Despite their apparent insouciance cats are loving and loyal companions. When my special best little buddy Mr. Tigg crossed over in 2023 I was devastated; it was the first time in my life I suffered a heartfelt loss. Adrian Veidt’s only real friend was Bubastis, a large red lynx named after the ancient Egyptian sun-goddess, but the sociopathic Veidt callously sacrificed her in his attempt to kill Dr. Manhattan, part of his warped plan to bring peace to a world on the brink of Armageddon. What’s one more life next to the three million you took thirty-five minutes ago? Even I would have spared the cat.
Two weeks ago roughly the same number of idiots took to the internet to express their disgust at the twenty-five-second clip Jaguar released to launch their rebrand. What pricked their rage glands? A mostly harmless if puzzling montage of beautiful people in avant-garde clothing, parading around primary colored backgrounds while a series of Instagram self-help slogans splashed across the screen. It gave the impression of a perfume commercial without the mandatory shot of the Eifel Tower, or an advert from this week’s app-based fashion start up. What started out as genuine bafflement rapidly turned into an eye-rolling new front in the culture war, leading to some seriously vile and bigoted commentary from the sort of swivel eyed loons who have a secret folder labelled Magaret Thatcher on their hard drives. In their lager-addled brains all Jaguar needs to do is return to its role as a purveyor of traditional masculine cars for traditional masculine customers, and En-gur-land will rule the waves once more. I’ve got a newsflash for those mutton-headed bulldog botherers: the customers who bought those cars never existed in numbers large enough to support the company as a going concern.
Like Veidt’s precious Bubastis, the Jaguar these Churchill-fondlers are getting all misty-eyed over is an imaginary creature. There was a time when a Jaguar was a wood-paneled and leather-lined phallus on wheels with feral suggestion bursting out of every curved body panel. Iron fist, velvet glove, yadda yadda. But when this reality held true the company itself was more like poor old Mr. Tigg: an arthritic blind old tabby who pissed on the carpet. A paper tiger held together by the sheer penny-pinching autocratic will of its revered founder, Sir William Lyons. Before we get into dissecting what this all means now that we’ve seen the bloody car, we need to understand how Jaguar ended up in the position of having to blow up its brand to save it.
Humble Beginnings
Plain old William Lyons as he was then known started the Swallow Sidecar Company with William Walmsley in 1922. Walmsley built the sidecars, while Lyons concentrated on the administrative side of the business. To expand they began repairing and repainting cars and renamed the company the Swallow Sidecar and Coachbuilding Company. Their first rebodied car was the Austin 7 Swallow, a brightly colored two-seater that sold for £175 but with its unique body resembled something much more expensive. Demand meant relocating the company from their hometown of Blackpool (a seaside town north of Liverpool) to Coventry in 1928.
After the Second World War Lyons decided using the name SS was no longer a clever idea, so in 1945 the company was renamed Jaguar Cars Limited. Pre-war models went back into production as Jaguars, until in 1948 they were replaced by the Mk V, a lumbering bus powered by the existing Standard straight six that could just about wobble to 90 mph. Lyons had long wanted a luxury sedan that could top the magic ‘ton’ (100 mph) and that same year he finally had an engine powerful enough; one that would go on to define Jaguar for the next four decades: the legendary XK.
That engine along with two cars – the E-Type of 1961 and the XJ of 1968, did more than anything else to define what a Jaguar was. Fast, stylish but raffish. Solid middle-class bowler-hatted types drove upright and uptight Rovers. Horse and hound families drove a Rolls Royce, an Aston Martin, or a Range Rover. Jaguars were driven by shifty grifters; wide boys and villains who appreciated their combination of luxury and performance at a bargain price. Watch any British cops and robbers TV show or film from the sixties and seventies and there will be a Jaguar full of gangsters squealing away from the boys in blue. A Jaguar is a Guy Richie film on wheels.
The Rot Started Decades Ago
By the late sixties, the British motor industry at large was imploding. The government pressured various struggling British OEMs into an unwieldy round of consolidation that by 1968 saw Jaguar firmly ensconced within the bosom of the newly formed British Leyland. Although at the time Jaguar was profitable, Lyons himself was nearing retirement age and had no natural successor, so placing his company under the aegis of Leyland seemed to be the logical thing to do to ensure Jaguar’s survival.
