Sir William Lyons, the founder of Jaguar, famously stated that a Jaguar should be “the copy of nothing.” This directive might be his most enduring legacy to the car company he established. It perfectly encapsulates the core principle of any serious creator, be they a designer, engineer, or artist. The finest Jaguars have consistently stood as the antithesis of imitation.
While the 1961 Jaguar E-Type and the 1968 XJ sedan may now be seen as relics of their time, they were groundbreakingly original and modern upon their debut. The same held true for Jaguar’s most iconic racing cars, such as the C- and D-Types of the 1950s, and the innovative engineering that underpinned them. Sir William’s XK engine, capable of winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times, was also refined enough to transport British prime ministers and the late Queen, remaining in production for an impressive 44 years.
At its worst, Jaguar fell into the trap of copying not other automakers, but itself. Obsessed with the beauty and purity of those 1960s designs, the company repeated them too frequently and for too long. The flagship XJ luxury sedan underwent seven design revisions based on Lyons’s 1968 design before a much-needed reboot in 2010. By then, those once-fresh, elegant lines had become bloated and outdated. The same design aesthetic was, inexplicably, applied to Jaguar’s compact X-Type sedan in 2001, which was intended to compete with BMW’s contemporary 3-Series. The style of the 1960s S-Type sports saloon, once bold, looked out of place on the new model of the same name launched in 1999, which was supposed to challenge BMW’s world-leading 5-Series. Unsurprisingly, both of these Jaguars were unsuccessful, and these failures, among others, hindered the brand’s ambition to become a British BMW.
Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons in 1966. Coventry Telegraph Archive/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
The delayed realization among Jaguar’s leadership that, like Narcissus, the company had spent far too long gazing at its own reflection at least partially explains the shocking, unprecedented rebranding it revealed at Miami Art Week late last year. That famous name, a redesigned version of the “leaper” mascot, and a newly truncated rendition of the slogan to “Copy nothing” are about all that has survived from old Jaguar.
The realization, though belated, within Jaguar’s leadership that the company, like Narcissus, had spent too long admiring its own reflection, partially explains why it revealed a shocking and unprecedented rebranding at Miami Art Week late last year. The famous name, a redesigned version of the “leaper” mascot, and a shortened version of the slogan, “Copy nothing,” are all that remain of the old Jaguar.
Production of five of its six models has already ceased, leaving the F-Pace SUV to continue for now. At some future point, the final model will also be discontinued, and the marque will enter a production hiatus of approximately six months before the first new-era Jaguar arrives: a fully electric grand tourer. With a starting price of around $130,000, which is more than the previous models, the volume will be significantly lower as Jaguar abandons its attempts to compete with German premium brands and positions itself exclusively as a luxury brand. Two SUVs will follow.
The concept car Jaguar unveiled in Miami, the Type 00, the first “0” representing zero tailpipe emissions, and the second “0” referring to car zero in the complete brand reset, does indeed copy nothing from its back catalog. Even the loyal, older customers are being left behind. The viral short film announcing the change features a group of young, diverse models dressed in avant-garde attire, traversing a purple lunar landscape, meant to represent the marque’s new consumer demographic and its new attitude. One model wields a sledgehammer in an obvious reference to the destruction of everything Jaguar once stood for.
The Jaguar Type 00 was unveiled at Miami Art Week in December. A production model hewing closely to its design is expected next year. Jaguar
The public’s response, as you might have observed, was intense and often critical. If slumping sales had led Jaguar’s management to believe that there was no concern for the company, that notion was quickly disproved. The rebranding made national news and spread on social media, with criticism ranging from the campaign’s alleged “wokeness” to whether the new image was actually edgy or luxurious. One anonymous user wrote on X, “Like what an aging creative director in Minneapolis thinks is cool in Brooklyn right now.” Everyone from Elon Musk to British politician Nigel Farage weighed in.
