Jaguar’s Art Basel event is starting! Let me see if I can live blog any of this! Here’s the livestream!
Here’s what we know: 1000 hp, 430 miles of range! Those are fantastic made-up numbers! The colors are “London Blue” and “Miami Pink!” The most powerful Jaguars ever, we’re told, and it seems to check out.
According to Jaguar, here’s more details:
“The engineers target a maximum driving range of 430 miles (692 kilometers) in the EPA cycle. In the more optimistic WLTP, the gran tourer will do 478 miles (770 kilometers) before running out of juice. Thanks to fast-charging capabilities, the EV will add 200 miles (321 kilometers) of range after juicing up the battery for only 15 minutes.”
Ah! I can finally embed the video:
We finally get a look at the taillights, too:
Two taillights, but oriented one atop the other, as opposed to side by side!
Jaguar’s Chief Creative Officer, Gerry McGovern, here is talking about how Jaguar doesn’t conform, and they’re uncompormisig and creative, pointing out the “exuberant proportions.” It’s all pretty much expected PR sort of talk, mostly meaningless.
They note also the “strikethrough” motif at the rear, which he claims emphasizes the haunches. Doesn’t say anything about it looking like a window unit air conditioner.
Unsurprisingly, comments are turned off.
The presentation was pretty short on details, and we still don’t know how this thing is packaged or what is under that long, dramatic hood. We were told that while these are concepts, Gerry there doesn’t like to do concepts unless they have a chance of becoming real, so I think we can expect to see Jaguars that look like this in the future, but when that future is no one hinted. 2026? 2027? Who knows.
The cars definitely have presence on that stage, and that’s certainly good to see. Especially when you consider what they’ve been making recently:
I mean, the Type 00 certainly has plenty of issues, but it’s not going to get lost in an empty Target parking lot like that I-Pace up there.
I think overall we have to give Jag credit for managing to get everyone interested in them again, which was certainly not the case a month ago. Sure, this whole campaign has felt desperate and derivative and laden with pretentious bullshit and some questionable design choices, but the concepts they’re showing are hard to ignore, and I feel like whatever comes out of the other side of this will be, if nothing else, non-boring. And that means a lot.
I’m including this image of Gerry because it’s the exact expression your dad makes right at that moment where he’s had enough. You were riding the line, and then you did or said that one last thing, and that’s fucking it, he is not having it, not anymore.
You’re in trouble now.
Oh, looks like we have a few more answers, if we dig around. Here’s a bunch more interior images, like this one, showing that the instrument and infotainment screens pop up as needed, because that’s the kind of shit concept cars do:
If you were wondering how cavern-like the rear feels without a rear window, here’s a shot of that:
Yeah, it’s like a cave. Are those seats back there, or luggage platforms? Or folded seats? Why couldn’t they have piut a window back there? And have people been clamoring for a huge copper pipe to bisect the interior of their cars? Did I miss that? Do people want that?
Look at this shit, though: that waterfall-like lump there is travertine. You know, like marble. Comfy, warm marble. Perfect for a car interior, right? What the fuck is this, the Getty Center? No, it’s a car, dummies. Which means maybe limit how many fucking rocks you build into the inside. Heavy, uncomfortable, brittle, does travertine have any qualities you want in a car? Being new and original isn’t a license to be stupid, Jaguar. Come on!
That’s some serious concept-car horseshit right there.
Oh, we do finally find out what these things are. They’re cases for “totems,” little physical tchotchkes that you can put into the big brass tube that’s getting in your way inside to change the car’s “interior moods?”
There. If you were wondering what kind of interface was worse than touchscreens or buttons or anything else, I think we found it: shoving little losables into obtrusive compartments.
Okay, I regret digging deeper. I liked when I just appreciated the dramatic proportions. These get stupider on the inside. Let’s just hope it’s all concept car exuberance and let it lie.
I’m done. Good work, Jag, I guess.
I mean Volvo uses glass from Orrefors and BMW crystals from Swarovski so to up that, Jaguar had to use marble, and probably hand carved from Carrara marble. Car designers just love the opulent shit.
Gerry loves opulent shit.
Yes, important clarification, I mean.. leather pockets on a selvedge denim jacket?
Knowing him a little as I do, that was quite a change from his usual tailored style. That’s definitely some high end designer jacket though – he wouldn’t be wearing it otherwise.
Well, it is nonflammable. In my experience that’s an important consideration in a British car.
