Jaguar Reimagined: Long-term automotive partner of the Attitude Awards poised to reinvent itself

The chief creative officer of JLR (née Jaguar Land Rover), Gerry McGovern, is a deep thinker and a plain speaker. Those in his orbit respond to those traits, mirroring an admired leader as they would, though there is — currently in respect of the Jaguar brand — more thinking and far less speaking going on. In motor industry circles, this is unusual.

Firstly, because ahead of any significant new product or change in brand direction, there are always crumbs from the table to prep would-be customers and commentators for what’s to come. And while we’ve had broad-brush proclamations, details remain thin for so radical a reinterpretation to be unveiled in a year or less.

Secondly, because in the absence of such crumbs, there would inevitably be one or two leaks, tactical or otherwise, just to keep the conversation going. Instead, Jaguar has gone to ground save for the teaser image you see here. It’s happy, for now, not to be spoken of. For the time being, it wishes you to forget everything you ever knew about Jaguar, save for one quote attributed to its founder, Sir William Lyons: “A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing.”

Fair enough. But following the 12th annual Attitude Awards earlier this month, the last eight of which have been ‘powered by Jaguar’, we thought it prudent to assemble the story so far since we were not party (yet) to a big unveil alongside our winners at Camden’s Roundhouse. Not least because it’s a project with such creativity and invention at its heart that we want to make the most of our front-row seat.

As recently as July, when speaking to investors, McGovern was typically if brutally honest.
As the man who reinvented Land Rover (and with it the Range Rover, Discovery and Defender sub-brands), he admitted that previous management’s decision-making — pitching Jaguar against volume, premium manufacturers the like of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz — had failed, had delivered “mediocrity” and that, as a result, “Jaguar had been left with no brand equity whatsoever — in trying to please everyone it has pleased no one, and that’s a kiss of death.” As we said, plain-speaking.

But having taken the Jaguar marque under his wing, and reordered JLR into a four-strong ‘house of brands’ with Jaguar alongside the Land Rover sub-set, as one might find within a major fashion group, there is a new, grand plan to reimagine and rebirth. Over the coming months, every single existing Jaguar model will come to the end of the line, so as New Jaguar arrives — likely unveiled in late 2024 ahead of first deliveries in early 2025 — there is no sign of the departed to distract or dilute.

And, having cleared the decks, what lands will, apparently, be a three-model family based on an entirely new, all-electric platform, unveiled at the rate of one every 12 months. Expect a four-door ‘Gran Turismo’ coupé first, then two more iterations thereafter. And they will look and feel both radical and extremely brave, with design language that will split opinions. “Marmite,” one source told us, while McGovern himself says, “One thing we haven’t worried about is being loved by everybody.” Promisingly, though, the man responsible for the smash-hit Range Rover Evoque and reinvented Defender designs is bullish: “When Jaguars appear for the first time, they need to have that jaw-dropping moment, so people say ‘Wow, Jesus, what is that?’”

Beyond that, corporate lips appear hermetically sealed, but talk is of hard edges and squared-off silhouettes, minimal clutter, new-age interior architecture and an electric platform that can deliver a range of 430 miles between charges. Together with price-tags that sit north (even well north) of £100,000. A rarefied atmosphere for recent Jaguars, perhaps, but market-typical for the floated approach to design, luxury and quality, and well within reason since the new strategy requires much smaller volumes to deliver success.

Is McGovern confident? He’s always confident: “I don’t think I’ve had any failures, and I don’t feel like having a failure with Jaguar now.” Amen to that.

VIP visitors to this year’s Attitude Awards may not have seen the New Jaguar, but they were whisked to the red carpet in the current (no pun intended), multi-award- winning, all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. And the gathered audience — not short of creatives and opinion formers in the luxury space, from the UK’s only master perfumer and a former head of design at Dior, to a global cosmetics head and a premium retail supremo — were alive (as would-be consumers) to the promise of what is to come. Watch this space…

For more information, visit Jaguar.co.uk.