CEO Adrian Mardell stated that he wanted the launch of the Type 00 to generate the same sensation as the original E-Type’s debut six decades prior. He certainly got his wish, though not for the reason he’d hoped for. The radical transformation of Jaguar started four years earlier. The brand is part of the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group, sold by Ford to the Indian conglomerate Tata in 2008 for $2.3 billion. Jaguar has always been the weaker sibling, and the disparity in the two marques’ success grew as Jaguar’s products faltered and Land Rover’s excelled, and the world—particularly China—shifted away from sedans and sports cars in favor of SUVs.
The Type 00’s design is brutalist and imposing: all straight-cut sides and a bold, assertive nose. Jaguar posted record sales figures in the 2018-19 fiscal year, but those numbers masked the underlying issues. In the early 2010s, some on the JLR board, including then–global strategy director Adrian Hallmark, who would go on to lead Bentley and Aston Martin, were reportedly arguing privately that Jaguar should abandon its attempt to compete with the premium German brands and move decisively upmarket, toward Bentley and Aston Martin. However, a different view prevailed, and in 2014 Jaguar unveiled the XE compact sedan in a second attempt to challenge the BMW 3-Series. Jaguar’s design director at the time, the celebrated Scotsman Ian Callum, had finally broken the brand’s obsession with its past, and his XE looked as sharp as it drove. But the world no longer wanted a sporty sedan from a second-tier premium brand, and by 2018 the XE’s sales were already in freefall rather than making the transformative contribution to sales JLR had hoped for.
Lyons presents the Jaguar E-Type Coupe 9600 HP to an international press corps in Geneva in 1961. Jaguar
Instead, that 2018 record was set by the brand’s first SUVs, the F-Pace and the E-Pace, launched in 2016 and 2017, respectively, in response to that shifting demand. But they were never going to sell as strongly as SUVs from a sibling marque with a 70-year heritage of making nothing else, and Jaguar’s numbers declined hard and fast from that peak. In the six years leading to 2024, they fell by two-thirds, but even before Covid hit in 2020, it was apparent that Jaguar was in serious trouble. The company had tried SUVs and heavy investment in a high-volume sedan. It had even attempted an EV already, beating its premium German rivals to market with the good-looking, fine-driving I-Pace, another Callum design. But the I-Pace was a little too early, and the company’s other efforts were a little too late. Having played all its cards, the company needed a serious reassessment.
So in 2020, the group’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern, also took over from Callum at Jaguar, assembled four design teams at the company headquarters in Gaydon, in the English Midlands, and instructed them to create something unlike anything else on the road—or any previous Jaguar. Meanwhile, the firm’s marketing department, with little help from external agencies, began work on perhaps the most dramatic rebranding the car industry has ever seen. If the constant references to its glorious past weren’t attracting the new buyers it desperately needed, they would try the opposite approach.
Four years later, in late 2024, before the Type 00’s public debut in Miami, Robb Report was invited to Gaydon to see the result under strict secrecy. My phone was confiscated during my visit. McGovern introduced the Type 00 by stating that I would initially feel uncomfortable with it and then assured me that they had not been “sniffing the white stuff.” The new car was indeed shocking. The Type 00 is much more attractive in steel than in the somewhat artificial-looking images initially released by the company. A connection to the E-Type can be seen in the new car’s proportions, with its long hood and low cabin set back on the wheelbase. However, the E-Type had a far more delicate shape, reminiscent of an aircraft fuselage. In contrast, the Type 00’s design is brutalist and monumental: all straight-cut sides and a blunt, arrogant nose.
Jaguar Type 00, shown in Miami Pink, was designed with a younger, hipper customer in mind. Aaron Davidson/Getty Images
The real significance of those proportions lies in their active rejection of EV design orthodoxy. Electric motors are far smaller than internal-combustion engines, and batteries can be hidden in the floor, giving designers greater freedom to conceive new profiles and maximize cabin space. However, the Type 00 still looks like it’s packing a V-12 up front. This was an intentional design choice: the designers were able to create their ideal proportions unconstrained by an existing structure under the hood. The JEA, or Jaguar Electric Architecture, that underpins it came later and was engineered around the design. And although the Type 00 is a concept car, intended to embody the marque’s new aesthetic direction, it was developed alongside the GT four-door grand tourer and two SUVs that will follow.
