, and millions are waiting for Jaguar to unveil its take on an EV.
“That’s what bold brand moves do—they turn people’s heads, shift their expectations, and yes, cause a bit of discomfort in the process.
People are talking about Jaguar. People are looking forward to the launch of the car. Part of me hopes Jaguar sticks to its guns and keeps doing what it’s doing because trying to appeal to an increasingly tiny slice of buyers with better options wasn’t working. Now it’s trying to connect with an entirely new set of buyers. That’s a dangerous gamble, and I don’t know that it’ll work. At the same time, backing down is unlikely to work, either.
At best, I think Jaguar has to hope the car connects with buyers who find this interesting on an emotional level. The car is the star here and, good or bad, this ad campaign is going to have everyone on the Internet talking about whatever it is Jaguar reveals.
The car better be good.
‘We Can’t Just Stick A Band-Aid On It’ – VW Brand CEO
Germany is in crisis. It is heading towards both a literal winter and a figurative one. It’s not clear what will save the company at this point, but job cuts are coming. Ford has already announced job cuts in the country and massive German company Thyssenkrupp is cutting thousands from its steel division.
Volkswagen has been the holdout, though only because it hasn’t quite settled on the scope of cuts in Germany. The cuts are coming.
Volkswagen sees no chance of avoiding layoffs and plant closures in order to cut 4 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in costs, the brand’s chief executive said in a newspaper interview, amid an escalating dispute with workers.
Thomas Schaefer’s comments further deepen a conflict with unions, who have threatened strikes at the carmaker from December and have asked the company to present solutions in ongoing negotiations over pay and capacity that exclude both factory closures and major job cuts.
“Ultimately, any solution must reduce both overcapacity and costs. We can’t just stick a band-aid on it and keep dragging it along. That would come back to bite us later in a serious way,” Schaefer told weekly Welt am Sonntag.
I might try to explain why this has happened to Germany at large at some other point, but I’m not sure I have the interest in getting into the argument quite yet.
Cadillac Might Finally Get To Race In F1
I was more than a little mad when Formula One indicated that Cadillac/Andretti racing would be left out of the sport. It seemed random and a little cruel given that one of the teams is Kick Sauber.
Now it seems like Cadillac will get in relatively soon, albeit via Ferrari engines.
From Jenna Fryer at the AP:
The team will be called Cadillac F1 and powered by Ferrari engines when it enters the sport in 2026. General Motors is expected to complete its own Cadillac power unit ahead of the 2028 season.
Multiple industry insiders spoke to the AP about the grid expansion on condition of anonymity because an announcement ahead of Saturday night’s Las Vegas Grand Prix could potentially steal the spotlight from the showcase event on the F1 calendar.
F1 is now American-owned, which means that the Department of Justice’s antitrust investigation into the sport is something it has to take seriously. I wonder if this doesn’t just conveniently solve that problem.
People Want SUVs But Want To Pay Sedan Prices
Here’s a fun stat, for the first time since Edmunds started tracking it, the first 10 months of the year saw “car” sales hit just 19%, the lowest ever. At the same time, SUVs hit 58%, the highest ever. That’s good news for most automakers as SUVs and crossovers tend to carry a price premium. That’s not-so-good for consumers as the Detroit Free Press reports:
“As passenger vehicles lose further popularity and drop to their lowest share of sales we’ve ever seen, automakers continue to bolster their SUV lineups to meet consumers with vehicle types they prefer,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights. “What’s complicating things for the industry is that this ongoing transformation is set against a challenging landscape of rising costs and limited affordability. Producing the bigger vehicles that consumers desire at prices they can actually afford is an arduous task that every automaker is already grappling with in the current market.”
This is where vehicles like the Nissan Kicks and Chevy Trax tend to shine, although I think there’s still gotta be some kind of market for actual cars in the United States.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I’ve always liked this Moloko song “Fun For Me” because it sounds like the answer to the question: What if Portishead was goofy? It turns out I’m good with that for exactly one song, and no more.
The Big Question
How serious is Jaguar?
What baffles me with Jaguar is that it is owned by a company that knows how to sell expensive cars, and are pretty good at it.
Doing luxury by saying “we are so edgy and luxurious, look! Look!” seems like they are going at it the wrong way. It’s just embarrassing.
