New Jaguar cannot work. Can it?
Old Jaguar is all but gone. Production of the XE, XF and F-Type ceased in the summer, and the i-Pace and E-Pace go the same way soon, leaving the F-Pace in production into early 2025 as likely the last ever Jaguar with an engine. When it goes, the curtain will fall on a chapter that, by JLR’s own admission, didn’t work.
‘The last 25 years of playing the volume premium sector – it’s not been commercially successful. If anything, it actually started to tarnish the brand,’ Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover tells CAR, matter-of-factly.
New Jaguar is beyond ambitious. From scratch, JLR will build an all-electric luxury brand selling cars at six-figure prices. The powertrain is all-new. (Not for new Jaguar an easier solution like Aston’s Lucid deal.) The brand positioning is all-new. The client experience, we’re told, will be all-new. The plan was agreed in 2021, and the first car, a four-door GT, goes on sale in 2026 – so in just five years, Jaguar will go from selling mainstream SUVs and saloons through conventional dealerships to being a more affordable electric Bentley, interacting with a discerning client base via boutique spaces and a luxury digital experience. And new Jaguar will succeed where others have either struggled (Lucid) or delayed (Aston).
Where to start… Jaguar undoubtedly has history, but its brand equity evidently didn’t help it sell cars to people spending £50k, let alone those spending £120k or more. If there’s hope in the notion that the luxury EV market beneath Rolls-Royce but above the volume players is relatively immature, the i-Pace – albeit at a lower price point – is a sobering reminder that going early is no guarantee of success, nor that a good car will sell. And while new Jaguar is free to describe itself as luxury until it’s blue in the face, ultimately, whether or not it gets to enjoy the trappings of being regarded as such is beyond its control.
There may be some comfort in the fact that the moonshot doesn’t include beating everything out there on technology. The ballpark numbers for the 2026 GT and the JEA platform on which it’ll sit are not remarkable, despite so-called ‘gen 2.0 technology’: ‘more power than any previous Jaguar’ and a 430-mile range. The Mercedes EQS claims 481 miles; Lucid’s Air, more than 500. Glover: ‘People won’t be buying our GT because it’s electric. The reason you’re going to buy it is because it’s a stunning piece of vehicle design inside and out and you want it.’
Reasons to be optimistic are few – there are three or four, perhaps – but creative director Gerry McGovern’s track record is undoubtedly one of them. His transformation of Land Rover has been extraordinary. He has sparked remarkable success through his flair and determination as a visionary, a brand custodian, and a designer; in the age-old battle of design versus engineering and cost, McGovern rarely retreats.