We all know how that experiment in motor manufacturing turned out – the Leyland logo was not nicknamed the flying plughole for nothing. Jaguar was always an awkward fit within the mass market Leyland empire and so in 1986 it was floated off publicly. By now the Jaguar range consisted of one brand new model – the XJ40, and two crocks. The Series III XJ12 was a 12-cylinder third facelift of the original XJ from 1968, and the XJS which dated from 1975. Sir John Egan kept the company above water until November 1989 at which point Ford, attracted by the untapped potential of the company, decided paying £1.6 billion for it was a sound business decision. Unfortunately Jaguar, after years of non-existent investment was more of a basket case than Detroit realized. Newly installed chairman (and ex-Ford executive) Bill Hayden told Gavin Green in the October 1990 issue of Car magazine:
“I was given the usual presentation on what terrific progress Jaguar had made over the years, and was then shown around the factory. I was appalled. I am essentially a manufacturing man. I’ve been to car plants all around the world. Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguar’s factory was the worst I’d ever seen.”
“The labour practices, the demarcation lines, and the general untidiness of the place: it was unacceptable. I think the workforce genuinely thought this was an advanced, acceptable factory. Perhaps they knew nothing different. Whatever, we will get it right.”
Despite pouring money into Jaguar, Ford never did get it right. First the XJ220 launch was all gong and no dinner: the promised V12 four-wheel drive show car became a two-wheel drive V6 and customers wanted their deposit checks back. After that debacle, Detroit squeezed out of Coventry a range of cloyingly retro cars designed around the idea of what Americans thought a Jaguar should be. The X-Type was unforgivably front wheel drive (although there were four-wheel drive versions) because it shared underpinnings with a Mondeo. The DEW98 platform that sired the Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln LS gave birth to the vagina grilled S-Type. The slick, ovoid XK8 could accommodate a pair of golf bags in the trunk but kept the XJS floor pan and had a ride height that wouldn’t trouble the hip joints of Florida retirees. Finally, the XJ40 was tarted up twice before finally being replaced with the brand new but superficially identical aluminum-bodied X350 in 2003. By the mid-2000s Ford themselves were in the shit and offloaded Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata in 2008 for £1.15 billion (about half what it paid), never having made any money on the company.
Tata taking ownership of both gave birth to the modern-day company we know as Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). Although the pairing of two iconic British car companies appears to make some sense on an emotional level, it makes less sense from a building cars point of view – because they make completely different types of vehicles. Nonetheless, modern platforms are capable of incredible acts of contortion – leveraging their expertise in aluminum construction JLR developed the D7 platform which on the Jaguar side of the business birthed a new compact sports sedan, the XE, and a second generation XF in 2015, and the F-Pace SUV in 2016. Lastly, the E-Type finally got a sort of successor with the F-Type, which replaced the XK in 2013. This flurry of new products including the electric iPace gave Jaguar its best year of sales in 2018 at just over 180k units worldwide (as a comparison that year BMW sold 2.5 million). Since then sales have fallen off a cliff, plummeting to just over 60k for 2022. So what the bloody hell went wrong?
The Problems
Two of the main problems have been brand positioning and products. Ford saw untapped value in Jaguar as a potential BMW competitor. In attempting to recoup their monumental investment they moved Jaguar into shark-infested volume waters. It didn’t work because the cars had too much Ford in them and their retro design didn’t appeal to a younger audience that hadn’t grown up with derring-do tales of Le Mans in the fifties. Tata continued this strategy but despite a step change away from the retro design direction thanks to Ian Callum taking over from Geoff Lawson as design chief in 1999, the cars simply weren’t competitive enough. They weren’t as light as their aluminum construction implied and the interiors offered nothing of the traditional Jaguar ambience. The iPace was one of the first full EVs from an OEM that wasn’t Tesla but it was built under contract at Magna Steyr in Austria so it never made any money. It was left to wither on the vine without any further investment or attempt to leverage its early mover advantage. They couldn’t get the CX-75 supercar into production for much the same reasons – a lot of the engineering had been contracted out to Williams so the economics didn’t stack up. The F-Type was oddly positioned – sized like a Boxster and priced like a 911 without the practicality of either. They titted about with various powertrains even inflicting the poor thing with a droning 2.0 liter turbo four, but it still failed to find more than about four thousand sales a year. And they never took it racing, which of all the times JLR pointed the corporate shotgun at their feet, this feels the most avoidable.