But hey, maybe they will blow out minds off with whatever vehicle they end up producing, and I really hope they do.
Because they went the other way with Jag.
They took Jag downbrand with the XE, for example. But didn’t commit to the F & E-pace as a Jaguar-spin on a Landrover (which would improve margins on SUVs across both brands and widen its net for customers).
Unfortunately they haven’t been good at it for quite some time, at least on the Jaguar side of the showroom.
Is the woke in the room right now with us?
I swear these people are the dumbest.
Jaguar became irrelevant to me the day that it was purchased by Ford, in much the same way that SAAB became irrelevant to me the day it was purchased by GM.
Most people that say this often don’t realize that GM bought 50% of Saab way back in ’89, and they certainly didn’t own a OG900 or 9000 (or anything before them) to really compare the before and after of their models either.
For a certain group of people “woke” seems to have become the blanket term for anything they don’t like or appears outside of their personal set of norms.
I hope Jag isn’t serious. The ad campaign seems overly pretentious, trying way to hard and too far away from what Jag has been. I fear it will alienate their current buyers without effectively appealing to a new set of buyers.
I see it two ways:
Ferrari doesn’t need this crap to sell uber expensive cars. I understand the need to start from scratch from Jaguar, but I’m not sure the next step is going to be a smart one.
People are still repeating this incredibly false trope? Let me know how Boeing is doing right now, or Armie Hammer, Bud Light still, BP in 2010…..
Jag was Britain’s version of BMW but more stately. They need to remember that.
As for the “Woke” Bull S***, they’re whining because the ad shows different colors of people together in bright clothing instead of old white dudes in suits. Screw the whiners.
Regardless of whether you think it’s woke or not, the advertisement is not going to capture Jag’s core audience/market. In fact I don’t think it will capture much of anything.
Yeah but that problem is because it looks like a clothing ad from a decade ago and the new logo is something you’d see on a mid-priced coffeemaker.
It’s a bad campaign, but let’s focus on why it’s actually a bad campaign.
I think it’s not meant to do, I think it’s a clear “fuck off” to their core audience/market, which is… not much, and I think it’s a good move.
Why do you believe it’s a good move?
Because what was left of their customer base, was the cliché of a cheap old white conservative male yelling at clouds and forgetting his wallet.
These “customers” are dying anyway (good thing), cutting tie in an hard (already seen, I agree with torch on that) way is bringing the spotlight on you, to, probably, a lot of younger generation that are not especially connected to cars the way we are, never heard of jaguar before, and might be interested in a car brand that try to talk to them.
I think they are targeting couture followers, it’s maybe clumsy but at least they are trying.
(I also think the targeted younger generations, don’t have the already seen aesthetic références, we, old people, have)
I agree that companies will need to attract a younger audience at some point since the older one doesn’t last forever. However, targeting a niche audience isn’t going to fill the showrooms to the brim unless they are moving towards a lower-production business model. I’m curious as to how it will pan out. Will it be a 1980s-90s Cadillac situation, where almost no young people were drawn in despite (some half-assed) attempts made? Only time will tell.
As someone considered young (born within this millennium), I’m not sure how the ad was supposed to connect to people of my generation. Edgy? Sure. Bold? Yeah. But if I’m in the market for a car, you might want to include a car in the advertisement—not just a colorful acid trip, lol. Of course, you’d have to ask more than one young person to get a consensus on how the ad resonated with people.
Thanks for sharing.
Jaguar doesn’t have to move to a lower-production business model. It found them.
Yea, their new more exclusive sales target of 50,000 global sales is only like 14k smaller than total sales in 2023 lol
That I agree with.
First Jaguar:
It’s a ploy.
Look at the photo of the car, then look at the camo-covered test vehicle.
They do not fit at all.
(Frankly, I’m surprised Adrian or Bishop didn’t notice this)
Then SUVs for sedan prices:
Are people buying SUVs because they WANT SUVs, or are they being forced to buy SUVs because THERE’S NOTHING ELSE OUT THERE?
(Kind of like how most cars are greyscale because that’s what the dealers order)
We NEED more sedans at sedan prices! I don’t want more dinosaurs making it impossible to survive a crash if your not one of them!
