Car design isn’t for the faint hearted – it’s a high stakes world where hundreds of millions are spent on design, development, preparing production, passing regulations, and driving demand. And you can only do safe and evolutionary designs if your customers are buying those things. Jaguar, bless it, has always struggled to make money – constantly squeezed between luxury brands and premium brands, it never seemed to know where it fitted. Budget Aston Martin equivalent or BMW rival?
Then came the Type 00. And boy did it get attention. Right from the beginning, they dropped a fashion show inspired ident video which created a social media storm – a lot negative, especially from older, male viewers. Even the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk chimed in with their quickly formed negative opinions. Musk, of course, owns a car company, so he’s going to use his reach to knock a competitor.
Concept cars are often marvellous, though production realities can dull them a little. Yet, some reach production with minor tweaks. The Audi TT concept of 1995 turned into something very similar that you could buy. The Honda e concept reached production looking almost as distinctive, albeit with some extra doors, but with an interesting story that the production car was pretty much nailed by the time the concept car was revealed.
I suspect it’s the case with Jaguar, so I decided to create a mood board and annotate various images of the car to see what’s feasible for the future. I think a lot is going to make it through, especially the details, and some elements will certainly face the axe. Let’s dive in…
Frontal view
The car is very ‘stanced’ in this image. Low slung with massive wheels peeking out. That’s not exactly street legal, so expect something a tad more sensible here, but modders will no doubt be itching to create this look on their cars. They always do!
The logo looks good in this context. From a typographic rulebook point of view it’s very wrong. But new directions always smash the rulebook. Remember the Apple 1984 advert? Smash conformity.
The lights will probably be larger, and indicators will appear, but I suspect the overall feel will remain on production cars. The convex curve on the haunches isn’t typical Jaguar but it’s rather fetching. It reminds me of race cars with widened arches containing huge slicks and strong suspension.
Overhead view
From above you can really catch the pouncing car shape, which is a Jaguar staple in its sports cars. It’s also the least radical view of the car. The glass roof is interesting in that it isn’t yet another black slab of a roof, but comes with colour courtesy of the louvred effect.
You can’t miss the super straight line of the louvres at the trailing edge of the bonnet. I doubt it’s a moving part, but I’m unsure how they’ll make it without being expensive to manufacture. That straight edge at the front of this detail feels almost too straight. It’s possibly the weakest link, but I can also see where they’re heading, and I can see something of this appearing in production.
Rear quarter view
In many respects, this is the car’s most radical feature, even though it has historic precedent. It looks very solid, very heavy. I feel like it’s going to be hard to hit legal requirements for lights and reflectors with the lights being hidden by the slats, but if it can be made to work, why not?
Side view
This is is the closest to Jaguar heritage. The shape at the back mirrors the Jaguar E-Type coupé, as does the long long bonnet.
The A-pillars up front is disguised in the Type 00, as is the B-pillar at the door’s rear. This gives an almost Koenigsegg style of cockpit, but also has hints of late Saab concepts about it. Modern cars tend to have very thick pillars for safety reasons, and designers struggle to hide these to help make the top of the car still look like and airy. In the old E-Type shown below you can see that there is this lightness about the cockpit area. That’s mostly because designer Michael Sayer and his boss William Lyons didn’t worry about roll over safety.
The brass detail that pops out for a rear view camera, is charming. The camera sits very low, however, so I question its practicality. I suspect we might see something else going on for rear view cameras. We haven’t seen much brass on cars since the thirties, and even then chrome was popular. Probably because it’s easier to clean. I’m guessing this will be coated, at which point the colour can be anything the designer cares for with, perhaps, different materials depending on customer choice.
The ride height is obviously too low for public roads. Cars need at least 100mm of clearance to avoid scraping speed humps. If you’ve ever tried to drive anything below that you’ll know it’s a series of getting beached and scraped underpans.
