I spent the better part of my working time last week researching and writing a considered long form piece about the tumultuous history of Jaguar and how the Coventry car maker found itself in the unenviable position of having to totally redefine its brand in a last gasp attempt to stay in business. This was all in preparation of the reveal of the new Jaguar EV concept reveal tonight at Art Basel in Miami (my VIP invite got lost in the post).
As I blearily awoke this morning the portrait of Matt I keep hanging in my wall was angrily flashing its eyes at me, Thunderbirds style. “Bag Open. Cats everywhere. Get on it” He growled. He wasn’t wrong. Overnight the internet has done its thing and the new Jaguar Type 00 has leaked.
It appears British newspaper The Independent had received official images ahead of the reveal tonight under embargo. That post now appears to have been removed but the internet does not forget and here at the Autopian we were not under embargo anyway. Now I’ve had enough coffee to sink a battleship let’s have a look and see what we think.
The usual caveats apply: I’m going off limited information here – I have managed to glean a few extra details from various sources (I met a shady-looking guy in an underground car park in central Coventry) but specifics remain lacking. We don’t know the dimensions, and we’re going off studio images so can only talk about what they show us. And as usual, to really understand you need to see a car in the metal.
Here’s What We Could Have Won
A couple of weeks ago, the cancelled X351 Jaguar XJ leaked onto the internet. During my time at Land Rover, I saw this car back in 2018 and can confirm this is indeed, or rather was the EV XJ. Back when Mr. Tata was still alive every six months or so there would be a big board level presentation for him on upcoming products. At the time the Jaguar and Land Rover studios were still separate – Land Rover was at the main campus in Gaydon and Jaguar was tucked away on an industrial estate in Whitley. So it made sense to bring all the Jaguar stuff over to Gaydon. Some were finished hard models, some were clays. So I was privy to all the future production Jaguars and concepts. There was a J-Pace SUV to sit above the F-Pace (no problem in revealing this as it’s common knowledge) and everything else was as you’d expect. These cars were then cancelled as part of the revamp and one absolutely incredibly beautiful and exceptional proposal aside, nothing of value was lost.
The Side Profile
First, this is a heavy-looking car. We know it’s going to be physically heavy because it’s a big luxury EV. But Jaguar Type 00 looks visually very heavy – it has big wheels (I’m guessing 24”) for two reasons. First, big heavy cars need big brake rotors to stop them, even though regen does counter this to a degree. Secondly, as a car goes up in size you need to nudge other dimensions up including the wheels to make sure everything stays in proportion. As you go up in wheel size, on a road car this means the wheel arch opening is pushed further and further up relative to the bodyside. Consequently, the wheel arch openings start wrapping further around the wheel as the body side gets closer to the ground plane. On an SUV this isn’t a problem because the bottom of the bodyside (the rockers) should be higher up and more in line with the wheel centers. But on a road car, it can give the impression of the whole car sagging towards the road making it look heavy. Compare it next to a Rolls Royce Spectre, a car the production Type 00 will be a competitor for, and see how successfully it hides its bulk in profile.
Also in the side view, particularly in the bottom half, I’m seeing some Range Rover. The crisp shoulder line, the kick-up of the tail behind the rear wheel, and the feature line along the bottom of the bodyside all scream Range Rover. This is exacerbated by the verticality of the front and rear of the car – the new full-size Range Rover and Sport have sharply docked tails. I heard that the initial sketch of this car was done by Massimo Frascella before he departed for Audi. Frascella was McGovern’s right-hand man at Land Rover for decades before Ian Callum retired and McGovern used the opportunity to bring both the Jaguar and Land Rover studios together. So maybe that’s where this Range Rover influence comes from.
From The Top
Straight top-down views are normally a bit boring and not used for media shots because they don’t show an awful lot other than the roof and hood. Here we can see some longitudinal strakes over the passenger compartment. What purpose do they serve? Behind that is what looks to be the trunk. Judging by how much the opening is inset from the edge of the C pilar the intention must have been to keep the shut lines away from the edge, lest they end up with two panels messily meeting at ninety degrees like a Cybertruck.
You can see the rear track is significantly wider than the front – lesser commentators will give you some bullshit about how this makes the car look squat and muscular and like an animal ready to pounce. It’s a bunch of crap because you can achieve much the same visual trickery with clever surfacing. For me what’s slightly more concerning is it looks like the front and rear of the car are from two completely different vehicles. Once the back half gets past the wheels has a lot of what we design wankers call ‘plan shape.’ That is the bodywork tapers in towards the center of the car, like the hull of a boat. This means you don’t have bulky corners and helps give an impression of speed and sleekness. But in real life, you never look at a car from the top – it would have been better to try and dovetail the side a bit.
Compared to the back of the car the front appears to stop abruptly – again in front of the front axle it looks like they were so determined to get the wheels as far forward as possible they didn’t leave enough room for the bodywork to flow smoothly. Look at how quickly the hood/funk shut lines change direction. They’re forced into this awkward transition because they have limited space to turn and meet the inner part of the front lights. There’s a very visible ‘corner’ running across the width of the car just ahead of the front wheel arches which is at odds with the vast expanses of uninterrupted sheet metal at the back.