Exactly –
Folks who talk about SUVs having “more room” – than what? A sedan (Sure) or a station wagon (should be the same)
As we move toward EVs – SUVs, being inherently inefficiently shaped, should drop in popularity as lower, sleeker shapes with similar interior space will be more efficient, resulting in longer range on the same battery packs as comparable SUVs, or similar range with smaller packs and shorter charging times.
Given who’s generally buying crossovers and SUV’s, I’ll admit this is very much the minority opinion, but for my 6’4” self, the taller greenhouse is what provides ‘more room’.
All else equal, I would prefer a sedan, and when I rent cars I’m generally going that way. But for my personal daily, prefer not having to choose at least 1 (if not 2) of butt on the ground/head hitting the headliner/compromised driving position. Fine if I’m driving one of my FIL’s Miatas, or for a fun rental when out of town (or for a 2nd – or really 3rd car, if I can win that argument…).
But again, I’ll admit that as a minority view given the market as a whole…
Some mentioned below that the need for SUVness will hurt the shift, whether less range because of the design or needing bigger batteries for the same range, but I agree with you on electrification. I think it will help, because vehicles won’t need to be built around the same blueprint like an ICE vehicle and can offer many of the attributes that might draw someone to a crossover like AWD or higher seating position.
The Ioniq 5 is billed as a crossover; it isn’t really in the sense like a Hyundai Tucson is, but it does make the case. The Model Y even more, honestly – it’s between say, a Forester and an Outback in length, but lower in height than either.
There’s a lot of hard camo parts on that mule that was photographed. So much so that trying to ascertain the shape of the actual car underneath it is utterly pointless. I should know, I did camo twice, once for the Defender and once for something else that was cancelled.
It’s worth remembering what we’ll see in just over a week at Art Basel is a concept. What’s under all that camo is a production vehicle.
Your point about camo doing the job of camo is valid – but look at the shape of that tail end in camo, then look at the photo:
The photo shows a hard edged sweeping roofline that terminates at the tail with hard-edged fenders.
The prototype has a narrow flat trunk surface – and the rear greenhouse surface is wavy – so the sloping roofline must be beneath all that taped on stuff. Pull a curved line from the roof somewhere slightly aft of the vertical window opening to the rear, and you’ll conclude that either the tail end of the prototype has a few inches with a flat rear deck taped on (Which would make the rear overhang ridiculously short), the line of the roof terminates much lower than the photo would make it appear – or the promo photo is a piece of fakery.
I go for fakery because who does a big rectangular grille at the back – when the door handles and charging ports are lozenge shaped? And taillights are therefore at bumper level? Or do we have an extended rear bumper, like cars did back in the 90s?
It just doesn’t add up.
RAV4 and CR-V have long been the best-selling models for Toyota and Honda now, outselling Camry and Accord. Those sedans are still very much available and sell well, just not the volumes they once did. But buyers definitely have the choice there.
If you’re a Ford/Chevy/Dodge shopper – Where are the sedans?
Midsize sedans at Chevy and Ford also coexisted with a crossover for years and years, and the crossover outsold it. It wasn’t for lack of updates, as the Malibu and Fusion received updates at the same pace as the Equinox and Escape.
Malibu sales were climbing in its 7th generation through 2012, but began to fall each year only really picking up with the launch of the 9th gen for MY2016 and then falling again. Meanwhile Equinox sales rose steadily each year throughout the 2010s, other than a dip in 2016 before setting records for the model each of the next 3 years.
At Ford, Escape and Fusion sales were pretty equal in volume all through the first half of the 2010s, with each cresting 306k in 2014. But while the Escape continued to grow incrementally through 2018, Fusion sales began falling each year after that.
To be fair, I don’t think it’s as simple as a tit-for-tat sales decision especially with those brands, more business decisions like they just wanted the plant capacity for something else. But I also don’t think people are as committed to the vehicle type as we might think. By the same reasoning – did people buy their sedans because they truly wanted a sedan or was that a case of “what they had available?” It’s not like those brands were consistent in any of their offerings over the years for a buyer to be loyal to a nameplate. If someone is vehemently opposed to the crossover, they have options from other brands and will leave the fold. And that’s something those companies have shown they’re comfortable with over the years.
*didn’t mention Dodge because where is any product for them? lol
The “Do We Shock You?” video sums up my response perfectly. Meh.
It seems like they have copied the Cybertruck playbook – double down on the crazy. The jury is still out on how that is going.
