The “pink flamingo”, as I think it should be nicknamed, has landed. The new Jaguar concept car was fittingly unveiled in Miami, a typically monied export market. It’s like no previous Jaguar in many ways – and that’s a very good thing. From a marque many of us, with great regret, assumed was moribund and about to join other great British names in that great garage in the shy, it is a positive, powerful, bold affirmation of future intent. Jaguar is alive!
The two show cars, in “Miami Pink” and “London Blue”, have burst onto the automotive scene like a couple of drag queens at a Reform UK rally – out, loud and proud. The knowingly controversial “woke” ad they ran in advance – no car, plenty of beautiful, multiracial, androgynous stars, “copy nothing” – did the trick. It engendered predictable outrage in all the right places; and curiosity among the many who care little about cars (and usually, couldn’t care less).
Rightly, Jaguar has ignored traditional styling cues “iconic” in past models such as the E-type, the Mark 2 beloved of Inspector Morse or the elegant XJ saloons. Back in the 1990s, motoring journalists used to beg Jaguar to bring out new retro-styled models redolent of such past successes – to revitalise the brand’s fortunes and delight the eye, in equal measure.
Under the then ownership of the Ford Motor Company, Jaguar duly obliged, with a new S-type (based on a contemporary Lincoln) and the X-type “baby Jag” (a rebodied Ford Mondeo). They were instantly recognisable as Jaguars, slathered in walnut veneer and leather; liberally sprinkled with leaping cat and “growler” badging – and, basically, they flopped. (Similar, more fatal misfortunes befell Rover around the same time).
Subsequent Jaguar designs, by the brilliant Ian Callum, were more adventurous and a more pleasing balance of the familiar and the new, but they too have failed to take the fight, as intended, to BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Time for change. In the show car, there’s a lack of ornamentation and a brutalist theme in the styling, yet with touches of the excesses of the posh cars of a century ago in the over-long bonnet, windowless fastback and opulent interior. It’s an intriguing blend and has lived up to the promise of those viral clips.
Now, under the stewardship of Tata of India, Jaguar has had a more convincing rebirth. Crucially, part of the plan is to take the products up-market, and fill them with modern technology – all-electric vehicles with breathtaking acceleration and unsurpassed refinement ought to be the goals. This is very much what BMW did with Rolls-Royce when it acquired that brand from the British Vickers Group in the early 2000s.
By then, the cars had become ruddy-daddy, associated with the ropier, tackier end of showbiz; tacky, even – and no one seriously thought they were the best cars in the world. After a similar cryogenic pause as is being now administered to Jaguar, a new breed of much more expensive and far more accomplished Rolls-Royce motor cars emerged, with a radical take on tradition (albeit not such a violent take as Jaguar is undergoing).
Something similar was done with Aston Martin over the past decade; and if you think the MG sports car died decades ago, you should know that the current Chinese owners have brought out a superb all-electric model, the Cyberster, complete with scissor doors.
The Jaguar Type 00 demonstrates how important and potent in the car world is the old Italian expression “everything must change so that everything can stay the same”, a quotation, appropriately enough, from the novel “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
This dramatic design, made in Solihull, should prove to be the greatest success for Jaguar since the last project that involved the founder, Sir William Lyons. The XJ6 saloon was launched in 1968. Like that saloon, still gorgeous today, the Type 00 captures modern tastes exquisitely. You can almost hear the growls of approval.