Jaguar rebrand

Jaguar’s new electric car is a terrible mistake - The Spectator​

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At least it has dropped the bright pink. But in every other respect the new, all-electric Jaguar launched in New York yesterday was exactly the same as the widely ridiculed ‘barbie-mobile’ that was first revealed as a concept car two years ago.

Despite all the evidence, Jaguar has decided it has the right design, and it is sticking with it. ‘Brave’ would be one word for that. But a more accurate one would be ‘fatal’.

The reason? It is very hard to see how the manufacturer can survive if this model does not succeed.

The reaction to the Type 01, Jaguar’s planned flagship for the exciting new world of electric vehicles, was, to put it politely, underwhelming.

With its chunky body, boxy lines, bright-pink colour scheme and gender-fluid adverts, the car had perhaps one of the worst launches of all time. It didn’t even have the famous flying cat that adorned the bonnets of its most famous models.

Nigel Farage dismissed it as ‘woke’, Elon Musk wondered if it was even a car, while President Trump weighed into the debate, complaining ‘Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that?’ It was hardly a great start for a model that was meant to relaunch the business.

In the two years between the concept and the actual launch, Jaguar had lots of time to reflect. It could have gone back to the drawing board, and come up with something that had a little more of the stylish, slightly rakish, and very British appeal of models such as the E-Type, or the Mark II – cars that are widely regarded as among the greatest cars ever made.

But no. Instead, the company decided it was on the right track. It has dropped the pink, but otherwise it has stuck to the design. In the unlikely event you want one, it will be available for £130,000 soon.

That is going to be a huge mistake. The only thing Jaguar still has going for it in a very crowded EV market is the heritage of its brand. By breaking with that, it has abandoned the only thing that was ever likely to persuade people to buy one.

Meanwhile, it has lost a lot of time, with Tesla dominating the top-end of the market, and with rivals such as Ferrari getting luxury models onto the market.

Meanwhile, the new Chinese manufacturers are not just cheaper and more technologically advanced, they are increasingly stylish as well. The Jaecoo 7 is muscling out Jaguar’s partner Range Rover, while new sports models such as the Xiaomi SU7 are as stylish as anything Jaguar ever made.

The Type 01 is the company’s last chance to get back into the game – and by sticking obstinately to such a widely disliked design it has almost certainly blown it.
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British luxury gets electric era overhaul with the new Jaguar Type 01

Many, many years ago, Sir William Lyons famously declared that a Jaguar should be "a copy of nothing," an ethos that gave birth to the legendary 1961 Geneva unveiling of the E-Type. It was a car so jaw-dropping that Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful car ever made. But for the better part of this century, Coventry lost that magical plot. Jaguar spent years chasing the German fleet-lease establishment, building perfectly competent executive saloons that never stood a chance against the likes of BMW and Audi. Then came the nuclear option: the company decided to kill off its combustion fleet entirely, and reposition itself as an ultra-luxury electric brand gunning for Porsche and Bentley.

After a few years of back and forth, and one curious marketing campaign, that gamble has finally materialized as the all-new Jaguar Type 01. Arriving nearly two years after the radical Type 00 concept sent shockwaves through car design circles, this four-door grand tourer is a monolith. It looks like nothing else on four wheels - and thank heavens for that. There is not a single nostalgic curve, no sentimental retro badge to soothe nervous traditionalists, and zero pandering to the crossover-crazed masses. Instead, you are looking at a clean-sheet, low-slung missile engineered to drag a historic British brand kicking and screaming into the high-voltage age.

The Type 01 delivers the kind of presence that stops the traffic dead. Its proportions are almost cartoonish: an impossibly long bonnet stretching out ahead of a chopped, low-slung roofline, paired with an extended rear overhang and enormous 23-inch wheels that fill the arches with no room for a finger. There is no fake plastic radiator grille up front - instead, active lower aerodynamic vanes work in tandem with a deployable three-stage rear spoiler to cleave the air with a surprisingly low drag coefficient of 0.23.

The only irritating aesthetic hiccup I could find is the massive charging flap awkwardly stamped onto the front driver-side wing that interrupts the otherwise seamless surfacing. And if you are wondering about rear visibility, do not bother looking through your rearview mirror - because, much like the Polestar 4, the Type 01 has completely deleted its rear window in favor of a digital camera feed.

www.arenaev.com

British luxury gets electric era overhaul with the new Jaguar Type 01

With over 1,000 horsepower and a radical design, the new Jaguar Type 01 swaps conservative executive sedans for an ultra-luxurious British-built electric grand tourer.
www.arenaev.com www.arenaev.com

DESIGNED, ENGINEERED AND MANUFACTURED IN BRITAIN: JLR UNVEILS NEW JAGUAR TYPE 01 | JLR Media Newsroom

media.jlr.com media.jlr.com
 
'Copy of nothing': New era begins for Jaguar with imposing new R2.85 million Type 01 saloon

Jaguar just dropped the Type 01, and the old playbook is toast. Unveiled in New York on 6 October 2026, this is no gentle evolution of the leaping cat. It’s a full-throttle reset: the most powerful, most aerodynamic and most technically advanced Jaguar ever, designed, developed and built entirely in Britain.

Forget the genteel saloons and classic sports cars that once defined the brand for a loyal, older audience. Type 01 is a low-slung, four-door luxury GT with a long bonnet, short front overhang, dramatic rear and 23-inch wheels. It arrives like a statement piece. Unmistakable, exuberant and engineered without compromise on Jaguar’s bespoke Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA).

More than 360 patent applications underpin the package. Active vanes, a three-stage deployable spoiler and obsessive airflow work deliver a drag coefficient of 0.23, making it the slipperiest Jaguar yet, without diluting the pure design vision.

Power is the real flex. Tri-motor all-wheel drive with intelligent torque vectoring pumps out up to 757 kW and 1,365 Nm. Zero to 100 km/h takes 3.2 seconds; the 100–180 km/h surge lands in just 4.0 seconds.

This is, of course, the most powerful Jaguar road car ever.

Yet it retains the brand’s signature balance: 50:50 weight distribution, two distinct dynamic characters, and the sense that serious thrust is always on tap. Formula E know-how from Jaguar TCS Racing helped shape that character, refined when you want it and ferocious when you don’t.

Range anxiety? Not here. An 850-volt architecture and 118 kWh usable battery deliver an expected EPA range of up to 643 km (up to 720 km WLTP), with sustained highway cruising at 120 km/h still good for 514 km. Plug into a 350 kW DC charger, and you can add 321 km in as little as 13 minutes. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) reckons that covers 99.7% of real-world journeys without a stop.

 
FiestaST said:
The Type 01 delivers the kind of presence that stops the traffic dead.
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Cos it's a brick wall with wheels. LOL.

I'm heading to carbonite to start a gofundme/backabuddy - to start my no holds barred car journo career. Going to be a series of videos going over new cars and ripping them apart.

"Where's the art?! Where's the soul"
"The only lines this car has is people lining up to point and laugh"
"This thing is a fridge with wheels"
"Sure this has a presence, in the same way an accident scene does..."
"This is what happens when you use AI to design your new car... and run out of tokens before it's done"
"Smacks of group project where everyone thought everyone else was doing the work and then they got together and slapped something together the weekend before it was due. Luckily there was a spare iPad lying around for the HUD [gestures towards the billboard size screen in the middle of the car]"

HAHAHAHA

I could literally make it a full time job to come up with roasts of most of the new cars that have come out.
 
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