If there was a single dominant message to emerge from the noisy two weeks following Jaguar’s announcement of its all-EV relaunch, it was “I’ll never buy a Jaguar again”.
And while there’s no reason to doubt those sentiments, at that point the most anyone had seen of the car was an unfortunate shot of a section of the concept’s rear end, which taken out of context just looked like the grille of a large industrial air-con unit.
Now, you have the chance to see here what the promised concept, named Type 00, looks like. But once again Jaguar has shot itself in the corporate foot, by making the car look like a computer-generated render, doing it no favours whatsoever. So let’s address what’s been going on, and then I’ll explain how the press reveal of the actual, full-size, real-life concept car went, and how it looks up close.
Firstly, back to the ‘I’ll never buy a Jaguar again’ sentiment. Well, if all those who made it sound as though they’d previously bought one really had done so, the manufacturer wouldn’t be in the mess that it’s in today. Despite producing several very good and a few truly excellent cars, Jaguar’s sales figures have been rock-bottom for years – in 2023 it sold a mere 64,241 cars worldwide, for example, of JLR’s total 431,733. In the same period, BMW sold 2,253,835. Just as Stellantis has found with Alfa Romeo, Jaguar simply can’t compete with the might of the German brands for the mid-market, despite often making much more interesting machinery.
So Jaguar in its current form is, basically, dead. However strong the feelings for its heritage, for the E-type, for Inspector Morse’s Mk2 (yes, even that was brought up in one national newspaper article), hardly anyone has been buying new Jaguars for the past few years. You could blame it on reliability woes, but that hasn’t stopped can’t-make-enough-to-keep-up-with-demand Land Rover has it? Or several of the German brands, which are nowhere near as bulletproof as their reputations suggest.
So Jaguar has chosen to literally go double or bust. The plan is to cut production numbers and double the price, aiming for the portion of the market just below Bentley – which is where the marque was in the 1950s and ’60s in some ways, producing fast, luxurious, classy cars at reasonable cost.
The concept car shown here was designed to demonstrate just how radical Jaguar’s plans are. It’s not how the production machinery will look, but it’s an indication of the design direction, at least. The long bonnet and the low coupé roofline of course hark back to the E-type, and will continue into the production cars, the first of which will be a four-door GT, to be revealed in late 2025.
The first shots of the four-door GT testing on the road, heavily camouflaged, were released after the initial marketing launch, and a week before Type 00 was publicly unveiled. Even the latter went wrong, with a Spanish website breaking the manufacturer’s 1am December 2 embargo, so images flooded the internet on the morning of December 2, 2024, UK time, hours ahead of the grand unveiling at the Miami Art Show.
Gone, as you’ll know, is the ‘Growler’, that unfortunately named big-cat snarling-face badge that was introduced in 1957. Much fuss has been made about that, but Jaguar’s argument is that it’s not appropriate for a futuristic-looking EV. Let’s face it, there’s been worse, like the SS name used between 1935 and 1945. Will anyone choose not to buy a new Jaguar solely because it’s missing the Growler?
The more iconic ‘Leaper’, the jaguar in full flight, stays, as it should. It’s an elegant motif to use, and far more evocative than the snarling face. The new Leaper was shown to us in its next form with a background of ‘Strikethrough’ horizontal lines; a theme that repeats throughout the Type 00 concept.
The most controversial part of the rebrand, aside from those Teletubby-like brightly coloured figures in the first-release marketing, is the new Jaguar logo. Again, the idea is clear: to modernise the look. But by mixing upper and lower case, apparently to create a more symmetrical, balanced logo, has simply resulted in cheapening the brand. Yes, it looks modern. No, it doesn’t look classy. To add to the disappointment, there’s also a new ‘jr’ motif that looks similarly underwhelming in isolation.
I was at the first press reveal of the new look and the Type 00 concept, on November 11. Although JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern OBE was in the room, and fronted some of the presentation, he also appeared in a short film, shot at his much-talked-about private house – all stark whites and carefully placed artworks. Later, two separate senior staff referred to Gerry as “a god”, and brand design director Richard Stevens separately stated “Gerry’s vision is everything”.
Chief commercial officer Lennard Hoornik talked to us, too, explaining that JLR’s aim is “to become proud creators of some of the world’s most desirable modern luxury brands for the most discerning clients”. On the decision to go fully EV, he said “if combustion can do it, then EV must be able to” as well, referring to a planned 450-mile range – which could easily be the case, given the speed at which battery tech is evolving.