Jaguar has never had the sort of consistent, decades-long involvement in motorsport their German competitors have. There were the Le Mans wins in the fifties with the C and D-Type cars but away from the 24 hours these cars had little success. D-Types remain unsold and were converted into the road-going XKSS and they still couldn’t unload them. Remember my earlier remarks about Jaguars being cars for chancers? Cometh the hour, cometh Tom Walkinshaw, a hardheaded racer who thought rules applied to other people. He took the XJS into European touring car racing and then used that as a trojan horse to get Jaguar into Group C racing in the eighties. Their 1988 Le Mans win was celebrated in the UK like we’d won the soccer World Cup and by the same class of people. What price pitching the F-Type into GT3 racing as a works effort using purple, white and yellow as the team colors and then using that scheme as a springboard for high-performance versions of their road cars? The less said about the brief F1 foray the better – this was only ever a corporate branding exercise undertaken at the behest of Ford. Jaguar themselves had little to no involvement.
Under Sir William Lyons the company didn’t modernize because he would rather save a pound today than invest it and save two in the future. Ford thought the answer was giving their own platforms a set of clothes from 1968. They found out to their great expense it wasn’t. Tata invested in all new platforms and with the stunning Callum-designed X351 XJ finally broke free of the stylistic legacy of the 1968 original. It was bold and shocking because it had to be. The F-Pace is as good as it’s possible for an SUV to look – but was it the right product for Jaguar? In hindsight probably not. No matter how great it is, when your sister company in the next room is Land Rover you’re getting to the point of splitting semantic brand hairs.
The Past Is A Gift And A Curse
What constitutes a brand isn’t a fixed point or a single well you can keep pouring from. Jaguar won Le Mans a few times in the fifties, released a couple of legendary cars in the sixties, and then kicked back and said that’s our brand values sorted for the next seventy years. We don’t need to bother doing anything else. Pass me the port old boy. You don’t enrich and progress your heritage by releasing continuation cars from the distant past that no one under sixty-five gives a shit about, and that have about as much relevance to the road car range as a pair of Jaguar-branded socks. Which you can pick up by the way in the reception of JLR Classic when you go and collect your ‘new’ XKSS. Sure they took on Group C in the eighties but to what end? None of the full English breakfast thickos who found themselves getting a French sunburn in 1988 were buying a new Jaguar because the cheapest one cost nineteen thousand pounds and came with cloth seats and wheel trims. Le Mans wasn’t a Jaguar victory – it was another Churchillian Brits against the Dastardly Jerries victory.
War rhetoric and class issues aside, this points to a broader problem Jaguar has with its home audience. There’s a big disconnect between how British car enthusiasts see the Jaguar brand and how the rest of the world sees it. A curious disease infects the British mind, one that demands nostalgia because things were much better when we had an Empire. We’re strangled by an opaque class system and yet completely in thrall to it – King and Country. We recently appointed a German as head coach of the national soccer team, and the most important thing on the minds of mid-wit commentators was: would he sing the national anthem at games? No other modern European country is so insular.
Enter Gerry McGovern
With the departure of Ian Callum in 2019, Gerry McGovern took over as the chief designer of both Jaguar and Land Rover. McGovern is often portrayed by the automotive media as a slightly prickly and aloof character – full disclosure he hired me personally back in 2017 and I knew him a bit two years prior to that – so I can’t help but get the feeling a lot of the ire directed towards the Jaguar rebrand from some quarters was a desire to see the whole thing blow up in his face: a gotcha from automotive journalists.
