Jaguar Chief: The Company Is “At a Crossroads”
Add Jaguar to the list of companies that announced they’d be going fully electric, then ran into a wall of consumer resistance.
‘“It’s been hugely frustrating—saying we’re going all EV then ‘nothing’.” That’s the admission from Jaguar’s new managing director Rawdon Glover about the brand’s current holding pattern of no new cars for five years amid a plan to go all electric… and extremely upmarket,” said a story in Top Gear.
The publication says, “We’ll see a glimpse of Jaguar’s new design direction and ‘brand world’ this winter, with an angular four-door fastback expected first, before a pair of SUVs. Glover, who took up the MD gig in March 2023, says the production car will offer a range of 430 miles.”
“Jaguar is at a crossroads,” said Rawdon. “Then-JLR CEO Thierry Bolloré said at the time [the plan to go all-EV was announced] that Jaguar had a choice to elevate itself out of the premium space [into being a super-luxury brand] and that choice has since been validated.
“We decided on this structure in 2021, but cars don’t appear overnight,” Rawdon told Top Gear. “We need to take [the brand] back to when we made beautiful desirable cars, not in huge numbers and not having huge numbers [of models] in the portfolio. Until recently we were up to six or seven models.”
The future is “not just some new cars, it’s a complete brand reinvention,” the Jag boss insists. “With every decision we make, we ask ‘is this going to make people think about Jaguar the way we need them to?’ If it doesn’t make them want to pay £120,000 ($157,500), we don’t do it.”
With no new product to sell after the F-Pace disappears, he expects to lose some dealers. “We’ve had to do some very painful things, but this is a long term plan.”
Just a glance at that photo tells the story…and now more SUV’s?
Unwise, unsupported choices. A drastic departure from what they did well. Not the first time we see this. I love when a brand needs to “re-educate” the consumer. Always ends badly. And who got played the worst was the dealers who were forced to build showrooms and service facilities at an astonishing level of finish. We are watching the end of Jag right here.
Pompous quips from one with no clue. Quit crying about how your customer is an idiot and how your cars don’t turn a profit for the company. We own two, an XJ and an XK. And a Range Rover. Leave the SUVs to LR and build jaw droppingly beautiful Saloons, Coupes, and Drophead Coupes. Two models. The Saloon in SWB and LWB, and the Coupe in open and closed formats. They should cost $75k but look like $200k, that is the Jaguar formula, since the SS100. Keep looking for your mythical buyer of your vapor ware upmarket future. Ask Danny Bahar how well that worked out at Lotus!
You are so right. They need to hire you.
Jaguar is not at a crossroads, its at a dead end.
The founders of Warby Parker originally intended to sell their glasses for $45.00. Glasses are inexpensive to produce and the profit margin on some ‘designer eyeware’ is absurd. They were told that price was not enough. Partly because the profits would not allow for expansion, advertising etc. but mostly because consumers would never believe you could get a good set at that cost regardless of the quality. So $ 95.00 was settled on. Jaguar seems to be doing something of the same. Fewer models aimed at a more affluent market . The “Divest and multiply” approach. Convincing potential buyers is another story. While not quite a 180 close. That will take time and capital.
Jaguar would be better off creating a new spin-off upscale brand than trying to con customers into believing their products are worth six figures; the firm has earned a very well-deserved reputation for shoddy reliability and rapid depreciation. This sounds like a recipe for disaster.