Jaguar GT ride review – we’ve seen the new Jaguar and been for a drive
It’s the car the world loves to hate, but what’s Jaguar’s new electric car like? We’ve seen it and been for a ride with the team who have developed it
This isn’t quite the moment of truth. You - and I - will have to wait a little longer still, because Jaguar won’t reveal its new all-electric GT until 2026 and we won’t drive it until later next year. Actually, that’s a small white lie because I have seen the new Jag in all its undisclosed glory and I can tell you… it’s not pink anymore. Never was going to be. Sorry Daily Mail readers.
As you can see, the GT remains very much underwraps to the public for now, but even beneath its zebra camouflage you can spot it’s a four-door coupe-saloon and the finished car, like all production cars that are first shown in concept form, remains true to the sleek low-slung body of the Type 00. Yes it’s bold. Yes it loses none of that striking appeal of the concept, it’s just more subtle as you’d expect a production car to be. I think more will be generally surprised and impressed, than those who will still be frothing at the mouth bleating on about how it’s not a true Jag like their X-type.
> New Jaguar GT electric saloon sheds more disguise ahead of 2026 reveal
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Customers and dealers who have seen the finished car are, according to Managing Director Rawdon Glover, positive about it. ‘Some who have seen it have really liked it. They love it,’ he tells us from within JLR's vast design studio a few days after Gerry McGovern, the man responsible for Jaguar’s new design direction, went on leave. ‘Those who were undecided about the approach that we have taken to see the car, have liked it. It’s just taken them a bit of time,’ Glover continues. ‘And yes, some still hate it.’
It might have been twelve months since Jaguar broke the news agenda but the GT is in its fifth year of gestation. A team of 30 started the project in a skunks works style set-up during COVID and now over 150 prototypes have been built in that time as the company develops its second all-electric car post the I-Pace (now there’s a car that could have stolen the march in the premium electric SUV market but for reasons only JLR will know, didn’t). Vast investment has also been undertaken concurrently to bring Jaguar’s factories up to the date and EV production ready.
The GT plans to change the I-Pace’s market shortcomings. It has to. Jaguar has no future without a product strategy that appeals to those well-heeled enough to spend a minimum of £120,000 as a starting point, with the expected average selling price to be closer to £140,000. ‘Between £120-150k will be the largest spread, but there will be opportunities for owners to spend more. You’ve seen what we offer Range Rover customers.’ The average selling price for a Range Rover is currently £130,000.
As to who will buy it, Glover believes it will be people who want a car such as this first (I know, that’s hard to pin down when we can’t show you what it looks like but imagine a slightly smaller, four-door Rolls-Royce Spectre) and an EV second. The powertrain won’t be the core reason for buying the GT is his view.
Jaguar’s new GT will also be a demand led car, rather than a volume led one. Jaguar knows it can’t compete in the premium-volume market so it needs to be more considered and have a more curated model family, of which the GT’s all-new architecture will also provide the underpinnings for two further models - an SUV and, most likely a two-door coupe GT.
Riding in Jaguar’s electric GT
What then is the Jaguar GT like to be in? Unfortunately we’re sitting on the wrong side and driving is strictly off limits for anyone not called Matt Becker, JLR’s Vehicle Engineer Director. Passenger laps around Gaydon’s maze of test tracks it is, then.
Power is claimed to be around the 1000bhp mark delivered via a tri-motor set-up (one on the front axle, two at the rear). There’s also torque vectoring, four-corner air-suspension and rear-wheel steer. ‘We’ve gone for a linear power delivery rather than one that gets you to 70-80mph as quickly as possible and then the acceleration drops off a cliff’ explains Becker as he accelerates from 80mph to 130mph with an urgency the biggest supersaloons deliver but with none of the initial lag their V8s suffer from as they build up the torque.
There’s a pliancy to the ride regardless of the surface Becker takes us on - and there are a few at Gaydon that even the local Warwickshire council would consider improving - and any movement or shudder through the cabin is because surface crater is giving the independent air springs a working over. At speed it feels solid, refined and with next to no body movement, then again its weight will be north of 2500kg. Although there’s a little more roll in medium speed, longer corners than I was expecting. It’s fitted with passive rather than active anti-roll bars.
Being all-electric, the silence is absolute. You sit low and cocooned in the GT’s cabin and if it wasn’t for the armco rushing by and the briefest of ruffles from the camouflage flapping in the high-speed wind, if you closed your eyes you would think you were stationary. There will be some piped in noise if you want it, but this is next-level silent running. What’s even more impressive is that this prototype is fitted with winter tyres and there’s not a decibel of noise to be heard from them.
Becker, Glover and the whole team started this project by driving Jaguar’s back catalogue of saloon cars, picking their favourites and highlighting what they thought and considered essential DNA for a Jaguar saloon that had to form part of the new GT. Becker’s favourite was the two-door XJC, the ultimate brute in a suit and a compelling benchmark for Jaguar’s new 2026 GT. We’ll find out next year.