Growing up in post-war Coventry McGovern is influenced by Modernism – not out of nostalgia but because it looks forward represents a time in history when design was about improving lives. He is not one for heritage or gimmicks; the little Jaguar cub silhouettes in the windscreen band of the E-Pace would never make it out of one of his design reviews alive. McGovern has always been forward-thinking and unsentimental–a look at his greatest hits demonstrates the man knows how to design a good-looking, modern car. This is the point that everybody clamoring for a return to tradition seems to miss, and I’ve made this point before: What resonates on nostalgia-obsessed social media does not translate into sales of cars in the real world. If it did, Jaguar wouldn’t be in the position they are in now. So anyone expecting the new Jaguar to hark explicitly back to the past was always going to be sorely disappointed.
McGovern talks a lot about ‘reductive design.’ Taking away that which is absolutely unnecessary and leaving only a clean, modern form language. You can see this in the progression of successive Land Rover models – compare the details and feature lines on the original Evoque to the latest L460 Range Rover. But here’s the thing – the latest Range Rover is still definitely a Range Rover because it has the proportions, silhouette, and character of one. It’s the sheer surfaces, the hidden-until-lit rear lights, and flush glazing that place it firmly in the here and now.
Further Thoughts On The Type 00 Concept
This reinvention of Jaguar was named Project Renaissance within the company. The three internal design teams were Jaguar, Land Rover, and Design Research (a sort of internal advanced skunkworks based at Warwick University). Each pitched against each other, and after a review at board level the Land Rover team won out. There was some internal strife as a result of this, leading to something of an exodus of the Jaguar design team to the new GM studio in Leamington Spa. But the proposals from the Jaguar team were iterative – newer versions of what had been done before, and this is something the JLR board was keen to avoid. They wanted a complete reinvention of the marque.
In attempting to break so deliberately with the past the new Jaguar needed to be absolutely stunning to shut the naysayers up. Cliché Miami pink color aside, the new Type 00 is devoid of warmth and crucially, movement. The sheer sides and rigid geometric features make the whole thing look blocky and static. There’s too little detailing – on a large car details do a lot of work disguising the bulk – so reducing the grill to a series of embossed horizontal lines in body color does little to help break it up visually. The proportions are verging on the cartoonish – the slide glazing is too shallow – and the passenger compartment needs puffing up to help balance out the sheer amount of car below the belt line.
Athleticism. Lightness on its feet. Movement. Muscularity. Grace. Danger. These are some of the adjectives the name Jaguar brings to mind – and none of them can be used to describe the Type 00 concept. It might sound corny but as a designer one of your jobs is to identify the positive connotations you want your brand to represent and exemplify them visually. This doesn’t mean applying them in the way it has been done in the past – and note none of them are meant to appeal to any one kind of customer. The trick is to capture and interpret these feelings in a new and meaningful way that resonates in the marketplace. It doesn’t mean pandering and redoing what came before. McGovern has talked about a modern sense of occasion for a younger, city dwelling affluent market – it bears pointing out that OEMs do not pull customer archetypes out of their assholes. They have whole departments dedicated to market research. The lens to view this new Jaguar is not as a car, but as a luxury consumer good. Speaking to a crowd at the launch event in Miami, McGovern said “Some may love it now, some may love it later and some may never love it. That’s what fearless creativity does.” In other words, a man who is not afraid of ruffling feathers expects to ruffle a few feathers.
Just over twenty years ago television executive Ronald D Moore presented five minutes of new footage from his reimagined Battlestar Galactica series at a fan convention. The reception from the fans was decidedly chilly. The recasting of Starbuck as a woman had these die-hard bores booing. Eventually one asked Moore outright if he would entertain their wishes to turn the reboot away from his grimdark vision and back towards the earnest, corny look and feel of the original series. No, Moore told them. He had his own ideas for what he wanted to do. Take it or leave it he told them.
Appeasing the loudest voices in the room isn’t a good idea because they are never going to be satisfied. It’s no surprise that the wrong sort of people were upset with the Jaguar rebrand because Jaguars traditionally appealed to the wrong sort of people. The Type 00 is not what they wanted – but going on what we’ve seen so far I’m not sure it has the visual appeal for anyone to want it.
