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Jaguar's rebrand and reboot has certainly got people talking. Striking and controversial, the Type 00 concept previews a new generation of Jaguars, but what does Electrifying.com team think?
Ginny Buckley - "I love it. No vehicle has left me as speechless as this one."
In Jaguar’s 90-year history, nothing has ignited as much global conversation as its controversial rebrand. That is, until the world caught its first glimpse of the jaw-dropping Type 00 Concept car.
I first encountered this £100,000+ all-electric GT during a private briefing at Jaguar Land Rover’s Midlands design studio several weeks ago. In over 25 years as a motoring journalist, no vehicle has left me as speechless as this one.
Yes, it’s pink. Very pink. Unveiled in Miami Pink and London Blue, those colours pay homage to the city that hosted its global reveal and Jaguar's storied British heritage. This bold palette mirrors the provocative teaser video that sparked outrage among right-wing commentators like Joe Rogan and Nigel Farage. It even prompted Elon Musk to troll Jaguar on ‘X’ with the question: “Do you sell cars?”
Today, Jaguar has answered that question loud and clear. Its colour—inevitably the lightning rod for criticism—is production-ready, according to Jaguar’s design team. If it makes the final palette, it’s sure to make the haters even more furious.
Beyond the colour, the Type 00’s design is dramatic, with an elongated bonnet, massive monolithic grille, and front-hinged butterfly doors (which won’t make the production cut for the four-door GT), while the rear window is replaced by a glassless tailgate with discreet cameras beneath brass plaques - it’s not a car for the feint heated.
Jaguar’s Chief Creative Officer, Gerry McGovern, told me: "It will make people feel uncomfortable, and it will polarise." Which, of course, it will. It certainly has at Electrfifying HQ. But if the aim was to get people talking, they’ve succeeded.
The Type 00 is a big car, in more ways than one. This is a make-or-break moment for Jaguar. It needed to do something significant because its previous strategy of competing with premium German heavyweights like BMW and Audi clearly wasn’t working. Jaguar sold just 64,000 cars globally in 2023, out of JLR's total of 432,000. That level of volume was unsustainable.
Yes, the sight of a large pink car will enrage some people, just as its rebranding as ‘jaGUar’ did. But armchair critics excel at being loudly opinionated about cars they will never buy. If everyone outraged by the Type 00—and the fact that the ‘growler’ has disappeared—had actually bought a Jaguar in the first place, the brand wouldn’t need to reinvent itself at all.
The challenge Jaguar now faces is whether it can evolve its brand quickly enough to attract the younger, wealthy buyers it needs to succeed, especially given that Jaguar's Managing Director, Glover, told me it expects only 10–15% of current Jaguar owners to be potential customers in the future.
Mike Askew: "I hate it. Just let Jaguar die with a bit of dignity."
Reinventing a brand is a tricky job. Especially when the brand in question has been part of the automotive furniture for more than a century. You don’t need to be a car nerd to know what a Jag is. It has currency and an emotional legacy, which is more than can be said for any of the upstart EV brands.
I realise that I am potentially aligning myself with some rather unsavoury talking heads here, but I don’t like the Type 00. Yes, Jaguar needs a reboot and a new audience, but for me, this is a Jaguar in name only.
I want to make it clear that I’m not lamenting the passing of ‘old Jaguar’ here. I’m not a member of the ‘it must have a V8’ movement. I don’t even like the E-Type, which almost everyone I know thinks is a thing of beauty. Nor do I want to sound like someone who likes a nice, safe bit of design. I own a BMW i3 - which some people cross the road to avoid looking at. I like bold and different.
But its not the chucking out of 100 years of history that bothers me here. I’m not especially sentimental about the past. To my eyes it’s just not a particularly pleasing piece of design. There’s a whiff of being different for different’s sake going on all over the place. Like teenagers trying so hard to appall their parents with their clothing choices, it feels done for the wrong reasons.
Although I’m thoroughly on board with the idea of rebooting the brand, I can’t help feeling that Jaguar is about to shred a design DNA that most brands would die for. Jaguars (let’s ignore the SUVs for now) have always looked fast, elegant and beautifully proportioned. To my eyes the Type 00 is none of these. It’s heavy-handed and soul-less. In its bizarre obsession to ‘Copy nothing’ (ironically a re-hash of Apple’s Think Different campaign) Jaguar risks throwing away a design language that it has spent more than 100 years developing and honing. If starting from scratch was so fundamental to JLR, why bother dragging the Jaguar name with it? Let it die with a bit of dignity rather than subject it to a hideous makeover.
Jaguar clearly knows its audience better than I do. I suspect target buyers such as Premier League footballers and car collectors in the Middle East are already getting ready to read out the long number on their debit cards. As cars like the Rolls-Royce Cullinan and BMW iX have proven, you simply can’t over-bling a design for some customers.