And German cars, especially BMW’s with diesel engines. Oh they like to burn, they like to burn like there is no tomorrow…
Are we surprised that a concept car has stupid and pointless design decisions? I thought that was the point of them.
Random thoughts:
I presume this is a large-ish car, but the roofline reminds me of the painful experience of entering and exiting a Lotus Elise with the roof in place.
I wonder if one of the designers thought, “I’m going for the Camaro look, but of course minus the Camaro’s ridiculously large glass area.”
This is the perfect post-apocalypse motor vehicle: lower yourself into the casket-like seating area, insert fetish object adjacent to the ceremonial horizontal hookah pipe, observe the remains of the world through armored personnel carrier windows, enjoy pasta from the fettucine-making machine stashed between the rear seats while waiting for the radiation levels to subside.
Please tell me this was live-streamed from The Onion.
Or that they are selling NFTs of cars.
The large wall between the driver and the passenger will be perfect for a customer who’s spouse hasn’t touched them since they spent $300,000 on this car.
Not a cybertruck
Definitely no road head happening with that thing in the way.
My soul mate, you are.
I think as society we are seeing a very late stage emperor-clothes syndrome. McG knows car design well, and I believe the entire team is designing and pushing not what they like, but what they think people will think it’s cool because a handful of people liked the cyberpunk crap Elon pushed with his truck. Sad!
I wonder if the travertine armrests will have little fancy airbags to prevent passengers wrists shattering in a collision!
And hips.
Ima be honest, I want Jaguar to live. Truly, I do. Give us an actual car and I really hope it succeeds! Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good brutalist slab o’ car. There are confirmed photos of me looking at an Alfa SZ with pure un-gothly joy. I love the XLR too, angular and slabby is my jam. But this just needs to be fleshed out some more. And if we’re making stupid and heavy design choices, lean into the brutalism and swap the travertine for concrete, obviously! As a taste of future design language, I don’t mind it at all. Take some cues from this, sprinkle here and there onto a new actual car, make it not suck to drive, and I will hope and pray that all works out well for Jag.
2026: “Our new Jaguar for 2026 introduces a thick tungsten carbide pillar rising between the driver’s legs from the seat to the steering column.”
I’m a girl, and even I don’t want to think about that in a collision????
This absurd car, the tasteless rebranding . . . it all reeks of a bunch of people sitting around a table, realizing they had absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain, and deciding to go full dummy.
It would look so much better with a traditional Jaguar grille.
On the contrary – the duct taped banana is the perfect metaphorical grill for this car.
Honestly, at any point while they were ogling brutalist architecture and trying to justify a 200lb marble block as an interior design element did anybody step back, take a long look and say “yes, but is it a Jaaaaag?” I’m guessing that dissenters will have been dispatched swiftly with a large yellow sledgehammer.
I feel like the Clarksonian “Jaaaaag” thing is exactly what they were trying to get away from. 60-80-something dudes who already own Jags and currently spend their days dodging coffins aren’t exactly a good customer base to pin your hopes on since they can’t dodge those coffins forever. They might not be alive to buy a car in a few years.
Valid point, failed execution. Why couldn’t they do what VW did with Scout?
I might be an exception, but I was 28 when I bought my first XJ6 4.0. I loved that crap and I love it til this day. And when I bought it and first drove to a dinner with my friends they were absolutely in love with it and one them bought one too. What I want to say with this is, they made absolutely astonishing cars, and I think with that timeless design which if you see it in real life it really starts to speak to you (long, sits deep and somehow have that big cat like charm, you know, you would like to hug it and take it home but you know it could tear you apart in a second) wasn’t a problem that it didn’t speak to younger folks, the problem was that it was not on younger peoples radar. I had the feeling that it was more like a PR problem than a design issue. They tried to correct it, with the Villain-car marketing campaign but I think it was to little too late. This stunt should have happened right after tata bought Jaguar off from Ford. But I guess it’s better now than never….
I’m all for people making unexpected car choices, and a 28 year old picking a Jaguar is certainly unexpected. Of course, that also puts you in a pretty slim minority of Jaguar owners. A car company will not thrive if they’re trying to sell to a minority of their potential owner-base. It’s lame, but it’s reality. It would be cool af if Jaguar knocked it out of the park though and got a fresh younger base of owners!