The reimagined BSG is now feted as one of the greatest television series reboots ever made, however.
All photos from Jaguar unless otherwise noted
It certainly looks a lot more like a Jaguar than the new Capri looks like a Capri. Not so sure the blunt front and rear grill makes sense but the body and proportions are OK if it’s intended to go against the Spectre (obviously the road car will have some ground clearance and have wheels that won’t rub even when parked)
And Adrian, you must have made quite an impression on the other designers for them to years later make a car that somehow manages to look goth even in Pink and Baby Blue.
I think you’re correct about Jaguar needing to reinvent themselves and come up with something new, and while this reminds me more of prewar luxury cars, with some hints of classic Jag coupes it is definitely not something that can be mistaken for any other car.
Time will tell if they can capitalize on the attention they’ve gotten these last few weeks, as the attention span of the current social media world is barely long enough for BMW to come up with new special editions before the previous new BMW is forgotten.
The closest I could imagine myself to becoming a Jag owner is if I buy an XJS project to punish myself for something so my opinion on the design of the ’00’ doesn’t really matter as much as it would on a car that could work with my current needs and price range like the Capri (which is technically a Scirocco).
‘Adrian, you must have made quite an impression on the other designers for them to years later make a car that somehow manages to look goth even in Pink and Baby Blue.‘
I thought this too! It’s definitely gothic even in pastel shades!
What’s Bangle up to lately?
Making wine.
Just bought a 2024 F-Type. Very nice car with a great sound and brute power. My wife loves it. I can’t see the thing above being attractive to anyone. My hope is the one I bought will be a collector item at some point due to being the last model year.
I’ve always viewed Jaguar as an old money brand just as I’ve seen Land Rover. If you have enough money, favor sedans, and want the look of a British aristocrat, a Jag is the obvious choice over the German options which, apart from the Mercedes of old, have a much more new money vibe.
But that’s a pretty niche market. And if you have a well-earned reputation for unreliability coupled with a market moving to S/CUVs, that market shrinks even further. Even more when your sister brand is one of the the original SUV brands and also happens to capitalize on the old money, anglophile market.
Now they’re moving to an even more niche market. God bless ’em. I don’t see this experiment working out any better than any of their past iterations.
nice history.
the brand trajectory thru the animal kingdom seems to be swallow-to-jaguar-to-rhino.
not a fan of the 00 design language, just have to see how it evolves and ages.
So why does legacy design language translate to sales (to the extent that it does anyway) for Mini and VW, but not for Jaguar?
Good question. They were (and are) more mainstream propositions, and both have longevity and consistency on their side. Although I would say the only thing retro about the iD Buzz is the two tone paint job.
I would argue that the legacy design language disappeared over 20 years ago. Recent Jags don’t look like Jags. Combine the lack of legacy design language with a reputation for low reliability (which discourages non-Jaguar-interested people from buying the new ones) and, well, that’s one of the contributors to where Jaguar is (in addition to everything else in the article).
“Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguar’s factory was the worst I’d ever seen.”
Brutal.
Also, I never really considered how counterproductive nostalgia was to good design, but you nailed it.
That next line…
…rocked me to the core, because that exactly sums up the company that I work for.
Nay nay nay. I say nay.
Seriously though, thanks for the explanation of what they’re thinking. I hope they beautify that car before they release it though, otherwise I’ll probably be in the camp of never liking it. I always thought the F type was their best looking modern car, but I didn’t have the income for it when it arrived. Now that I do, it’s gone. Probably for the best though, considering the (in)famous Jaguar quality.
Edit:
The concept 00 gives me vibes of cartoon Soviet era villain. Very brutalist almost. I’m not sure that’s the right term, but it describes my feelings about it.
I wonder how much sunk cost fallacy is going to keep them going down this path until Tata finally cuts them off. Then the inevitable will have to happen. Make Jaguar a performance trim level on certain LR models thus:
Range Rover = Luxury
Land Rover = Rugged
Jaguar = Performance
The Land Rover branding is confused enough already.
