Picture Car Confidential #6: Jaguar Rebrand

One thing about the internet, it can serve up more misinformed and disinforming hot takes in a millisecond than the entire in-patient population of a hundred psych wards on a bad day.

A case in point would be the hysterical reaction to Jaguar’s Concept 00 electric show car coupe. Or, more precisely, the bile that greeted its marketing campaign. Now, I’ll freely admit the teaser videos with their multi-racial, vaguely androgynous dancers in DayGlo clothing left me cold. Not because such individuals are objectionable, but because the campaign struck me as clichéd, not so fresh in conception, yet truly classical in its meaninglessness. Nothing new there, and no car to be seen? I’m all for tradition, but didn’t United Colors of Benetton do this 30 years ago?

So, where’d all the haters come from? Change is hard, and detractors in both the U.S. and the U.K. remained strikingly on message with each other regarding this ad and subsequent concept reveal, as if there was some satellite or undersea cable connecting them. People went mental. Taking a not-great campaign and making it a hot global news item for weeks by getting so mad about it gifted Jaguar and Concept 00 a lot more attention than they might have otherwise gotten. Ditto the outcry over Jaguar’s new logo, said to be an affront to all that was great and good about the company and its old logo, the one that, lest we forget, festooned an increasingly decreasing number of Jaguars—the root cause of the reboot.

For the record, I don’t care much for the new logo, either. But the thing is, I’ve always been of the belief that good cars sell themselves while bad ones aren’t saved by good marketing campaigns or ensorcelling logos. And when you’re fading into obscurity, all press is good press. Bringing us back to Concept 00 itself, which Jaguar flew me to England to see back in November, several weeks before its official unveiling at Art Miami.

The heavily embargoed early morning Jaguar media event in Stratford-Upon-Avon featured the teaser that (little did we know) would go on to offend so many. Accompanying the film were all of Jaguar Land Rover’s top executives personally making the pitch, freighted with bold promises to be “bold” and “different,” pledges which, come to think of it, one has heard before.

On the other hand, with Jaguar announcing the effective shuttering of all car manufacture for more than a year—while readying a shared-platform, three-car, all-electric lineup comprising a four-door GT based on the two-door Concept 00, as well as a limousine and an SUV-type thingy—it is undeniably doing something different. Higher prices across the board—think $130,000 and up—will leave the mass luxury market behind, while target volumes have been trimmed by more than two-thirds from the marque’s historic highs, another difference between this and most other resets, with anticipated worldwide sales falling to 50,000 units per annum. Of course, this may still prove unrealistically high. In which case, getting the volume wrong part may be good old Jaguar, and not different. But it’s too soon to say.

Cutting to the chase, I didn’t love the 00, at first. It’s no E-Type, to be sure, but it is different (even if I see faint echoes of a couple of concept stunners from the fairly distant past: the 2003 Cadillac Sixteen and 2006 Saab Aero X). No matter how much time passes, the E-Type continues to stand as an ever-present reminder that the model, which shocked the world with its beauty in 1961, has again proven itself at once a blessing and a millstone around Jaguar’s neck. When attempting to reinterpret this classic design and its spirit, Jaguar has never come close. How could it or anyone else?

I’m not given to blanket declarations, but it seems highly unlikely there’ll ever be another E-Type. Veterans of foreign cars won’t need reminding, either, that its replacement, Jaguar’s XJ-S, the last of the company’s designs in which Jaguar’s style lord and founder Sir William Lyons participated, was pilloried upon its release because… it didn’t look as cool as an E-Type. But the XJ-S ran for 21 years, and more than 115,000 were sold, which in Jaguar terms was hardly insignificant, selling at virtually the same rate on an annualized basis as the E-Type. And while E-Type sales fell over the course of its lifetime, XJ-S sales actually grew. Ironically, the XJ-S has lately been rediscovered and cast as an icon of ‘70s fashion, one that was suitably nipped and tucked during its lifetime to further extend this rolling homage to the past’s retro-charm-sphere to the ‘80s and ‘90s. 

