What’s Going on at Jaguar? Here’s How the British Brand Plans to Go Big Again
Forget everything you know about Jaguar. The storied British carmaker is undergoing the most profound transformation in its 89-year history.
Fast, curvaceous cars and British Racing Green. The warm glow of wood, the rich tang of leather, the bright splashes of chrome. Grace, pace, and space? Forget all that. There’s a new Jaguar coming down the road—and it’s nothing like the old Jaguar. Everything, including the creation of a new typeface for the Jaguar logo, has been changed. And having seen the concept car that previews Jaguar’s bold new design language, we can confirm the coming generation of electric-powered cars from England’s storied automaker will most emphatically look like no Jaguar the world has ever before seen.
0:00 / 0:00
We can’t let that cat out of the bag yet, though. Jaguar plans to reveal the car during Miami Art Week on December 2, but we can say this: Prepare to be shocked. (And if you can’t wait, you can see spy photos here.)
Necessary Upheavel
Jaguar Land Rover already shocked Jaguar enthusiasts and dealers when it announced it would end the production of all internal combustion engine Jaguars this year and stop selling Jaguars worldwide until the first of the brand’s all-new electric-powered models, a car described as a four-door GT, launches in 2026. Halting production of today’s Jaguar lineup and effectively withdrawing the brand from the market for almost two years—although U.S. Jaguar dealers will be selling down inventory through 2025—sounds like a breathtakingly radical move. But it makes economic sense for a car company whose balance sheet has for years been awash with red ink. “We don’t lose money if we don’t sell money-losing cars,” one insider pointed out.
The idea of positioning Jaguar in the volume premium-vehicle segment, where it competed against Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi—a strategy first developed when Ford Motor Company owned the brand and continued under Tata’s ownership—has proven an expensive failure. Jaguar never got anywhere near selling the 600,000 vehicles a year it needed to be profitable.
“The transition into the premium volume segment wasn’t successful,” admits Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover. The $2.5 billion transformation underway now is, he says, about finding a model that works for a business of Jaguar’s scale. “Jaguar was successful when it was not really chasing volume,” Glover insists.
The New Strategy
We heard a lot of brightly colored, buzz-wordy marketing guff—“delete ordinary,” “live vivid,” “break molds,” “fearless creativity”—during the media event held to reveal Jaguar’s new brand strategy and the radical concept car at the heart of it. And as JLR design director Richard Stevens ran us through the nuances behind terms such as “device mark” (basically, the Jaguar nameplate), “strike through” (a textured parallel line graphic that will appear on all Jaguar cars), and “maker’s marks” (the leaper, and a stylized JR graphic), it’s apparent a lot of time and money is behind this project.
Underneath it all, Jaguar’s reinvention is based on a simple premise: The company wants to sell fewer cars at higher prices and have them deliver fat profits. Ironically, that’s a business model JLR well knows and understands. JLR last year sold about 80,000 full-size Range Rovers at an average transaction price of about $180,000, and close to 125,000 Defenders at an average transaction price of just more than $95,000. While Jaguar has bled cash, Land Rover now makes an average profit of $25,000 per vehicle sold.
The math is easy. Making it work is the hard part. But JLR boss Adrian Mardell is confident the company can pull it off. “It’s a complete reset,” he says, “but we’ve done it before with Defender and we will do it at Jaguar.”
Jaguar’s New Cars
At the core of JLR’s re-invention strategy is the belief that Jaguar—the brand and the cars—must embrace the modernist design philosophy perfected by Gerry McGovern when he was Land Rover’s head of design; a philosophy that has allowed models like the Defender to move upmarket. “[Jaguar’s] past strategy wasn’t the right one,” says McGovern, now JLR’s chief creative officer. “It was looking back too much.” His new brief to the Jaguar design team was simple: “Forget everything that went before.”
That doesn’t mean the new Jaguar EVs will look like low slung riffs on McGovern’s smooth and sleek Range Rovers. Far from it, in fact. The concept car unveiled on December 2 “will be as talked about as the E-Type,” Mardell says. And trust us, it will be, but for very different reasons. It is a Jaguar, McGovern insists, that does not desire to be loved by everyone. He’s right about that.
JLR is banking on the idea that a whole new audience—younger and wealthier, more connected and more urban—will be attracted to the new Jaguar. Indeed, Glover expects only 10 to 15 percent of Jaguar’s existing customer base will stay with the brand over the coming years, not least because the least expensive car in the lineup will retail for at least $120,000 when it goes on sale in 2026. But if the upmarket move works, it means Jaguar can sell fewer than 100,000 cars a year and make a profit.
As mentioned, the first of the new all-electric Jaguars will be a low-slung, coupe-like four-door vehicle. Jaguar has released no technical details other than to say the car will have an EPA-rated range of up to 430 miles and an electrical architecture that will enable it to add 200 miles of range in just 15 minutes on a fast charger. The car will almost certainly be all-wheel drive, with at least two e-motors, if not more.
Why launch the new strategy with a body style like this when worldwide sales of four-door sedans and coupes have trended downward for some years now? “The first production car was chosen quite consciously because it is the purest embodiment [of the concept car to be revealed on December 2],” Glover says. The Jaguar managing director is also relatively unconcerned about the recent worldwide slump in EV sales. “We can’t think about 2024,” he says. “We believe that in the long term, the future is electric.”
And After That?
Glover won’t be drawn on the other Jaguar EVs in the pipeline, other than to confirm the lineup will total three cars. Company insiders, acknowledging the success of vehicles such as the Ferrari Purosangue, Lamborghini Urus, and Aston Martin DBX707, don’t deny that a two-box, SUV-like model would be an obvious addition. And though the new Jaguars will be unrecognizable compared with those of the old, it’s inconceivable the third model won’t be an electric-powered sports car in both coupe and convertible form.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by cars. My father was a mechanic, and some of my earliest memories are of handing him wrenches as he worked to turn a succession of down-at-heel secondhand cars into reliable family transportation. Later, when I was about 12, I’d be allowed to back the Valiant station wagon out onto the street and drive it around to the front of the house to wash it. We had the cleanest Valiant in the world.
I got my driver’s license exactly three months after my 16th birthday in a Series II Land Rover, ex-Australian Army with no synchro on first or second and about a million miles on the clock. “Pass your test in that,” said Dad, “and you’ll be able to drive anything.” He was right. Nearly four decades later I’ve driven everything from a Bugatti Veyron to a Volvo 18-wheeler, on roads and tracks all over the world. Very few people get the opportunity to parlay their passion into a career. I’m one of those fortunate few.
I started editing my local car club magazine, partly because no-one else would do it, and partly because I’d sold my rally car to get the deposit for my first house, and wanted to stay involved in the sport. Then one day someone handed me a free local sports paper and said they might want car stuff in it. I rang the editor and to my surprise she said yes. There was no pay, but I did get press passes, which meant I got into the races for free. And meet real automotive journalists in the pressroom. And watch and learn.
It’s been a helluva ride ever since. I’ve written about everything from Formula 1 to Sprint Car racing; from new cars and trucks to wild street machines and multi-million dollar classics; from global industry trends to secondhand car dealers. I’ve done automotive TV shows and radio shows, and helped create automotive websites, iMags and mobile apps. I’ve been the editor-in-chief of leading automotive media brands in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The longer I’m in this business the more astonished I am these fiendishly complicated devices we call automobiles get made at all, and how accomplished they have become at doing what they’re designed to do. I believe all new cars should be great, and I’m disappointed when they’re not. Over the years I’ve come to realize cars are the result of a complex interaction of people, politics and process, which is why they’re all different. And why they continue to fascinate me.Read More