That itself is a compelling argument to change it, but the proposal also seems quite a waste of the Jaguar name.
I’d rather see Jaguar go out outrageous and flaming than become a trim level that makes promises that can’t be kept.
To be fair the King is about half German, and he never sings the anthem…
I think you touched on the real reason in the article but didn’t make it the focal point – everyone wants SUVs and the other half of JLR is “The SUV Company”, and that’s basically killed Jaguar as a mass market proposition.
Wouldn’t it be a little self-serving for the king to sing God Save the King? 🙂
I always wonder if he sings “God save me-eeeee” in his head when it’s playing.
Did he sing God Save the Queen as a prince?
I believe he did, yes. William certainly sings it about his Dad.
Tarted-up XJ40 or not, my X300 has started more conversations on the street, at the gas station, and in the drive thru of any of the dozens of cars I’ve owned previously.
The X300 is the one modern Jag sedan that deserves to be spoken of with greats like the S1 XJ. It is not only much better looking than the XJ40 it was derived from, but the reliability and fit and finish are excellent – much better the the XJ40. The X308 kept the looks and is faster, but something was lost in the way it rides and drives, and the interior feels lower quality and less bespoke.
If you are going to blow up “Jaguar”, then what’s the point of the whole exercise?
It’s like what happened to Starbucks in Idiocracy. Is it really Starbucks anymore, if it isn’t coffee?
While I’m not a fan of the 00, in production form it may have had a chance if it came with a V12. As an EV, it doesn’t have a chance.
I don’t see this as a copy of nothing, it’s a long nosed car with huge wheels and letterbox windows, typical concept car fair. It’s not bad looking in my opinion.. just a bit cartoonish. As soon as I saw this I thought Nissan GTR blacked out A pillar, ubiquitous ultra slim daytime running lights, and of course the rear lightbar trend which EVERYONE now employs irrespective of the overall design. There is even a false grille of sorts, which I just don’t understand the need for given there is no family grille to link into (like what Audi, Rolls, and BMW) to make the car instantly recognisable.
Also I spotted the bronze bits on the side and instantly recognised that form previous Range Rover products.. not my cup of tea but reinforces that this is maybe someone applying some Range Rover bits to a sports car template.
Hard to say if this will work, as fashion is fickle and so by definition is its target market..
Well they’ve blown up the brand… but it remains to be seen if they will end up saving it.
Often when you blow something up, all you have left is something that is even more hopelessly broken and you realize that in hindsight, you shouldn’t have done that.
Gerry McGovern has been quite successful at taking slab-sided, rectilinear designs (Ur-Range Rover, Land Rover, 1960’s Lincoln Continental) and redacting them into minimalist rectilinear objects. Yay Him.
The issue with Jaguar is that there is but one model – the unloved XJ40 – which has ever been a somewhat rectilinear design (when equipped with the original rectangular headlamps – unlike the facelift with the round headlamps as shown). That XJ40 was unloved because it took a curvy design and made it rectilinear. Everything else in the entire portfolio is curvy. What was needed, and what folks are reacting to, is that a curvy design heritage should have been redacted into a minimalist curvy design.
(Blah-Blah X Type. It was all a matter of timing and perception. Had the X been introduced 3 months before Mondeo – Folks would have LOVED the X Type and Ford buyers would have crowed about how they got a cut-rate Jaguar)
You can talk about disruption and breaking things, etc, etc – We’ve already heard it from Miles Bron.
Truth of the matter is this:
McGovern is exactly the wrong designer for Jaguar.
And
Jaguar is irrelevant.
Sir William Lyons saw prototypes of the XJ40 before he died and gave it his approval.
Old men frequently make questionable decisions before they kick off.
This is a great article – it nails so much about the kerfuffle around Jaguar right now AND the way the enthusiast press and enthusiasts themselves fundamentally misunderstand the world as it is.
A master class – necessary reading.
Thank you.
Masterful Watchmen reference.
