'Jaguar’s rebrand isn’t the problem, its new cars will be'

Who knew so many people carried such strong opinions on Jaguar. By now you too have probably formed your own opinion on that ‘ad’, the new branding, the bold colour palette and if people should be fired/strung up/stoned in the streets of Coventry or given the freedom of the city for being so bold, creative and willing to step away from the automotive marketing we’re regularly served that’s as appealing as an inflight meal. If you're reading this you have seen the car, too. Type 00 in all its pink and blue glory. Bold, isn’t it? A cross between Lady Penelope’s hot rod and a Rolls-Royce Spectre that the Goodwood-based brand wasn’t confident it could pull off. 

I literally couldn’t care less about the branding and marketing. The font, the new logo that replaces the growler, the bar-thingy front and rear and an ad that made little sense to me when Jaguar spent several hours explaining it and I still don’t get after the entire planet has explained what’s wrong with it. I had just assumed the Pet Shop Boys had been involved. What I do care about is that Jaguar remains on life support. Type 00 and the cars created from it (spoiler alert, this isn't the production car) have some seriously heavy lifting to do.

> A hybrid Lotus Emira could be on the cards

How heavy? In 2023 Jaguar sold 64,241 cars globally. This was actually a 4.2 per cent increase over the previous year with all but the F-type and I-Pace models enjoying a sales uplift. You can put this is down to the company running out its internal combustion engined models at its Castle Bromwich and Solihull plants allowing them to be reconfigured in time to build the new electric models (a four-door GT, SUV and, eventually a two-door GT) rather than a stampede to buy XEs because people had finally discovered that Mercedes' current C-class is rather forgettable and poorly built. 

However, to put those numbers into some perspective BMW sold 47,594 Minis in the UK in 2023. For every six Land Rover products sold, one Jaguar found a home. As many Range Rovers and twice as many Defenders are sold in a year as Jaguars. As a wise man in our office put it: Land Rover has to pay the Jaguar tax on its profits (circa £2bn). The only light on the Jaguar sales charts was the F-Pace, Jaguar’s best car for a decade and still the best in class, outselling the Discovery 5. Although in a world where the Defender dominates that’s a pretty low bar.

What concerns me more about the new Jaguar, so much more than what the people in the ad identify as, is this: will anyone want to buy the new family of electric Jaguars any more than they wanted to buy the old petrol and diesel (and electric) models?

Ignoring those current Jag owners who have owned six Jags (most likely used and most likely have never set foot in a franchised dealer or service centre), the dying gin n’ Jag set and those who simply have to express a view on everything, and you’re left with quite a shallow pool of potential customers. Unless, that is, the 164m people who viewed Jag’s new ad on X were all potential new buyers and now they are so mortally offended they are going to buy an electric car from a man who thinks Total Recall is an instruction manual for life. 

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Or perhaps the combined 190,000 people who left a comment on X and Instagram had the configurator open and the BACS transfer for the deposit primed, but now they are going to buy a Ford Capri, which they also hate, but Ford hasn’t changed its name to FoRd. We’ll also ignore those who were going to buy an outgoing Jaguar prior to that infamous day in November, but now won’t because their egos are too fragile to be associated with a piece of viral marketing. 

And maybe those brand and marketing expert commentators on LinkedIn were all set on swapping their ID.3s for a Jaguar. Or maybe not, because let’s be honest, Jaguar has been off so many people’s radars, regardless of how good the product has been, for decades. 

Why haven’t people bought them? Because of what Jaguar said about them: old, stuffy, middle England. They were a pint of mild in an Aperol Spritz world. The boiled burger from a roadside ‘cafe’ when they are looking for Korean street food. Adapt or die was Jaguar’s only choice. People weren’t buying old Jaguars and that’s not much use if you’re in the business of selling Jaguars.

Unfortunately the harsh reality is that even Jaguar doesn’t expect to sell as many of its 5m+ long, 2m+ wide electric vehicles as it did its outgoing internal combustion engine line-up. A figure of circa 20,000 has been bandied about, which is… optimistic. The starting price will be £90,000 for the four-door saloon, the average selling price expected to be closer to £120,000 (the average price of a Range Rover is £126,000), which lands it in the heart of Audi e-tron, Porsche Taycan and Lotus Emeya territory along with BMW’s i7 and the Mercedes EQS. 

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The positive spin is that Jaguar is moving into the premium luxury market having failed to make it in the premium volume market, which is why it was never an option to just develop new variants of the current line-up. Therefore, sales are expected to be lower but the profit per unit higher, which sounds straightforward enough. Except for one small issue: the segment Jaguar is moving into is already stunted and shows no signs of growing anytime soon.

One of the reasons for a downturn, which resulted in Audi posting a 91 per cent drop in profits in Q3 of 2024, is predominantly due to China. Not only has its own car market declined by seven per cent in 2024, its consumers don’t see European-badged premium, expensive EVs as a necessity, preferring instead to spend their money on locally built products that are far more affordable, have far more advanced battery and motor tech and software that is years ahead of anything that legacy European brands can achieve. 

Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche have all seen sales in China slide throughout 2024. Even Chinese-owned Lotus has announced that it will abandon its EV only strategy that was due to come into play in 2028 and move into selling ‘hyper hybrids’ alongside its electric models. It sold just 4361 electric vehicles globally in 2023 and is only forecast to deliver an additional 2000 units on top of that figure this year. BYD sold 419,426 cars in China in September 2024. 

My fear is not that Jaguar’s rebrand has ripped up, thrown away and destroyed a legacy, but that the strategic decision to bet the house on electric is not only mistimed, but borderline reckless with no plan B. Perhaps if one per cent of the very angry 166,00,000 ranting on social media had bought a Jaguar in the last decade, which would have doubled the brand’s sales over the same time period, the world wouldn’t be raging and protesting about - checks notes - a 30 second viral ad on the internet and the letter G.

Type 00 is another new beginning for Jaguar. Hopefully it’s not immediately followed by its permanent end.