Dirty secret of the auto industry: Larger vehicles do not cost that much more to produce than smaller ones. A lot of the cost of a vehicle is in the engineering, tooling, and regulatory compliance. Proportionally little is in additional materials.
However, consumer taste associates larger with more expensive in the vehicle realm, automakers tend to charge far more even if they are on the same platform as a much smaller vehicle.
Given the preferences of the North American market, I am surprised automakers kept producing small cars and sedans for as long as they did. Same with sports cars.
As for sedans, I suspect only a handful of the most popular will remain as viable options in the near future. Either they bloat themselves into irrelevance and sales collapse, or they were also-rans that weren’t bringing in much – if any – profit and walking away from the market is the more fiscally sound argument.
If I had to buy a new car today, it probably would be a Mazda3 sedan or Honda Civic sedan. I hope they stick around.
Re: Jaguar. Marketing is certainly a thing. The internet is a thing as well. As much as the ad campaign screams that this company has no idea where it’s going and the odour of marijuana smoke emanates strongly from that boardroom, the hot takes of social media as the reaction are just as dumb. Mostly, “avant garde” marketing without product gives me the sense of a dying brand.
Dirty secret of the auto industry: Larger vehicles do not cost that much more to produce than smaller ones. A lot of the cost of a vehicle is in the engineering, tooling, and regulatory compliance. Proportionally little is in additional materials.
I’ve been making this point ever since I started writing. Small cars were mostly a loss leader to get you on the product ladder.
And, at least in the US, a way to offset the effects of larger and more profitable cars on CAFE. Those discounted Escorts and Cavaliers were subsidized by full-sized wagons. The shift to footprint-based bands helped get rid of that.
Which has me asking… where’s this crossover between size and profitability? Because one thing lost in this whole argument is volumes of scale.
Because for most of automotive history, something like a Civic certainly wasn’t (isn’t?) a loss leader.
Jag is serious, it’s real, the car will garner a similar response and then it and the ad campaign will slowly fade into the “oh, I remember that” category.
I agree. This will be a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live one day. Sometimes marketing misses wildly, and I think Jaguar’s serious attempt was misguided. Contrast these ads with the version Taco Bell did a few years ago: super fashionable people in Hunger Games settings eating… cheap burritos?! It was borderline satire, and I don’t think Jaguar got it.
But press is press, and people are indeed talking about a company most people probably forgot about in the ’90s. I remember when I saw an F-Pace in person and I thought “oh, Jaguar finally got around to making a Cayenne”.
This Jaguar ad campaign reminds me of a certain state’s Meth: We’re On It campaign. A lot of WTF were they thinking rage, then quickly forgotten.
I’m guessing a lot of people have vague recollection of it, but not many can identify the state. (Hint: the governor that approved it will soon be our Secretary of Homeland Security.)
In a year or two, this will be good for a chuckle and no one will be buying Jaguars.
The holder of an account named “statespirit” with an American flag logo and bitching aimlessly about “woke” does not own two Jags. They’re hopping on a perceived bandwagon for attention.
Such is the way for both sides. Clout seekers are clout seekers, regardless of political association, they’ll look for something to rant about on their garbage social media app.
Meh, the biggest MAGA dingus in this area drives a Range Rover with a Trump 2024 wrap. apparently making America Great Again doesn’t involve, you know, actually driving American cars.
Miatas Always Get Attention
(Especially those lovely Speeds, oh my yes)
Finally, a maga that I can get behind!
No, but it does involve keeping several mechanics, tow truck drivers and loaner rental personnel gainfully employed, so there’s that.
It clearly involves driving a “British” vehicle from a brand owned by the Chinese!
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a single “two-Jaguar” family in the entire country (outside of collectors). Personally, I don’t even know a single Jaguar owner anymore.
Yeah I have one – but every jag owner knows you cant count on that one to keep running all the time. I have 2 other cars to help out when the jag is having one of its…. time-outs
That is almost certainly a PR bot account run by some overworked intern. You can absolutely buy this kind of PR, and as we can see it generates a response. The solution is, as ever, just fucking ignore everything on social media.
I want to believe the Jaguar rebrand is some elaborate Bond Villain-esque 4D chess move with more twists than a mountain road but we’ll see. They’re probably still cooked regardless.