And then, after nearly 90 minutes of that, we were led down a long ‘experience’ tunnel where the jaGUar logo, the jr motif and the Strikethrough were revealed with great drama. It felt exciting, but also a little excruciating. And then, as lights flashed and dramatic music played, we waited at the end of the tunnel for the doors to the reveal studio to be opened – at which point we got our first view of the concept car, Type 00.
There was a surprised silence for a moment, and then one ‘seasoned’ journalist was heard to mutter: “Why didn’t they just show us that in the first place?”
We – around 30 of us I think – walked slowly and quietly towards the car as three young designers explained the thinking behind it. No photos were allowed; we’d had to hand our phones over to security at the start of the day. After the talks, it was almost as if none of us knew what to do, other than slowly circling, getting closer and closer until we were able to view the interior through the open butterfly doors.
The feeling, though, was upbeat. As promised, Type 00 up close is extremely bold and striking (and large). What detailing there is, is thoughtful and clever. The Leaper-on-Strikethrough motif is etched into brass plates on the lower edges of the front wings, and pop out to reveal rear-view cameras – maybe not the most practical place for cameras, but this is a concept not a production car.
The front is shocking, ugly even, for its upright bluffness, but it makes a statement – and the bonnet is huge and almost completely flat. The sides, though, are more sculptured, even though they also appear to be flat at first sight, especially in the images here.
And then there’s that long, sloping rear, which does without a rear window altogether. Again, viewing the car ‘in person’, it works. A few of the Strikethrough lines across the tail are used effectively – dramatically even – for full-width lighting.
The Type 00’s best angle is certainly side-on, though. Here you see what Jaguar is really aiming for: a modern-day E-type that is so far from looking like anything that has gone before that it really underlines the ‘Copy Nothing’ marketing slogan that was inspired by (not copied from, of course) Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons’ “a Jaguar should be a copy of nothing” ethos. The two colours, nicknamed Miami Pink and London Blue, are meant to echo the two E-types launched at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show.
Oh, and then there’s the roof, which also features the Strikethrough, this time in long bars along the length of a panoramic panel. It sounds bad but looks pretty good.
The interior is as striking as the exterior, as it had to be. With the butterfly doors and the ‘pantograph’ tailgate open, it’s revealed as high luxury and futuristic, with a 3.2m central brass spine, twin screens, and – slightly ridiculously – a central stone plinth. Honestly, it looks pretty good, but the designers freely acknowledged that the brass will be toned down, or perhaps eliminated, in the production car, and there’s little chance of a hefty lump of stone finding its way in, either.
And now let’s go and spoil it all again, and provoke a few more ‘woke’ comments. The final part of the presentation went all futuristic and a little silly, with the presentation of a ‘totem’ that can be inserted into a compartment in the centre console to change the ‘mood’ of the car – the lighting, the driving characteristics, even the smell. These totems are placed in a ‘prism’, which can be stored in a side compartment of the front wing. When it was opened, for the prism to be deferentially placed within, I half expected dramatic music to play and smoke to emerge. “Where’s Gwyneth Paltrow?” muttered someone behind me. But, remember, this is a concept. There has to be some theatre.
At its reveal at Miami Art Show launch, rather than in a cavernous studio in Warwickshire, I can easily see this going down a little better. And that’s the nub of this: the Jaguar isn’t aimed at seen-it-all middle-aged magazine editors. The company is aiming for a new audience, far away from the tweed jacket ‘older gentleman’ look that it has never quite escaped despite so many extremely potent, capable performance cars in recent years.
Will it work? Maybe. If it doesn’t, then we can all blame the dubious marketing campaign and mutter ‘woke’ without really understanding why. The real indicator of future success or failure won’t come until we see the new production car, which I think we can safely say will be referred to as Type 01. We know it will be British built, and we expect it to use similar design language to the Type 00 concept you see here. “If you put Type 00 and the new car next to each other, the similarities will be obvious,” one of the designers answered when quizzed about the designs.
Jaguar’s stated aim is also that the production car will target a driving range of up to 478 miles WLTP or 430 miles EPA, on a single charge, and add up to 200 miles of range in as little as 15 minutes when rapid charging. Also, the car will be sold through a reduced number of completely remodelled dealerships – although existing dealers will be encouraged to support current and older Jaguars in terms of spares and maintenance.
The first view of that new four-door GT will be in late 2025. Until then, duck when you hear the words ‘Exuberant Modernism’, ‘Delete Ordinary’, ‘Copy Nothing’ or any other marketing slogans from Jaguar, and comfort yourself that actually the new models may turn out rather better than we were expecting. And if not, at least we have a strikingly brave and divisive concept car to look back on.
