Opinion: can the Jaguar Type 01 save the brand?
The Type 01 has at last been revealed – and the market has changed hugely since it was first conceived
Finally, the new Jaguar is here.
Rarely has a car’s arrival been so drawn out, as well as so storied. You can’t imagine an Audi Q5 having this start to its existence…
But then the Type 01 isn’t just a new car. It’s also a completely new start for its maker. Neither the Type 01 nor the brand behind it has any link to the modern Jaguar that the market has come to know.
Amid the relief that the Type 01 has finally arrived, we mustn’t forget the risks still inherent in this relaunch. So long has the car been in development that decisions taken in one time might not work in another, because the market has changed.
For example, going all-electric was in tune with the market at the start of the 2020s but still only Tesla exists as a successful electric-only car company. Existing car firms have mostly long since abandoned commitments to be all-electric by a certain date and no start-up car maker has ‘done a Tesla’. Jaguar will have to buck an established industry trend, and it can’t rely solely on a bold-looking car to do so.
The cringey marketing campaign that accompanied the Type 00 concept two years ago still lingers in the wider public consciousness too. Time passes but opinions have been formed and the sentiment towards the car and the reimagined Jaguar brand has not been generally positive. That will need to change, not least to convince the wealthy buyers Jaguar now courts that it is a brand to be seen in.
But time also heals. Whereas previously we were dealing with a concept and the future, at last we can now appraise Jaguar in the present once more.
Autocar team weighs in on Type 01
Rachel Burgess
Kudos to Jaguar for keeping this final car so close to the bold concept. It might not win over existing Jag owners, but that’s not the point.
Between the legacy brand cachet and these dramatic new looks, it’s primed to entice a new era of Jag owners, so long as the quality and drive are up to scratch.
Felix Page
I’ll always find it hard to detach this new-era Jaguar brand from the one that went before, enamoured as I was by a run-out XF I lived with a few years ago. It’s easier, I find, to just think of it as a new company with a familiar name.
But then that does invite all the usual inherent concerns that come with ambitious yet unproven start-ups, particularly given the company’s own assertion that Jaguar had no brand equity in its previous era.
The Type 01 is a wicked car – a proper world-beater, no doubt. But can a six-figure luxury EV (of the type that VIPs are so resolutely not flocking to buy) provide strong enough foundations for the marque’s commercial renaissance? I hope so, but I’m not counting on it.
Illya Verpraet
The Type 01 looks like a concept car and looks like the concept car, but I don’t think that’s actually a good thing.
It has retained a lot of concept car features that usually don’t make it to production for good reason: because they’re impractical. It’s enormous yet doesn’t seem to have much space inside. It also appears not to have any tyres and the windows – the ones that are present at all – are tiny.
I’m sure it will be great to drive on a test track or open road, but I’m not convinced it will hold up on a real road, and owners will probably end up having to treat alloy wheels as a consumable.
I’m also mystified by the general idea of the car. It has become clear that there’s limited demand for big, expensive electric GTs, but here’s yet another one.
At least electric propulsion carries the benefit that the drivetrain can be packaged in such a way that it creates more occupant and luggage space, yet Jaguar has put the batteries exactly where you would expect to find an engine and gearbox. Maybe that’s the saving grace and Jaguar can follow Alpine and Porsche and stick an engine in it after all.
Ben Summerell-Youde
Jaguar has nailed its ‘copy of nothing’ brief here. It is a car you either desperately want or completely reject: there will be nothing rational about this purchase. The GT’s sci-fi looks make a spectacular, modern statement.
Its brash, monolithic design and massive proportions are going to be divisive, but it will command attention wherever it goes.
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