I would dearly love to see the Jaguar ad campaign come to an end with a Pythonesque “No, no, no, NO” commercial that reveals a lovely leather-lined grand touring beast and a return to the classic logo at the end. Sadly however, I’m pretty sure that Jaguar has gone all-in on whatever this is and has decided to try to sell high-end mobility devices to sledgehammer-wielding fashion victims and guys that look like refugees from an art installation in the 80s.
Stop that – it’s silly.
Calling the Jag rebrand as “woke” is the 21st century end game version of Martin Niemöller’s confession. How do people function with so much blind intolerance and hate?
Good take on the Jag thing. They did grab attention. Hate to see Jag die. Germany appears to be caught in a perfect storm. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out, but the country is going to end up reduced in power and influence for a while. If people want cars at a reasonable price they need to lobby their reps to fix the CAFE and EPA regs that let the manufacturers end run the intended rules and build behemoth trucks and suvs.
People’s memories are so short, that by the time Jag actually does have a new car to sell, no one (except us, of course) will remember this ad campaign and will just wonder why the new cars have a sans serif logo with no leaping cat. Meanwhile, the stupid ads make sure no one forgets about Jag at all until that day.
No, they’re only Jagking!
If you ask me, they’re just jagking off.
What a witty jaguar.
I’d like to see a deep dive into the real reasons that people have shifted to SUV’s and crossovers. Because it can’t truly be that they are “bigger” because for many of them they aren’t really bigger. Taller, maybe. The AWD false sense of security, although a lot of them aren’t even that anymore. Is it just that we’ve reached a tipping point that if you’re driving a low vehicle you can no longer see around 60+% of the other vehicles on the road? Certainly SUV’s of today are “safer” than the ones of the 90s when I lived in Detroit and rollovers during the morning rush were a daily occurrence. (Thanks VSP). But there has to be more to it than this…. Is it just that collectively we can’t lower our ample selves into a car-height seat anymore?
Light trucks have less aggressive CAFE requirements than passenger cars, and traditionally/until very recently, sold for more money (higher margins) than a close equivalent car
Say it again, louder for those in the back.
For consumers, CUV’s now have *good enough* fuel economy for the difference relative to sedans not to hurt, the extra space is nice, and the sedan offerings, hobbled by the stricter CAFE regs, aren’t compelling at the cost/benefit they’re able to offer.
Regulators wrote regs that (intentionally or otherwise) incentivized CUV’s and punished cars, and then sat back and scratched their head about why the fleet average fuel consumption wasn’t improving anymore. Weird. It must be the customers’ fault.
Also, the AWD thing (i.e. that everyone is now convinced they can’t drive in even rainy weather without it) is very associated with SUVs in people’s minds, so though plenty of cars are available with it, the connection to the big boxes is hard to shake.
It’s going to continue to be a problem with the EV switch over, taller, heavier vehicles need bigger, heavier battery packs to get the same range as smaller, lower slung cars
Yes, now the car companies are going to have to try and unwind what their marketing departments have spent the last couple of decades making popular – tall, butch-looking cars have lousy ‘demand energy’ and thus require big batteries to have reasonable range, which makes them unaffordable. Whoops.
So far they’re trying to gaslight CUV customers by making BEV ‘CUV’s’ that are suspiciously compressed in the height direction. Almost like they’d be better suited as hatchbacks or station wagons, but those are evidently verboten marketing terms.
Hyundai *almost* got it right with the Standard Range Ioniq 6, but then they poison-pilled it by limiting the power way down to hair-shirt levels (150 hp) even though a 53 kWh battery pack capable of a C-rate of 4 should be able to deliver something like 285 horsepower – A sub-4000 lb rear wheel drive EV with 240 miles of range and nearly 300 hp sounds like a recipe for a lot of grins to me, shame they didn’t lean into it.
I can answer for my wife. She likes sitting up higher, esp in today’s traffic. And she doesn’t really care about the handling of a CUV vs sedan. Modern CUVs handle fine for most people.
My wife is 5’2″ and likes sitting up higher. Her opinion matters.
I have an intermittently janky back and it is painful for me to do extended periods with my legs extended in lower riding cars. I’m a very active person, still rock a 9-3 convertible, but more than an hour in that position will cause my back to nag for a week.
