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
If Jaguar wants to try something different they should make a reliable car
Scorchingly original take there.
I love this.
Perhaps we’re just in darker times and our villains need something a little boxier.
But let’s just say the quiet part out loud: this is all cyberpunk. I’d easily see this car in Cyberpunk 2077. The villains that bought Jags in the past now buy Cybertrucks, and Jag’s gotta get them back.
Um . . . none of those are what I think when I think of Jaguar. I would have said Elegance. Refinement. Power. Somehow I still see Jaguar as aspirational . . . at least, I did until last week when I realized that Jaguar no longer saw itself that way.
Jaguar doesn’t need to give up its history and heritage to survive. That’s ridiculous. They just think that if they forget the past, everyone else will too.
I’m sure they do consider themselves as aspirational – they just don’t care whether *you and I* aspire to own one. Their marketing strategists and their consultants don’t think there are enough of us to keep the business as a going concern.
I’m one of these idiots.
Fuck you, and the explanations you rode on 😛
The “presentation” was pretentious shit, announcing the drowning and death of a legendary brand into tons of more pretentious shit, by a pretentious shit, for the ephemere joy of a few more pretentious shits.
Jaguar might survive, but if it does – it will not be thanks to miles long explanations of why we should like something that is impossible to like, It will be by decapitating the whole clique who orchestrated this, making amends, and coming back to designing cars that can live on a wall poster till the paper starts to crumble.
You appointed a German as the head coach of the *Men’s* national soccer team. You already had a Dutch woman as head of the Women’s national soccer team. She’s the one who won your first, and only, trophy by a senior team since 1966.
This is a fair and excellent comment, thank you. It bothers me she wasn’t offered the job of coaching the men’s team.
Up the Lionesses!
The absolute pits of Jaguar branding is the range of bicycles sold in Japan, mostly generic soft-roaders or folding city bikes with Jaguar logos and – the horror, the horror! – Jaguar leapers on the front fenders. https://img.aucfree.com/366368868.1.jpg
Some of them have jaguar pattern paint 🙁
I spoke to a “senior design executive” at Jaguar about this, maybe 15 years ago, and he told me that Jaguar Design was powerless to do anything about it: at a time when Jaguar was desperate for cash, they sold the rights to bicycle branding to a Japanese businessman and had no control over his use of Jaguar IP on bicycles.
I completely agree with this and how Jaguar needs to reinvent themselves, how the angry people likely never bought a new Jaguar in the modern era (or any at all), and sometimes shaking up things that pisses off purists and enthusiasts can be just what the bottom line ordered as it’s the far larger group of Others who actually buy cars in numbers and they often buy those very cars we vociferously hate.
What bothers me most about this concept is that it has potential, but seems just clumsily done or done specifically as an anti rather than something new in itself so that it still owes the design to Jaguar’s past, if in a roundabout way. IMO, the problem for a designer here is the Gozer Choosing Your Own Final Adventure Problem where thinking of the past at all is a problem (yeah, I grew up in the ’80s, how can you tell? That’s also why I didn’t find the ad shocking, but made me look up Grace Jones to see what she’s up to today—in her 70s and still doing shit—though it predictably pissed off the usual suspects who are perpetually outraged over petty things). I think this particular job requires emptying one’s head of everything Jaguar and that means not just avoiding regurgitating a long moldy and irrelevant past, but also keeping that out of mind when trying to come up with a more novel solution, rather than “be the opposite of what it was”, which seems to be what they’ve done here. Goofy and pretentious show car stuff aside, cleaning this up and putting some curves and surfacing into this basic silhouette form could work wonders, could be a Jaguar without being a Jaguar. Take your list of adjectives for Jaguar, it’s those kinds of things that really should have been in their mind and nothing else. The brief should have been something like, “Here are some adjectives to design to for an all new car from an all new company. This is not a Jaguar!” (Dammit, now I just put that thought into their heads and I’m going to get friggin’ XJs and Es!)
Mmm, all this article did was make me want to go find an oldschool Jag to put a BMW V8 into. Keep the good looks but add a reliable (by Euro standards) V8 in with decent electronics. Basically like what people have been doing with small block swaps but a little more sophisticated.
What BMW V8 is reliable by any standard ?
The M60 4.0L V8 (1993-1995) is quite reliable, having a robust dual-row timing chain where chain guide failure is virtually unheard of. The one in my 95 540i/6 has 285k miles and it’s the original motor. Aside from having basic maintenance like valve cover gaskets and spark plugs, it’s never been opened up. It makes around 300hp with a chip tune so it’s plenty powerful for its relatively small displacement.
Ah, those. Ok. BMW V8s that are old enough to vote don’t have my vote, but those that are old enough to have grandkids are ok in my book.