The always impeccable motoring journalist, Richard Porter, showed me a rough overlay he’d done of the test car pictures onto the concept car (later shared on his socials). I’ve stolen that idea from him as it gives a very clear illustration of the similarities:
As can be seen, the car lengths are about the same. The front wheel is a little further back, meaning that the gap between wheel and door (often known as the prestige gap, because it tends to be bigger on prestige cars) is a little smaller but still large. The door’s leading edge will also find itself further forward, closing that gap and making the bonnet appear shorter. At the back, the rear wheel moves a few inches back also.
The roofline is just that bit higher – which makes sense, No one fancies peering out of a letterbox. still, it’ll be a long and low car. In a world saturated with fat, grey SUVs it stands true to the old Jaguar ethos of crafting fast, good looking cars.
The Totem and the interior
I’m going to suggest that this panel will be a little smaller, and probably just become a charge port door. With cars of this size, where cables can’t always reach distant charge ports, it’ll be a good idea to have one on each side. And this is a very big car. In the concept, the side port reveals a totem you can place inside the car to release custom smells and set an ambience. I don’t think we’ll see that on the production car, somehow.
I adore the blue colour pop. They add a burst of colour to an otherwise restrained, neutral palette. I’m a little less convinced by the idea of stone effect switches, and I feel that this concept won’t arrive in production cars but let’s see if they make it work. The brass highlights are delightful on the doors.
Overall, the interior feels a little unfinished compared to the exterior – like a computer game render. The central split cockpit is interesting and harks back to the D-Type, but seems impractical if good for body stiffness. Squared off steering wheels have problems – you’re obliged to hold the wheel in only one place. So if it makes it to the production car, expect an entirely drive by wire system such as in the Toyota bZ4X and Tesla Cybertruck.
I’m still a bit befuddled about the slab of travertine stone separating the two seats but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some stone elements somewhere – it’s just a unique idea.
If the car was dark and brooding
And one final design note. Jaguar have revealed just how political a mere splash of colour can be. If the rebrand was advertised with lots of men looking moody, with beautiful women clinging to their arms, it wouldn’t have had Farage making videos hoping for the brand’s downfall for being woke. It also wouldn’t have generated much interest from anybody, really. Past Jaguar rebrands (you can find all the Jaguar stories over at Design Week about this) have gone by barely a whisper… and their sales have reflected this. This time they’ve got news and attention from a broader audience. A marketing dream. The fact it’s annoyed people that the broader audience often dislikes is just a dream come true.
But what if the car was recoloured into something dark? How would it look then? Well, fear not. I whipped out Photoshop, got busy with the masks, and I’ve produced this still imperfect render. What do you think?
In summary
I feel like the head of exterior design, Constantino Segui Gilabert, with his team, has done a great job of designing an exterior that is aimed at a new audience for the car company whilst clearly marrying it up with classic Jaguar styling details that will also be attractive to the old audience.
The interior design, led by Tom Holden with material design by Mary Crisp is distinctive and new. There are elements I’m not comfortable about just yet, and it feels, to me, a little unfinished. I suspect stone can be used in interesting ways in the production car, but I think it’s the brass and the colour pops that do it for me and will also get the attention of buyers.
The Type 00, in its launch colours best described as ‘Miami Pink’ and ‘London Blue’, is a divisive car. Very big, very pink, yet I imagine very masculine in dark colours. Bruce Wayne would order one in black. And that’s what’s very clever here. I’ve seen more women talk about this launch than I’ve ever seen around a car launch. And a lot of these women like that there is messaging aimed more at them. Women are the choosers of many cars.
I’m going to leave you with a advert from Jaguar’s past life and ask you to consider who it’s meant to appeal to, and if many of those people actually exist. Sociopaths? James Bond cosplayers? People who like to drive slowly through underground car parks whilst sounding strangely rorty? What I do know is that Jaguar’s new direction is bold. I just wish I could afford one of the new cars. Please like, subscribe, and leave a comment for me 😉