I drive a fun car right now but will probably go back to a small- to mid-size SUV in a couple of years. It isn’t fun to be so much lower than 90% of the other vehicles on the road. And I do have to make a bit of a concious effort to look like getting in and out is easy. And I can’t drive around with my dog in the very back or fit as much of my kids’ crap as my husband’s truck can.
Yeah, tell me about it. I’ve daily commuted a 91 MR2 turbo to work most every day in the SF Bay Area since 1999, and between the increase in both vehicle sizes as well as numbers on the road, It’s not much fun anymore. Especially at 6’2 and 57 and counting years, but I REFUSE to give in to a CUV/SUV, at least for now…
As someone who is fairly tall (I’m 6′ 3″) I would like to hear more about how, exactly, you are able to fit into a MR 2?!?
When I shop for cars it is an exercise in so much futility when looking for anything fun like that. I would love a Miata but couldn’t fit in those, to say nothing of the Honda S2000 (I couldn’t even bend my knee enough to get my legs in the thing).
Are you all torso with stubby legs?
Your last sentence is the real reason: we’re all too fat for normal cars.
IMHO, it comes down to (primarily) one thing. Ingress and egress.
The boomers are aging, and it gets difficult to get into and out of a car when the seat is a foot (30cm) below your butt. SUVs win that by allowing you get not have to “fall down into” your seat or “get up out of” your seat.
SUVs are available. Even at a dealership that may offer a new sedan, they will have many fewer on the lot than the comparable (usually on the same basic floorpan) SUV.
I’d like a wagon / hatchback for the dogs. There aren’t many non-SUVs that offer a rear door with a flush opening to the cargo area. Wife commutes and we’re in a snowy area so AWD is a thing. We don’t need it on every car, but we do on hers.
I’d love a Corolla hatchback with a nicer interior and AWD. Hybrid with rear-mounted electric motor for AWD functions would be fine. I’m not taking the thing off-road, just don’t want my wife to get stuck trying to pull onto a snowy street. I’d be Ok with a camry / accord wagon with a similar drivetrain. If they don’t build it, I can’t buy it.
For me, the real reasons that I drive a crossover (a Soul) are: 1) I got a hail-damaged one with only 8K on the clock for half of KBB, 2) I’m an old fart and it’s way easier to get in and out of than, say, the Accent or Aspire I owned in the past, 3) it’s got good visibility (that may coincide with your argument about low vehicles), 4) it’s got great cargo capacity and access compared to a sedan, and 5) most of my driving is city stop-and-go, so MPG is going to suck no matter what (average 24 over 9 years). It’s got pretty good safety ratings (if you don’t count theft). But I’m almost certainly not your typical buyer, though I did buy a new vehicle once, 26 years ago.
I mean, I get what Jaguar was trying to do, I also get they while they were probably expecting some sort of WTF Internet outrage which counts as buzz and engagement these days, they likely weren’t expecting the “anti woke” pile on.
Still, this is an aging British brand in slow decline owned by an Indian conglomerate. They had to figure out *something* to shake things up.
Their mistake was really in the preannouncement. They probably could have tried to let the car speak for itself, then layer the branding on top.
For Jaguar, they have brand recognition, so could see them going the Harley Davidson route, Jaguar the T-shirt, Jaguar the coloring set, Jaguar the lunchbox. But for cars, especially as an EV, they could do stuff like a nice convertible, there are almost no EV convertibles, except maybe the Smart ForTwo Cabrio EV, and for good reason as the aero sucks, but that’d stand out.
Jaguar the Flamethrower. (The kids love it!)
Want and SUV but pay Sedan prices? Get. A. Wagon. But then nobody bought them and now the only wagons on sale in the US are high performance German land yachts. Hatchbacks are still out there and nearly as good on the smaller end of the spectrum, and liftback sedans are an incredibly compelling in-between, but nobody buys those either. What a shame.
I really like the new Buick Envista. It’s called a crossover, but it’s maybe an inch or two taller than previous-gen hatchback cars. I’m starting to see more and more of them as people realize they’re reasonably priced yet deliver the stuff that usually pushes people toward believing they have to own a big SUV.
Problem with that is that a station wagon is almost always going to get at least slightly worse fuel economy than the sedan it’s based on – more glass, more steel, more weight, and that will count against the passenger car side of the manufacturer’s fleet average. But, make a crossover or SUV that gets even worse fuel economy than the wagon would have, and you can count it toward the light truck side, where it would actually improve the final average there, offsetting big pickups and SUVs.