Find an old Aston V12. They’re based on the Duratech V6 so parts are available in the US. And putting an Aston motor in a Jag is the right kind of sacrilegious.
I bet that engine would fit in a Triumph Spitfire. Make an aero hardtop for it and do some aeromods, and you might get over 40 mpg highway, maybe low 20s city… with a V12 under the hood.
As a Euro car enthusiast, I wouldn’t want any American car parts touching a Jag, haha.
Enjoyable and informative read
I think it’s a terrible, amateurish looking mistake – especially considering the competition at the intended price point. Ultimately the market will pronounce the verdict. It’ll be interesting to see that play out.
This dope article reminds me of the golden, nerd press days – in my mind, cca 2000 Wired magazine. Long form, well researched articles from insufferable know-it-alls, wrapped in nice graphics. Loved that and I still miss it what with the death of printed word and all that. If the Autopians ever start doing a hardcopy, say, quarterly edition, this would fit right in.
That would just be a book of my stuff.
How will Jaguar get the gear oil, wool and wood veneer aroma that infuses all of their past models into their new electric cars?
Actually, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for Jaguar to abandon its past. I’ve owned three of them, never new, so why try to get enthusiasts to buy one? We’re just pretenders to owning a sort of expensive car, with above average electrical troubleshooting skills. I’ve owned an e-Type, XJ6 (XJ40 I believe) and XK8. The ’94 XJ6, built at the high point of Ford ownership was the best.
Having said this, and considering that Jaguar is trying to erase its past (as it probably should) it seems likely that the new Jaguar brand will soon become the car brand of Land Rover – even if it stays Jaguar. The new concept looks like a streamlined truck with Land Rover styling cues. Adrian points out that the car was designed by the Land Rover team, not one of the other two competing design teams. I doubt it was a real competition. I’d wager that the fix was in.
Do I care, as a Jaguar enthusiast that the Jaguar zeitgeist is gone? No. The XJ6 was the best Jag – at least the best built and best driving – and since then it seems the company has been losing interest. I don’t think they were ever really interested in their enthusiasts anyway. Amateur repairmen probably don’t make the best word of mouth sales people for luxury brands.
Farewell Jaguar, you oily, odiferous icon of grace, pace and space. And welcome Jaguar, makers of truck like cars for the upper crust.
Adrian, this is comprehensive and excellent work. I really enjoyed this walk through. Especially the commentary about how Jaguar had a reputation in the 60’s. That wasn’t without solid reasoning, it seems, as the E-Type and Mk X were symbolic of success and power for those in organized crime.
Mark Knopfler wrote a song titled “5:15 AM”, reflecting the Mk X and E-Type’s perceived shady status. The song addresses the murder of Angus Sibbet in South Hetton, County Durham, in 1967.
Sibbet, a fruit machine man, or “one-armed bandit man”, was killed for allegedly skimming hauls from the devices. He was found by a pitman bicycling home from overnight work in the coal mines.
His vehicle was a Mk X, but Knopfler notes that those in the business considered an E-Type and a flashy suit to be just as aspirational.
It must have been quite a thing for a collier to come upon one of these, parked under a bridge at 5:15 in the morning, especially given the situation.
Ha I didn’t know this. Excellent reference.
That’s a lot of information to convey in song form!
Check out the song “Boom, Like That”. Distills the history of Ray Kroc and the rise of McDonalds in a song. He just knows how to craft and tell a story.
Bam. the perfect description of what’s going on with the brand, why it’s having to happen and where it needs to head into the future
The renderings of the car really don’t do it for me, but I watched part of the Harry’s Garage vid on the launch and his footage of the actual concept makes it look quite a bit better. Still not my jam, but better and not so jarringly un-real looking.
This is a good history and write-up, and I really appreciate your nuanced take. I’m curious to see what they do with this design language – one of the things that struck me reading your history is that the brand identity as a stodgy old design is absolutely not what any of those stodgy old designs were when they came out – they were closer to this than to what the Jaguar purists are demanding.
One note:
Pairing Jaguar and Land Rover, the automotive icons of the British Empire, under Tata, the premier Indian car manufacturer, is absolutely an emotional move. If I were the head of Tata and saw the opportunity to acquire the automotive crown jewels of Great Britain, I wouldn’t be looking at the term sheets either.
In the 80s (my teens) and 90s (my 20s) the Jaguar was the car of my dreams. Attractive, sporty, handsome, absolutely distinctive. Of course, I didn’t have any money to buy one then. By the time I did have the money to buy a Jaguar, they had morphed into vehicles that you couldn’t immediately identify as a Jaguar. Basically anything new in the last 2 decades lacks a distinct Jaguar look (if you have to look for the logo to identify which brand a car is…), which, combined with reliability issues, why would I buy it?
