Jaguar strikes back with 'exuberant' concept tease
Forget about where it's appropriate to use uppercase letters for a moment - there's a concept car inbound
Jaguar, it’s safe to say, has kicked up some dust. It will have been expecting that. Indeed, it has apparently gone out of its way to court a degree of controversy. Perhaps it would not have counted on quite so much vitriol - but a violent break with tradition, whether prudent or not, is very much the point. And in its version of the brave new EV world, it can comfort itself with the idea that changing the minds of a comparatively small proportion of prospective buyers is probably sufficient. Some of those people value the controversy that inevitably comes with breaking norms. Quite a lot of people, after all, paid good money for a Tesla Cybertruck.
Or that’s the working theory PH is going with at any rate. The first sign that Jaguar might be nervously biting its fingernails down to the cuticle is the unscheduled (in the sense that PH wasn't expecting it) release of a concept teaser image. This provides, on its social media channels particularly (where Jaguar has taken the bold decision to delete all its previous posts) a useful counterweight to the Copy Nothing launch video - a 30-second film seemingly custom-made to push people’s buttons. Given the 12-day wait for the full reveal, having something else for the internet to chew on is arguably no bad thing.
And there’s a lot here to get one’s teeth into. Officially, ‘the teaser image shows the rear detail of [Jaguar’s] Design Vision Concept that will inspire future Jaguars’. The car’s haunches, stretched dramatically far from the tapering roofline, appear enormous. Adjacent to them, and presumably mirroring the ‘strikethrough’ motif that Jaguar has already shown, is a highly conspicuous set of horizontal slats. The firm has boasted of its intent to ‘showcase bold forms and exuberant proportions’ - this would suggest that it has been true to its word.
Moreover, no tail lights are visible (not unprecedented in a concept) and nor is a rear screen - though it seems the bodywork is cut to imply the presence of one. There have been rumours previously that Jaguar would forgo the use of a conventional rear screen in favour of a digital rearview mirror; for the concept at least, it appears that speculation carries some weight. Whether or not all of this could be said to ‘recapture the ethos of founder Sir William Lyons to Copy Nothing’ is, of course, still open to rampant speculation. The teaser, the first concrete, undisguised glimpse of Jaguar’s ‘fearless creativity’ in action, is well primed to spark its own firestorm of opinion. The manufacturer has suggested it wants to embrace a brand character ‘that commands attention’. Job done. Let’s hope it knows what to do with it.
Would it just be beauty?
That's about the only thing they could possibly conjure as a point of difference but I doubt they can comply with a myriad of technical parameters for a global car AND make something gorgeous looking. The only way of making something quite different would be to not package the battery as a skateboard and that would make the car handle like a pig.
They have no proprietary battery tech and can't reinvent the electric motor. They've decimated their local dealer network and the wider JLR group have a poor reputation for reliability and build standards. The Ingenium engine is possible the worst engineered power plant of this century. Their flagship product is best known for being able to be stolen anywhere anytime.
I wish it were not so as many of my customers work in the broader Solihull economy but the writing is on the wall, Going down in a splash of desperate wokeism is just an undignified way to die,
Which of Tesla's dumpy looking cars is a rival for a Taycan? That is what the Jaguar is aiming at, not Tesla. And what is luxury about a charging network? Hanging around a grotty motorway service station?
If I want to travel from my house, North on the motorway, a journey that is 45 miles, I would have to make a 10 mile detour to find a Tesla Supercharger or travel further than my destination. The detour one is in the car park of a garden centre next to a busy main road. The one further than my destination is at a motorway services. What is luxury about that? Luxury is a petrol station on the route and no detour and no hanging around waiting for the car to charge up.
Nothing about charging an battery car is anything but a hassle, inconvenience and a delay. And at an average public charger rate of 67p/KwH, it's expensive, before the horrendous depreciation of a battery car is taken into account.
Well, the screenless rear (and digital mirrors) looks a lot like the back of an Avatr 12. It's a good-looking car, but hardy "copy nothing".
Arguably what Jag are aiming for is a class above both of them - for people who want something visibly better than a Tesla, which means not competing with it (which should be OK since Testa's strategy is to move downmarket, not up). I can see the entry figure of £120k-150k making sense.
I can see from the video that they’ll be painting them with a 4” brush, that traditional coach building means the panels will be hand hammered, but I can’t see a car…
Did I mention I can’t see a car?
Gay means having a partner of the same gender (appreciate it’s got more nuanced and complex in the last few years but that’s largely the concept) Can’t really draw any conclusions as to anyone’s sexuality from the advert.
What we actually have is a rather self consciously odd advert that has upset a lot of folk who thought they knew what Jaguar represents.
Was never going to be Jackie Stewart wistfully recounting Jaguars illustrious history over some historic footage but this does seem a step too far.
Though, to be fair we are all talking about it, even if I don’t subscribe to the any publicity is good publicity mindset.
Put a gun against its head, pulled my trigger, now it's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away"
However good the cars are, people will associate them with the ads.
As has been pointed out with the new Defender, PHers… it was a joke, JLR have got it wrong, farmers won’t buy it, no one will but it. I’ve no idea who buys them but I’m seeing them everywhere so a lot of PHers were wrong.
Maybe they’ll be right this time about the new JaG, we’ll see.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff