One of the many criticisms leveled at Jaguar in the firestorm ignited by its rebrand last month was that while it revealed a new logotype and a short film of eight conspicuously diverse models clad in bright couture emerging from a yellow escalator into a lilac lunar landscape, it didn’t even hint at a car.
Despite being busy preparing for government, Elon Musk found time to reply to Jaguar on X, combatively asking: “Do you sell cars?”
Well, after the news leaked earlier today, Jaguar has now officially revealed the first car of its new full-electric era at Art Miami, but it will be worrying that the world’s interest in this niche, hitherto struggling British brand has been exhausted by the row over the supposed “wokeness” of its reinvention, the resulting barrage of “vile hatred and intolerance” online directed at both the campaign and, deplorably, Jaguar staff, and its apparent abandonment of almost every aspect of its 90-year history, including its aging, traditionalist client base.
According to Rawdon Glover, managing director at Jaguar, customers for the new EVs will be younger, more affluent, urban, independently minded, creative, and wishing to “carve their own path.” Tellingly, Glover adds that the brand “needs to build a relationship with almost an entirely new client base.”
To mark the ire and miss the car would be a shame, because whatever you think of Type 00 (say “zero-zero”), it delivers on the brief given by JLR’s chief creative officer Gerry McGovern four years ago to four competing design teams: to produce something not only unlike any previous Jaguar, but unlike anything else on the road.
