Amid declining sales, the real betrayal would have been letting Jaguar die a slow and painful death by doing nothing at all.
What fun is the Christmas period or, indeed, any other period, without something to hate? How can we be expected to entertain the notion of kindness, giving and good cheer without a little palate cleanser of loathing?
Bravely stepping forward to fill this space right now is Jaguar, which, following a rebrand announced last month, has managed to upset just about everyone. The Outrage Machine® has been turned up to 11. Thank you, Jaguar, for being the automotive Krampus of 2024.
Let’s catch up. Jaguar, one of England’s marquee luxury car brands, has decided to turn itself into, well, we’re not quite sure yet. But what we are sure of is that this brand, so often the carriage of choice for mobsters, scoundrels, rakes, yuppies, hoo rays and Hugos, is no more. Decades of history, which can effectively be condensed into ‘Rupert Campbell-Black with wheels’, is consigned to the dustbin. What we have instead, announced in a bizarrely colourful video that featured no cars is, well, who knows. But it made a lot of people very angry. Take Times columnist and nepo-baby extraordinaire Giles Coren, for example. He wrote, in his national newspaper column, that the Jaguar re-brand showed ‘utter contempt for the values of ordinary people like you and me’. He then went on to describe it as a ‘full-scale assault on Middle England and common decency’.
This, incidentally, was before anyone had actually seen the car.
But then we did see the car and everyone got even more upset. Hero of the ordinary person Mr Coren was soon back to his typewriter — this was in fact the third time he has written about Jaguar in the past 10 days — to decry the concept, titled Type 00, as ‘an ode to modern absurdity’. ‘It looks like the sort of vehicle I used to carve in the sand for my children to sit in on the beach,’ he goes on. ‘Featureless, broadly rectangular, about as aerodynamic as a house brick. It doesn’t even have a back window.’
So there we have it. Everyone cares about Jaguar and its rebrand. And is very mad. I suppose those at Jaguar must be scratching their heads a little bit. If everyone cares so much, why is nobody buying their cars? That is, after all, one of the main reasons why they have had to do this re-brand. Last year, sales were down by 67,000 units. People might have loved Tom Hiddlestone flying around in a helicopter, smirking and discussing evil and Britishness, but it wasn’t selling cars. And, as for the ‘ordinary man’ ideal, Jaguars have long been luxury cars. They were aspirational, so complaints about the new concept being ‘too expensive’ seem odd as well. If you want to really drill down into it, the ordinary man should be thankful. Jaguar Land Rover’s commitment to electric vehicles is the reason it can keep its three factories open, protecting thousands of jobs for ‘ordinary people’. But then again, nuance is the great enemy of performative outrage.
I digress. The real issue lies elsewhere. It is the commitment of this government, at least for now, that you will not be able to buy a petrol or diesel powered car from 2035 onwards. This is not breaking news. However, 2035 does creep ever closer. Brands are having to prepare for this and things are going to be different. They are going to look different. You can disagree with the direction of Jaguar’s rebrand, or Lotus’s, or anyone else’s. I do agree with Giles that the tone of nu-Jaguar is quite baffling. But they had to do something, and they went with turning the whole shooting match into a pop video from 1983.
I like the Type 00. The side profile makes it seem suitably malignant, with that sporting-brake styling reminiscent of a 21st-century Al Capone. It’s got big wheels and a long bonnet. From the front it looks imposing and mean. When it pulls up behind you in the outside lane on the motorway, silently flashing its lights in the rich Jaguar tradition, you will get out of the way.
On top of that, nobody is saying that you have to buy it in pink — not least because you won’t be able to buy it at all. This is a concept car, a design statement, a direction post rather than a final destination. It’s like criticising a Turner Prize winner. You might as well complain that Tracey Emin’s bed looks uncomfortable to sleep in.
Jaguar might be the latest source of contemporary outrage from people who dream of an England riddled with polio, bread pudding and National Service, but it is unlikely to be the last. Electric cars will look different, because their engines are smaller and their batteries are bigger. It’s something of a miracle that the Type 00 looks like a car at all. Who knows what other brands such as Aston Martin, Bentley, McLaren and Rolls Royce are cooking up. For the first time since the invention of the internal combustion engine, car designers have an opportunity to start from scratch. These are people who get paid to take LSD and play with crayons. They are, by their very nature, going to be creative. They are going to draw some weird shapes. We will like some and we will dislike others. We will learn to live with them.
We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but does anyone else get tired of the constant fury at change? Who really cares whether Jaguar is making pink cars for androgynous millennials? We know you weren’t going to buy a Jag anyway. The essence of Englishness in our car manufacturers has been diluted for some time: Rolls-Royces are German, Lotuses are Chinese and Jaguar Land Rovers are Indian. The only people who should care, and will no doubt be celebrating, are the marketeers at Jaguar, who have had more press coverage in the past week than they likely had in the past 5 years. As Andy Warhol said, ‘don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches’.
But after all it is Christmas-time, the season of goodwill and cheer, and it can all get a bit much. So thank you to Jaguar — not for efforts to prop up a dying brand, or for an exciting or challenging new car design, but for giving us all something to get upset about in between the gift giving and festive wishes. If we’re talking about tradition, I can think of few better than that.
James Fisher is the deputy digital editor of Countrylife.co.uk. He lives in London and thinks Jaguars should only come in black or green.
The Aston Martin DB12 Volante: 671 horsepower wrapped in a smoking jacket
Aston Martin's convertible 'super tourer' is an elegant bruiser that tiptoes the line between relentless power and comfortable cruising with
Rebirth of an icon: How Lotus is picking up the EV baton and running with it
After years of financial turmoil, Lotus is going all in on electric cars. We tested the new Eletre to find
Bentley tells us the future and announces fully electric car for 2026
The Crewe-based luxury car maker also reveals plans to go fully electric by 2035.
The great electric car conundrum: In 35 years, driving a petrol car will be like driving a steam engine. But is now the time to make the switch to an EV?
To EV or not to EV? That is the question for car buyers today, whether they're looking for a new