I didn’t love 00. But, mind you, I didn’t hate it. And as time has passed and I remember, too, that the four-door production successor to 00 could well clean up some of its less appealing details—that non-grille up front, for instance—I’m starting to like it better and better. It is more imposing and striking than beautiful, yes. But it cuts an undeniably baller profile. Not unlike a Rolls-Royce Phantom, it reminds us that excess is often the fruit of success and always has been. People forget (or never knew) that Jaguars and many other of the great marques since the beginning of automotive time have been thought vulgar and even tacky in their day by large segments of the public. Meanwhile, with each generation of only slightly tweaked XJ sedan, Jaguar’s critics wondered why it didn’t try something, to coin a phrase, bold and different? Then, it happens, and, poof, they’re mad all over.

In short, with two regally large asks—reliable, fully-sorted electrics and a properly luxe interior (lose the plastic ashtrays and penalty box austerity introduced during the Ford-ownership era)—I am hopeful. The new Jaguar could well be an object of desire for those with the cash. And, though it hurts to say so, the price point isn’t as expensive as it sounds in these days of $300,000 Porsches and $250,000 Range Rovers. Fact is, $130,000 is considerably less than most of the upscale competition charges and, in the end, I believe, Jaguar’s audacious extroversion will help. As long as it doesn’t feel cheap, the way too many Jaguars have of late, it will have followed the original Jaguar formula of delivering more car for the money to those who may not be the richest or spendiest, but who will not be poor.

The reset also makes Jaguar one of the very few companies to live up to its all-electric pledges of a few years back. This fact alone clearly put some critics’ noses out of joint.  There’ll be a lot of folks who’ll continue to say that this proves that Jaguar’s parent organization, JLR, shepherds of the very successful Range Rover and Land Rover brands, are nuts, out of touch, or less than manly, that electric cars will never happen, that people don’t want them. What better time for the launch of another salvo in the culture war than the launch of a new Jaguar? To which I say, blah blah blah. Jaguar is to be saluted.

The present moment in automotive history is hugely consequential and clearly massive change is afoot. To cry for Jaguar’s lost heritage is to cry for that which is past, something I, admittedly, do every day even though I know it’s pointless. It’s also to overlook that Jaguar was, historically, never a volume carmaker and rarely made real money. People forget that when Lyons threw in the towel on running Jaguar as a stand-alone company, selling out to BMC in 1966 (to form the short-lived British Motor Holdings, later British Leyland) for a mere $51 million in shares and debentures, it was because Jaguar couldn’t fund its new model programs despite sales up 30 percent from the previous year. Even in this banner year, fewer than 23,000 Jaguars of all types were sold worldwide.

Will Jaguar be as polarizing in the future as it been lately? I’ll make no predictions, as who would’ve imagined the concept’s teaser campaign triggering an international culture firestorm? And who was expecting the frosty, highly politicized reception that greeted Tesla’s Cybertruck? All I’d like to know from all the people concerned about Jaguar’s new style: Where were you when so many hideous over-styled, undercooked crimes against automotive aestheticism—like 90 percent of today’s pickups and SUVs and the many automotive examplars of what Bob Lutz once called the “angry toaster” look—previously landed?  Who gave the Lamborghini Urus and Toyota bZ4X a free pass?

The car business is changing rapidly. Duh. So seems to be Jaguar. I don’t know about you, but I wish it the best.

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A man of many pursuits (rock band manager, automotive journalist, concours judge, purveyor of picture cars for film and TV), Jamie Kitman lives and breathes vintage machines. His curious taste for interesting, oddball, and under-appreciated classics—which traffic through his Nyack, New York warehouse—promises us an unending stream of delightful cars to discuss. For more Picture Car Confidential columns, click here. Follow Jamie Kitman on Instagram at @commodorehornblow; follow Octane Film Cars @octanefilmcars and at www.octanefilmcars.com.