While I understand the thought process here (great article other than the unnecessary political elements), and having a truly new vehicle that appeals to younger audiences is great, this new vehicle will do nothing to appeal to the MANY drivers who both have happy thoughts of Jaguar as a brand AND have the money to purchase them. You know, typical luxury car buyers – people in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s. We have a BMW and a Jeep in our garage (so, yes, reliability is not my primary concern as a car buyer), and would love to own a Jaguar…but only if it looks like a Jag and has at least tolerable reliability. This ain’t it. Throwing out *all* of the brand goodwill seems a dubious strategy.
This can be summed up in a single word – hideous.
I’m reminded of the McGovern introduction of the Evoque, with Posh Spice.
I wasn’t a fan of the National Trust styling under the Ford era, and they didn’t have the range to compete with the the likes of BMW. But I did enjoy owning my X350 XJ, sheddy as it was. That throwback design covered up a good car though obviously not a mass market one. The lower spec ones do look a bit retired pensioner.
Maybe a return to being more niche could help- Land Rover taking over some of the old production capacity.
Throughout all this media hype and angry ruddy faced men launching spittle covered transphobia all over Twitter I’ve been waiting for an article from Adrian on Jaguar and this concept and I’m not disappointed!
It’s a great piece and does a great job explaining why Jaguar are at this point.
I think the whole marketing thing over the past fortnight has been excellent, riling up the right people which has got them ALL over the mainstream media, where a concept car wouldn’t cause a ripple normally.
However, it also shows how stuck the brand has become, appalling the backward facing old men who have very clear views what the company should be whilst at very best might have bought a second hand Jaaaaag (Urgh).
They’ll do well to maintain that buzz for the 12-18months until the production model is shown tho.
Your excellent summary of Jaguar’s tortured history suggests to me that the Type 00 concept (which I would rename the Type 00f) is just another own-goal in a long history of them.
Jaguar’s goal at this point should be to build cars that some segment of the market wants to buy. Using the design language suggested by the Type 00 seems like a major misstep. You even hinted at a possible way forward with your description of the new Range Rover: It’s unmistakably a Range Rover, yet elegantly modern. Jaguar should be able to do that too.
EVERY segment of the market is highly competitive right now, except hatchbacks in North America, so Jaguar should just pick one and go in guns-a-blazing.
But not with the Type 00 design language.
I’d suggest Range Rover has evolved throughout generations. Jaguar failed to do that, for decades being stuck on retro pastiche.
The Ian Callum era tried to do the elegantly modern yet unmistakably Jaguar and while generally successful (superbly done on XJ and I-pace, disregarding E-pace entirely), it still didn’t sell.
Jaguar have ‘just picked one segment and are going for it all guns blazing’ just as you ask.
But…influencers and tech bros? Really? Even given the amount of competition in all the other segments, this seems foolhardy.
Who knows?! Certainly not me, it does seem niche, but maybe there are enough of those types for it to be a viable segment of the market.
Appealing to ruddy faced old men has proven time and again not to work for them.
True enough. And other specialty marques like Ferrari and Rolls-Royce have proven that exclusivity can work if the dealer experience is right.
I just can’t get past the design language, I guess. Jaguar’s coupe designs weren’t the problem.
A bit of an easier thing to do with a single model vs an entire marque? Also easier to evolve what is fundamentally a practical box of an off roader.
This is extremely well written, Adrian. I hope this concept morphs into something more palatable in the future, I’d like Jaguar to stick around. They’ve always made things that are slightly weird, and for better or worse, not quite like anything else.
I kept trying to figure out what that side view reminded me of. I think I got it.
I will never be able to unsee that.
Okay Adriane, you make many excellent points, but equating the 00 to BSG is too much of a stretch. BSG had detailing and surfacing and attractive people (Tricia Helfer anyone?), this grotesque phallus appliance has none of that.
Also, the new taillights on the RR give it a narrow ass. Like an old person who’s ass is just gone. I get what Jerry is going for and applaud it, but he seems to have spurned beauty in his mission to push modern.
Other than that, great article! 🙂
Yeah, it’s the wrong take on BSG too. I remember there being a few loud cranks who were pining for the old corny-ness back, but they were vastly outnumbered by fans new and old who were very excited for the new series. I also do not remember, nor can I find in my quick searching, anyone at all who objected to Katie Sackhoff being cast as Starbuck.
I remember a LOT of pushback to a woman as Starbuck.
https://www.polygon.com/23991388/battlestar-galactica-anniversary-fandom-best-choices
I don’t make things up.
This kind of feels like “what if Jeep had stopped making the Wrangler a while ago?” As in, trying to keep the off-road vibe going with the Compass and Liberty.