Jaguar Needs a Miracle. Is This It?

When it comes to cock-ups, mismanagement, and hoping for fair winds and following seas, Jaguar is right up there.

If you haven’t heard, the Jaguar part of JLR—Jaguar Land Rover—is in a pickle. Earlier this year, it stopped selling the XE and XF sedans as well the F-Type sports car. Now it’s pulled the plug on the I-Pace electric car, the E-Pace junior SUV, and its primary cash cow, the F-Pace SUV.

This means you now can’t buy a new Jaguar in the U.K. And that means Jag dealers can’t sell you one. The last time this happened was when bombs were falling on factories, during World War II.

Yet for reasons best known to Jaguar executives, outside of the U.K., some international markets—America among them—will continue to sell new Jaguars. 

The bosses at JLR say the blueprint for success is simple if challenging: Reinvent Jaguar. Imagine a time when Jaguar will soar high above the likes of Audi, BMW, and Mercedes—which, let’s not forget, it once did—as a maker of more exclusive, and more expensive, motorcars. The new-age Jaguar will be electrified, luxurious, and limited in numbers. The hope is a Jaguar might supplant a Bentley or Porsche in the driveway, without stepping on the toes of JLR’s epic money-spinner, Range Rover. 

The first evidence of this reinvention has broken cover across Jaguar’s social media. The brand’s new slogan is “Copy Nothing,” which is ironic as the initial advertising campaign looks like something Benetton might have tried during the ’90s. The effort has been met by an astonishing outcry, as the Jaguar faithful question the decision to erase the past (quite literally, on social channels) and start with a clean sheet of paper. But how many of those commenters have actually bought a new Jaguar in the past decade?  

The worry for onlookers and fans of the brand is that Jaguar has form when it comes to muddling through and getting away with things by the seat of the pants. From the 1940s through to the 1960s, Jaguar built a reputation that few could touch, drawing in passionate engineers and daring executives who shaped a golden era not only for the brand, but for people like us who cared about cars. With William Lyons at the helm, beginning in the mid-1930s Jaguar became known for upsetting the status quo, turning out cars that were prettier, faster, cheaper, and had more sex appeal than anything the establishment could muster.  

There was the SS100, which hit 100 mph, the “magic ton,” in 1936. Then the XK120, which wowed the crowds—and the rest of the world—at the 1948 Earls Court motor show. Three years later came the C-Type, which would go on to secure Jaguar its first victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 24, to be swiftly followed by the potent D-Type, which won Le Mans in 1955, ’56, and ’57. The end of that decade saw the launch of the car that, for many, is the most recognizable sedan of the time, the Mark II. And even before writer Piri Halasz coined the phrase “Swinging Sixties,” Jaguar had knocked out all of us with the E-Type.

These cars broke new ground and in doing so set new standards for drivers. They would be followed in the late 1960s by the elegant XJ6 and, from 1975, the avant-garde XJ-S. Like it or loathe it, the XJ-S could only have come from a company that was confident in its values and what it stood for (just don’t mention the “R” word: reliability).

Compare that track record with more recent efforts. We all know how Jaguar managed to royally upset its wealthiest clients over the XJ 220 debacle, U-turning on a V-12 engine and all-wheel drive for a twin-turbocharged six driving the rears only.

More recently, I remember testing one of the very first S-Types, in 1999, and being appalled at the poor quality of the cabin it shared with the Lincoln LS. Of course, there came quick reassurances from the PR people that it was a pre-production car and not representative of the finished thing that would be much improved. Unfortunately, it was and it wouldn’t be. A facelift was rushed through and into production by 2002.

When the X-Type came out in 2001, its role was to help grow Jaguar’s volume. But it was hampered by awkwardly conservative design and the decision to only offer it with all-wheel drive and thirsty V-6 engines. Where were the front-wheel-drive, four-cylinder versions or diesel models that fleet buyers across Europe were buying up at the time? Jaguar executives are said to have become fixated on the large U.S. market, to the detriment of everywhere else.

Then there was the time engineers embraced aluminum for the construction of the X350 XJ in the early 2000s. Its bodyshell was 40 percent lighter and 50 percent stiffer than the previous XJ, which is something worth showcasing with bold design. But management pushed for conservative cues, so to anyone not in the know—which, let’s face it, is the majority of the car-buying public—the new XJ looked like an old XJ. An Audi A8 or BMW 7 Series spoke of modernism and technology; the Jag simply said “old man’s motor.”

And as the world fell head-over-heels for remakes—think Ford Mustang and GT, Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, and Nissan 350Z—rightly or wrongly Jaguar couldn’t bring itself to revive the E-Type nameplate. Or find a way to create a production-feasible C-X75 supercar.

Jaguar’s one recent glimmer of first-mover advantage came with the all-electric I-Pace, which hit the road way back in 2018 as one of Europe’s first luxury electric SUVs to rival Tesla. However, the electric crossover was plagued by reliability issues and a failure to provide timely updates in the face of new competition. Now it’s dead.

The big roll of the dice, put in place by Thierry Bolloré in 2021, is to reposition Jaguar as a maker of all-electric luxury cars, using a new platform called JEA (Jaguar Electric Architecture). But hands up who’s been reading the recent reports from the likes of Aston Martin, Bentley, and Ferrari saying buyers in the luxury car sector have precious little appetite for all-electric cars. Forecasts are being revised, production plans walked back, profit warnings issued.

Bolloré went out the door after two years at the top of JLR. Draw your own conclusions. Now Jaguar has to pick up the pieces, and rumor has it the first car, said to be a four-seat super coupe (set to be previewed as a concept at Miami Art Week on December 2) is having to be reconfigured to somehow accommodate hybrid running gear. Whether that is true or not, the fact remains that these are troubling times for a once-great brand.

If necessity is the mother of invention, but drivers of luxury cars aren’t buying electric cars, it’s going to take more than reinvention for Jaguar to survive. It’s going to take a miracle.