After two weeks of anticipation – and many angry social media tirades – Jaguar has finally pulled the covers off its first new car since it revealed the company’s revised logo and ‘Copy Nothing’ tagline. Although you might be fooled into thinking these images are renderings, the Type 00 is most certainly a real concept car, which we have witnessed at its international debut in Miami on 2 December.
Before we get into the details, it’s important to understand why Jaguar needs to hit the reset button if it wants to survive. If every online critic of the rebrand and its arty launch ad had actually bought a Jaguar during the last decade, the manufacturer wouldn’t be in the mess that it’s in today. Despite producing several very good and a few truly excellent cars, Jaguar’s sales figures have been rock-bottom for years – in 2023 it sold a mere 64,241 cars worldwide, for example, of JLR’s total 431,733. In the same period, BMW sold 2,253,835. As Alfa Romeo and other outliers in this market have discovered, it’s difficult to beat the German manufacturers at their own game.
So Jaguar in its current form is, basically, dead. However strong the feelings for its heritage, for the E-type, hardly anyone has been buying new Jaguars for the past few years. So Jaguar has chosen to literally go double or bust. The plan is to cut production numbers and double the price, aiming for the portion of the market just below Bentley – which is where the marque was in the 1950s and ’60s in some ways, producing fast, luxurious, classy cars at reasonable cost.
Enter the Jaguar Type 00 concept…
The Type 00 concept car shown here was designed to demonstrate just how radical Jaguar’s plans are. It’s not how the production cars will look, but it’s an indication of the design direction, at least. The long bonnet and the low coupé roofline of course hark back to the E-type, and will continue into the production cars, the first of which will be a four-door GT, to be revealed in late 2025.
Gone, as you’ll know, is the ‘Growler’, that unfortunately named big-cat snarling-face badge that was introduced in 1957. The more iconic ‘Leaper’, the jaguar in full flight, stays, as it should. It’s an elegant motif to use, and far more evocative than the snarling face. The new Leaper was shown to us in its next form with a background of ‘Strikethrough’ horizontal lines; a theme that repeats throughout the Type 00 concept.
The most controversial part of the rebrand, aside from those Teletubby-like brightly coloured figures in the first release marketing, is the new Jaguar logo. Again, the idea is clear: to modernise the look. But by mixing upper and lower case, apparently to create a more symmetrical, balanced logo, has simply resulted in cheapening the brand. Yes, it looks modern. No, it doesn’t look classy. To add to the disappointment, there’s also a new ‘jr’ motif that looks similarly underwhelming in isolation.
At the first press reveal of the new look and the Type 00 concept, on 11 November, Chief commercial officer Lennard Hoornik explained that JLR’s aim is ‘To become proud creators of some of the world’s most desirable modern luxury brands for the most discerning clients’. On the decision to go fully-EV, he said that ‘If combustion can do it, then EV must be able to’ as well, referring to a planned 450-mile range – which could easily be the case, given the speed at which battery tech is evolving.
The feeling in the room was upbeat. As promised, Type 00 up close is extremely bold and striking (and large). What detailing there is, is thoughtful and clever. The Leaper-on-Strikethrough motif is etched into brass plates on the lower edges of the front wings, and pop out to reveal rear-view cameras – maybe not the most practical place for cameras, but this is a concept not a production car.
The front is shocking, ugly even, for its upright bluffness, but it makes a statement – and the bonnet is huge and almost completely flat. The sides, though, are more sculptured, even though they also appear to be flat at first sight, especially in the images here.
And then there’s that long, sloping rear, which does without a rear window altogether. Again, viewing the car ‘in person’, it works. A few of the Strikethrough lines across the tail are used effectively – dramatically even – for full-width lighting.
The Type 00’s best angle is certainly side-on, though. Here you see what Jaguar is really aiming for: a modern-day E-type that is so far from looking like anything that has gone before that it really underlines the ‘Copy Nothing’ marketing slogan that was inspired by (not copied from, of course) Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons’ ‘A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing’ ethos. The two colours, nicknamed Miami Pink and London Blue, are meant to echo the two E-types launched at the 1961 Geneva show.
Oh, and then there’s the roof, which also features the Strikethrough, this time in long bars along the length of a panoramic panel. It sounds bad but looks pretty good.
The interior is as striking as the exterior, as it had to be. With the butterfly doors and the ‘pantograph’ tailgate open, it’s revealed as high luxury and futuristic, with a 3.2m central brass spine, twin screens, and – slightly ridiculously – a central stone plinth. Honestly, it looks pretty good, but the designers freely acknowledged that the brass will be toned down, or perhaps eliminated, in the production car, and there’s little chance of a hefty lump of stone finding its way in, either.
The final part of the presentation went all futuristic and a little silly, with the presentation of a ‘totem’ that can be inserted into a compartment in the centre console to change the ‘mood’ of the car – the lighting, the driving characteristics, even the smell. These totems are placed in a ‘prism’, which can be stored in a side compartment of the front wing.
At its reveal at Miami Art Show launch, rather than in a cavernous studio in Warwickshire, I can easily see this going down a little better. And that’s the nub of this: the Jaguar isn’t aimed at seen-it-all middle-aged magazine editors. The company is aiming for a new audience, far away from the tweed jacket ‘older gentleman’ look that it has never quite escaped despite so many extremely potent, capable performance cars in recent years.
Will it work? Maybe. If it doesn’t, the blame will undoubtedly fall on Jaguar’s polarising marketing campaign – complete with buzzwords like ‘Exuberant Modernism’ and ‘Delete Ordinary’. One designer hinted at the connection between concept and reality: ‘Put Type 00 and the new car side by side, and the similarities will be obvious.’
The first glimpse of the four-door GT road car is expected in late 2025. We can safely assume the British-built production car will be called Type 01. Jaguar’s stated aim is also that the production car will target a driving range of up to 478 miles on a single charge, and add up to 200 miles of range in as little as 15 minutes when rapid charging.