Queen Elizabeth II driving her Daimler-badged Jaguar to a polo match in 1995. Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty Images
But will anyone buy them? When Jaguar’s leadership committed to fully electrifying its range, they could not have foreseen that the market for electric vehicles of any kind, especially luxury models, would be so challenging presently. Porsche’s pure-electric Taycan is brilliant to drive, but sales have declined, and the marque is considering returning internal-combustion engines to models such as the Macan and the 718, which it had previously pledged to electrify. In Stuttgart, Mercedes has paused development of its MB.EA platform, which would have been used for its next generation of large luxury EVs, and it has abandoned its vow to electrify its entire range by 2030.
Princess Diana with a Jaguar XJ Sovereign at a 1987 polo match.
Princess Diana with a Jaguar XJ Sovereign at a 1987 polo match. Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images
The new Jaguar has already been delayed by a year, and when it is finally launched, it will face even more luxury electric rivals in a market that could be further impacted by upcoming tariffs and trade wars over EVs. There will also be an all-electric Ferrari by then, and Ferrari’s strategy of continuing to offer hybrid and pure internal-combustion drivetrains alongside its new electric model might prove wise. Outside of social media, those with genuine insight have voiced quiet, trenchant criticism of Jaguar’s bold move.
Andy Palmer, who served as CEO of Aston Martin for six years, earned the nickname “Godfather of EVs” for his pioneering work on the Leaf while global COO of Nissan. He remains a respected thought leader in the field. “I can’t think of anybody that has done this before,” Palmer told Robb Report of Jaguar’s sudden reinvention. “It’s almost unprecedented. We have to look outside the car industry to find a brand that has tried to reinvent itself so completely. And even then it is not easy to think of one that has said, ‘Let’s delete our history and use the same name to define a new history.’ It is somewhat counterintuitive.”
Actor and race-car driver Steve McQueen with his Jaguar XKSS convertible at his Brentwood, Calif.,home in 1966. James Drake/Getty Images
“Jaguar as a British BMW didn’t really work,” he continued. “It hadn’t set itself apart, and so it needed to move its brand position, and it needed product to go with it. I was also of the opinion that simply going fully EV in itself wasn’t enough, given that everybody’s going to go EV by 2035, so it needed to be something more than that. Jaguar is kind of at a crossroads. It was do-or-die. But the most expensive marketing you can do is taking your existing brand and building a new brand from it—because you’ve got to dismiss the old legacy and create a new one…. It’s not ‘Copy nothing,’ it’s ‘Start with nothing.’ … I probably wouldn’t have gone as extreme.”
There is also risk in chasing the younger, hipper demographic reflected in that promotional film and targeted in the Jaguar rebranding. Millennials are more likely to use driverless Waymo vehicles in cities than buy and park a large electric Jaguar. That demographic might have money, but Jaguar’s existing older demographic has more, and more desire for a luxury car. “I’ve been in the car industry 45 years now,” says Palmer, “and about every five years a product planner comes to you saying, ‘We really want to go after these cool 20-year-olds.’ But they are not the target you need to be looking at, and that is more true now than it has been over those 45 years. There are more people now that are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s that have money that should be your target customer, rather than 20-somethings who don’t have money, don’t have the need, and will probably look for tech first, in which case they’re going to buy a Tesla or a Nio or a Polestar because their aspiration is Apple, not a Jag. Jaguar is seemingly walking away from a customer base that others are walking towards.”
JLR and its parent company didn’t need to do any of this. The company wasn’t forced to take the financial and reputational risk of a complete rebranding. Brands, even the most storied, come and go, and that turnover will probably accelerate in the turbulence of the shift to electric propulsion. Jaguar could have faded away quietly and respectfully after years of struggle, as other great British names like Daimler, Rover, and Triumph did. It still might if this radical, unprecedented gamble doesn’t pay off. Ultimately, you, the buyers, will make the final decision.