The only thing they sold me on was that shade of blue. WTF for the rest
“Strikethrough motif”
It would’ve been better if the top and bottom edges of the shoulder and skirt lines were connected with parabolas that doubled as taillights. And then they could’ve mirrored that on the front with diffused LEDs to get rid of the knockoff Toyota FT-3e vibes up front.
The more I look at it the more I’m seeing ways to fix the design and the more I’m getting annoyed at all the unfinished detailing and incomplete lines.
Fix what design ?
It does look more like a buck that you’d do design studies on, doesn’t it?
I was thinking the other way around, it looks like the box an E-Type coupe comes in.
That’s an unboxing video James May should make!
I think Jaguar just failed the Turing test.
Brilliant banana placement! Like a NIST Absurdity standard calibration.
Wait’ll Matt and Beau see the bill for the NIST Standard Calibration banana.
At least the horrible door in the flank of a Bristol held a spare tire. Why does the long interior console look like a bowling ball return device (drawn with shadows to reverse the topography as between the lower middle and upper edge part)?
In honor of the only customers Jaguar has on the US west coast, this should be re-equipped with Waymo systems and sent out to terrify the public
Vehicle this large and you get a can of fix-o-flat.
To quote a certain car salesman: “You think you hate it now…wait until you drive it.”
You know what would have been unexpected? Sticking the legendary Jag V12 under that very long hood.
It’s more 12v than v12 sadly
You mean the one that was legendarily so troublesome the standard repair procedure was to pull it and put in an SBC?
The rotating assembly is flawless. The shitty British injection and ignition was the problem. Ford fixed it and nobody swaps out the 6.0L.
Oh. And it won Le Mans.
That is rather terrible
I was afraid the side compartment would be for something, you know, STUPID. Nice to see that it’s a very practical storage unit for the pretentious version of the Buddy Jesus statue I had stuck to my dashboard twenty years ago.
Buddy Christ.
No, Buddy Jesus. From the Keith Smythe movie Dharma, right?
(Lol, just trying to cover up for my brainfart last night)
In two years you’ll be able to type that into an AI prompt and watch the Keith Smythe film.
“These ingots theatrically deploy to reveal rear‑facing cameras that – like the charging ports and front air intakes – remain hidden until needed.”
Doesn’t look like a camera to me.
Oh, I guess it is “totem” storage.
I’m still firmly thinking, WTF? This has to be satire, right? That presentation video seems like it was pulled straight from a movie spoofing idiots in the car industry. Even the name is silly.
However, the pink version would be the perfect basis for a Batgirl Mobile or as a whip for The Ambiguously Gay Duo.
I think we entered into a post satire society sometime in the mid 2010s. Around then, it started to become almost impossible to exaggerate truth in the interest of comic commentary, as the reality had already surpassed what would have been considered going too far for a properly funny spoof only a few years prior.
I was about to say about at the same time period we encountered a major glitch in the matrix
I had no idea at the time it came out, but the late ’90s really did turn out to be about the human peak. I did, however, agree with Agent Smith.
There were several events that happened within quick succession that caused trauma and created weird society-wide coping mechanisms. In the U.S. those were the Dot Com crash, 9/11, Katrina, and the ’08 crash. We dealt with that by retreating into nostalgia and the corporations locked us into that by refusing to risk anything on any new media. It’s been almost fifteen years of this at this point and it’s like watching the societal version of a depressed person.
The bastard was so right. And I am 98% sure he is now morphed into a Sam Altman shape.
The Good Place
Nope. You are just getting older and wiser. Not falling for the tricks.
It happens.
I was rooting for satire too, buddy, but alas this ain’t the Onion version. It appears real money and effort is being poured into this.
I especially like how they deliberately decided not to put a rear window on it, despite having a large rectangular shape at the exact location where one would be. Such a tease.
$20 says if asked about it, the designer says “it’s because we don’t look back”.
Call the morgue, I am deceased
Jason, What?! The I-Pace is a fairly striking vehicle, especially for a midsized-crossover-type-thing. Did you mean to put the E-Pace, which is, for reasons no one knows, not the electric one?
I always thought the I-Pace was a bold design because it pushed the definition of “SUV” just as far in the direction of “yeah, it’s a hatchback because we expect you to use it like one” as is possible, before anyone else did. It stumbled so the Buick Envista could soar.
I won’t comment further at this time on the design of the 00. I will say that it’s nice that the designer chap has seen fit to celebrate the holidays by hanging a Christmas tree ornament from his ear.