Rectangles. Rectangles Everywhere
The front and rear graphics are both made up completely of rectilinear elements. The small horizontal lighting graphics are simple and out of proportion meaning there are vast expanses of nothing below and between them. It all just feels so stark and rigid – nothing is radiused and there’s barely any curvature visible. This is partly a trick of looking at an image that is necessarily reduced in scale. I know on the actual car there will be a degree of curve present because horizontal dead straight lines appear to sag – something James Dyson found out the hard way because when he was attempting to build his own car he thought he knew better than professional car designers and didn’t hire any. But I’m digressing.
The straight lines continue inside. The hard-edged seats look like a bench that’s been yanked out of a Coventry bus station. The slats and strakes theme from the outside are replicated on the instrument panel upper. There are no visible screens or gauges, or indeed any controls whatsoever. I wouldn’t be putting my faith in a mind-control helmet designed by JLR so I assume there’s some concept car surprise and delight bullshit going on that we’ll find out more about later. It’s certainly not a leather and wood-lined comfort cocoon-like Jaguars of old. Like the exterior the interior is very sparse and spare – it feels like a high-tech medical waiting room in a sci-fi computer game. Except not all the visual assets have loaded in properly.
One of the great myths about EVs that I’ve done my best to dispel is that because there’s no bulky ICE engine and gearbox designers and engineers will have a lot more freedom to start getting wild with proportions and acres of interior space will be liberated.
This overlooks two things – firstly EVs still have a lot of crap to package. Motors can go on axles sure, but you still have control modules, onboard chargers, battery management systems, and all manner of black boxes to find room for. This is why smaller EVs don’t have much of a frunk, even if they are RWD like the Honda e. Secondly, the market is generally pretty conservative. The Jaguar iPace was about as revolutionary as it was possible to go in terms of volumes – and purchase price issues aside look how that faired. Judging by the cab rearward shape of the Type 00 I can only hope this thing has a huge frunk – because they’ve almost pushed the shape into caricature. There’s so much dash-to-axle and the roof line is so low. It’s a bit like when auto design students discover these characteristics for the first time and decide pushing them beyond the limits automatically makes a better-looking car.
We must remember this is only a concept. The actual production car will be a four-door GT. This is only a preview of the visual style of future Jaguar models. It’s certainly striking, but you’d struggle to call it beautiful. It’s also monolithic and slabby.
Next to a Rolls Royce Spectre it feels like an ill-considered sixties concrete tower block next to the Seagram building. Similar ideas and ethos but one is much more successful in terms of execution. Gerry McGovern got his love of Modernism from the rebuilding of Coventry after it was bombed flat in the war, but visiting the city now you’d be hard-pressed to recognize the optimism and hope that drove those concrete ideals. Let’s hope this brutal revamp is more successful, because there are a lot of jobs depending on it.
All Photos Jaguar, Probably
Ah, I wondered what the designers of the 2011 Mediocrity were up to lately!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GL1T-JVpgQ
That’s awesome.
The Mediocrity looks 10X more real than the cartoon images above.
That’s because it was real! It was a Kia Optima covered in fiberglass. 🙂
If the Mediocrity was streamlined to a sub-0.20 Cd value and kept the same frontal area, it wouldn’t look mediocre anymore, and would actually be quite extraordinary in many metrics as a result without much added expense. Give it the rear wheel skirt, a grill no larger than necessary for cooling, and NACA ducts where appropriate. Go full retard on Cd reduction(at least within the context of the car being usable and easily serviced), damned be styling. Nothing else on the market would look like it.
Then you can get rid of the 4-cylinder front drive layout, and make it a RWD V8, and still get excellent fuel economy, and segue that into an affordable EV sedan along side it.
Sadly, I have friends who’d love that thing.
I didn’t think it could get worse than the stupid advertising campaign but they done went and did it
Well, they had a good run. Sad to see another British marque go.
‘Tis the season!
Haven’t seen such a pink nightmare since Ralphie’s bunny suit.
At least with the interior, someone has finally fenced off the passengers amorous advances!
This is equally terrible and fantastic. It looks almost exactly like it fell out of Night City. I applaud and boo the designers for something that looks like a 15 year old’s idea of
T H E F U T U R E.
It needs to be said, though, this is really from Tesla’s cybertruck school of design but… less stupid.
Got a sweet little unexpected architecture lesson at the end there.
Must have gotten inspiration from looking at commercial air conditioning units because the rear definitely looks like one. This isn’t a very good design…. IMHO…
The designers requested a trip to San Tropez for inspiration.
They were given an Uber ride to Home Depot and a subscription to TinkerCad.
Screams concept. Its 2 door when they say 4 door GT will be the first new model. I’ll wait to see the actual car before passing judgement.
Glad it’s Pepto pink, the design makes my stomach upset.