Jaguar should hold last rites….now…The plan from what I’ve read is no production for 2025. Come back with all electric vehicles. Starting price to double to $120k. Good luck with that! My friend at a Jag River dealer says the I-Pace is a steaming pile. Nobody will ever buy another one! The old joke is you need to own to Jaguars. One to drive while the other is in the shop. Geely is pushing them towards the drain…Love the history lesson tho! Too bad Jaguar’s history is over.
That was a fine walk through history. Enjoy your writing, and insider perspective. I have to ask, What kind of multiples are they envisioning selling?
That Gerry McGovern Lincoln concept you linked, worked as a re-imagined tribute to past glory, but wouldn’t expect it to sell in large volumes. This 00 concept, to me, reeks of shock value, for shock alone, with no redeemable qualities about it. I find the “blow it up” mentality, juvenile, especially when there is no thought out plan for an improved replacement. (” I have a concept of a plan”) Any endeavor should be undertaken to the best of ones abilities, and I see no evidence of that here. But as a family friend was fond of saying “That’s a view”
For volumes I think less than then thousand a year, but I’m not sure. Certainly that sort of level.
Thank you for the unexpectedly fast response! So it seems expensive advertising, not actually making cars that generate profit.
I agree with Toecutter, that the future for the industry should be dictated by efficiency, both in aerodynamics, and resource allocation, for mass market, affordable vehicles that will hopefully, you know, turn a profit for the manufacturer.
They can make it as nostalgic or modern or swoopy or blocky as they want. Until they can build something that doesn’t have to go back to the dealership every week for yet another recall or repair they will not be on my radar
I think the problem is that most of the positive things I imagine when I think Jaguar (inline-6 motor, long hood, walnut dash, sumptuous leather interior) are just generally out of fashion. Take those away, and what else is Jaguar? Crappy electronics? Poor reliability? If you’re just going to throw everything “Jaguar” away, then why not just jettison the baggage and start over?
jaguar to me – at least is what people drive who want luxury features, luxury speed but not drive a german or japanese car. By me Audis are everywhere as well as BMW and Mercedes, I see a ton of Lexus and Infiniti – but Jags.. not so many.
So its way to have a nice exciting car that isnt like everyone elses.
Jaguar needed to do what Hyundai did with the Concept N 74. That car is not paying homage to anything (maybe just a bit of Hyundai Pony) and it’s a concept that speaks for itself. No need for a cringy perfume ad.
I associate a car like that more to a future Jaguar than that horrendous, pretentious thing up there.
https://blog.way.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Hyundai-N-Vision-74-feature-1.jpeg
+1 to this. I think Jaguar’s traditional target audience are either retired or ..dead, so aiming for a new market positioning and new audience, with a completely different set of values (including aesthetics) is essential for them to survive, and being investable for their owners.
The majority of younger buyers are increasingly cash-strapped. They can’t even afford to move out of their parents’ home, let alone buy any of the new cars available. That must be considered going forward.
If made available in the UK, even a $11,400USD BYD Seagull would stretch their meagre budget. Something radically cheap AND appealing offering excellent value for the money, and forward thinking with regard to declining purchasing power/resources. is probably the answer, but the payoff period will be long and arduous as the margins will be skimpy…
They’re aiming for a market that doesn’t exist then. I think the new ad hate is overblown but as a young enthusiast, I can’t imagine who the new brand direction is meant to appeal to.
You can sell an old person an young person’s car, but you can’t sell a young person an old person’s car.
That’s… quite astute, actually. They’re selling an idea, the question is whether or not the idea is good.
Bunkie Knudsen said it originally I think.
Question for Adrian. If Jaguar is trying to forge new ground, why the exaggerated design language that is 100 years old? Long hoods and short decks harken back to the 1930s when straight 8s were the alpha vehicles. Is that archetype embedded in the automotive consciousness or just in the brainstem of designers?
If it is a total rethink, then design something with tomorrow in mind rather than doubling down on yesterday with less filigree some Miami Vice paint.
It’s an established heuristic. You expect a car to look like a car. They tried something novel with iPace which is exceptionally roomy for its footprint. But the reality is the proportions of it were just too challenging.
It looks okay as a car, I guess, but not as a Jaguar.