I own two Audi Allroad wagons, a 2017 and a 2018…….both get incredible fuel mileage – on a recent trip to Hallet from KC I was averaging over 35 mpg. My daily is a classic Mini, it doesn’t even get that mileage!
I have the Audis because A) the wife likes them (it functions as a giant purse for her) and B) for me its all weather/conditions ability, plus it’s fairly quick.
I have the Mini because I always have had one and I like them because they’re fun to drive. The not being able to see around anything else issue really isn’t one – I just pass them and go on!
And I’m of the oldest boomer generation, and while creakey and tired and stiff, I still manage to get in and out of my Mini just fine.
I know the reason I haven’t had a sedan in 10+ years and won’t buy another one is cargo carrying. It is a pain to put anything larger than a suitcase in a sedan. I know most have fold down rear seats but trying to jam things through a trunk opening is not fun. A wagon or SUV is much easier for larger cargo. I used to drive wagons but now it is almost impossible to find a wagon that is not european, which based on my experience (and that of my co-workers and family) will be unreliable and expensive to fix. I have a larger hatch back which works for me for now. The higher seating position of a SUV/Truck is nice and now with number of SUVs on the road, the visibility when driving in your typical sedan is poor due to all the tall vehicles on the road.
Very much this. Didn’t used to be this way, but the way sedans are styled now they have very tiny trunk openings. Even if the actual volume is large the small opening makes it useless for larger items. The hatchback shape of an SUV is just more practical.
I’d DD a wagon if I could (even put in an order for a TourX but it was canceled on me) but nobody makes them besides the mega-$$ Euro ones.
Also you can’t see out the back of them. Hatchbacks give much more visibility.
As a Jag owner here who doesn’t have 200k-400k for my next car. I could really care less. At this point their advertising is the same as Bentley, Rolls, Louis Vuitton, Rolex.. just over expensive shit that I have no way to purchase, and never will, so I tune out.
No, probably not
But you know what IS serious? The Jatco Xtronic CVT!
Amazing that there are still vast swaths of people in this country who act like they were time-travelled from 1746 and the mere sight of an androgynous model in an ad campaign has them rolling around on the floor and speaking in tongues.
Remember when, uh, “traditionalists” made fun of “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”? They sure have become delicate snowflakes!
Some people see a non-white person in an ad and jump immediately to “woke”.
When you’re entire cast is white, that’s just choosing the best people. When it’s diverse, you obviously excluded all the qualified white people in order to appear woke and appease the DEI gods (who I’m pretty sure are just chronically online 20-somethings).
The old white hatemongers at work love to turn on fox news and talk about how ending DEI is a “10-4” from them and that we should carpet bomb Haiti from end to end, then follow up with napalm, because of the gangs shooting at planes.
I’m not making this up and I’m not exaggerating. The racists are out and proud again.
Apparently when you don’t use DEI you end up nominating a bunch of rapists to the Cabinet, so apparently it’s crucially important.
Early-1970’s David Bowie is looking down on us from Bowie Heaven and laughing.
I would like to hear more about this “Bowie Heaven.”
That might actually make church fun if I heard stories about what I have to do to get into Bowie Heaven.
Apparently, the ad was actually done by Jaguar Land Rover’s in-house marketing department rather than an outside agency, which might explain a lot of the issues. It’s the big budget equivalent of a local plumbing and heating company sticking need glasses on a 5 year old and having him stumble through some lines about a Bradford White water heater special
I’ve had one person tell me it was done internally, and someone else tell me the opposite (both first hand sources). So I’m not sure where the truth lies.
It does seem a bit too big and well produced to be internal, but who knows? I would expect JLR to have a fairly shoestring type operation in house
My local plumbing and heating company does ads at the second run theatre where they flush different objects through a toilet, asking “will it flush?”
I am way more inclined to buy their products after seeing their ads, much better than the Jaguar campaign.
I like doing business with companies that have a sense of humor
There’s a running gag between a friend and I about the absurd things toilets advertise being able to flush. It started with a “bucket of golf balls” but has since been raised to “seven billiard balls,” both of which are actual hang tags on toilets at home depot. I should see what you can flush at Lowe’s.