I thought I’d hate this more than I do. I’m a fan of pushing the envelope, especially when a brand is dying on the vine. In a way, Cadillac did this in the early 2000’s with the Art & Science design movement. Granted, the internet was nowhere near the vitriolic hellscape that it is now so I’m sure we all would have ripped that to shreds at the time.
Either way, I’m very interested to see where this goes next. Kudos to Jaguar for doing something different.
It’s strange. I don’t hate it, but that center divider’s gotta go.
I wonder what the price point is going to be. I wouldn’t get it in pink, but I’d drive it. Someone make it British Racing Green.
This is so much worse than I ever could have imagined.
So you’re saying JLR has overachieved?
Overachieved at creating a car uglier than a Cybertruck? Yes.
This and the Cybertruck would be the perfect two-car garage if you had a spare airplane hanger to fit them. Oh, and if you were an objectively bad person.
In other words, this could still be part of a Jaguar head-fake? Is this rendering the “New Coke”?
Here’s hoping this is the box the actual car comes in.
Wait, is this a Jag or the new Pink Panther Panthermobile?
I was thinking Lady Penelope’s new ride…
Still waiting for the freedom of EV architecture to bring us Art Deco and pre-war inspired beauty. If I had been still holding my breath, this would have collapsed my windpipe
My opinion/observation: the industry doesn’t want to give us a timeless design that doesn’t go out of style. It will sabotage the planned obsolescence ethos that has existed in the auto industry for decades.
Imagine making the same design for decades on end, sharing the same parts, with the cars designed to be repaired by your average Joe. You won’t be able to extract the maximum amount of money from people anymore…
If I ever buy a new car, it may be an Aptera.
Are these some the most awful press photos in recent times? I know they’re leaked, so better stuff might be incoming, but still.. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this part of commercial tie-up with the new Barbie 2 movie.
There was a RR Sport one recently that was awful. Showed the car with smoke pouring off the front tyres.
Haha!
Needs moar white paint.
All the design principles of Soviet East German, but painted pink. This thing looks like the Stasi went woke because they were getting bad Yelp reviews. With ironically, this thing will have the same drag coefficient of the Berlin Wall. I’m just glad to know the one space heater left in a Coventry strip mall that is now Jaguar HQ, is in fact that designers muse. Prison looks more inviting than this. This is legally hostile architecture. This thing looks so heavy RFK Jr’s first act will be dose it in beef tallow and set it ablaze. All SpaceX flights are now canceled, as this car has increased Earths gravity three fold. The Lithium required to power this thing is 1/3rd the domestic product of Chile annually. The Sultan of Brunei declined buying it, he was quoted as saying “Oh, don’t think I have the space to park it.”
The drag coefficient is more dependent on things like smooth surfaces and flush details, as well as a flat underbody. So this is probably a lot more aerodynamic than it looks to the untrained eye.
I could see it getting a Cd value into the low 0.3X or even upper 0.2X range. Coupled with the massive frontal area, it’s still a pig.
My background is in bike racing and thus bike aerodynamics, and I realize cars are a different beast. But surface and flush details aren’t really the end all be all. Shape matters a lot in aerodynamics. TBH, this looks like they’re going for the “make it a massive Naca Foil” thing that the Cybertruck did. The problem seems like the ground effect would inhibit dispelling air though the underbody, and you would get a nice big air dam right at the front splitter. It looks like the front nose angles down a bit to resolve some of this, but splitter is going to create turbulence. Granted, I’m sure they wanted some level of downforce here, so they weren’t going full marginal aero gains. Still, all the smooth surfaces aren’t going to overcome what looks like a large frontal smashing without a pass through on the bottom. I’m with Toecutter here, it looks kinda aero, but not spectacularly aero.
Checking back to see if the photos had a “Roast Me” sign in front of them… 🙂
The only thing this comment lacks is something insulting about the designer’s parentage.
It’s too bad EVs don’t emit lithium particles as they drive, I feel like that might have beneficial effects on society.
There’s a brutalist influence here, but as if an anime studio intern designed it. Also, it has the frontal surface area of an OBS Ford truck, which can’t be good for efficiency.
I guess they had to cook up a new logo because the old one wanted nothing to do with this.
Should we have the funeral for Jag now…or???
Wait, isn’t this the coffin?
I’m getting Pepto Bismol vibes from that color, which seems appropriate. Also, will the orange plastic track this thing runs on be included or sold separately?
It looks like Jaguar asked AI to design a car that makes you forget about emotions, stifles joy, sterilizes excitement, and finally achieves no one’s goal of erasing sex.
“Nailed it.”
I can imagine the commercials, with a voiceover:
“Where are you going?
Nowhere. There is no reason to drive. The world is a cold place; it is less than unforgiving. It is without the capacity to feel or care. To drive would be to have intent, and there is no intent. There is only existence, and then one does not exist. To be alive is simply a quirk of fate, animation of flesh that begins to die from the moment of birth…”
Voiced by Werner Herzog.
Reminds me of a comic book drawing.
I don’t hate it, but I don’t think this will ever make it out of computer rendering.
Reminds me of a bloated Chrysler Crossfire.