So here it is, at last. The all-new Type 01 – a striking, nay sensational, four-door ultra-luxe coupé that delivers absolutely on the Coventry carmaker’s promise to present a ‘copy of nothing’ to mark a dramatic rebirth.
Take it in. The manifesto made real: yours for circa £125k from summer next year. A hypercar-baiting 1019bhp (the Bugatti Veyron at launch had ‘only’ 987 horses), three electric motors, all-wheel-drive, four-wheel steering and a remarkable 360 patents filed to bring New Jaguar from concept to reality.
Remember that concept? Type 00? Revealed in shimmering pink to a post-Trump world obsessed with chasing down DEI, its landing two years ago prompted hysteria around long-term Attitude partner Jaguar’s rebrand that made little sense but catapulted the marque to the top of the 24-hour news cycle.
A no-car teaser video with some future-forward fashion, asking if Jaguar “still built cars” and Messrs , and assuring us the commitment to an all-electric future meant “going woke and going broke.” They vowed, collectively, never to buy ‘another’ new Jaguar, those of us who would felt quietly reassured.
How ridiculous this seems in light of what you see here: a genuine, breathtaking advance on Jaguars of old, albeit with echoes of glorious traits of yesteryear on closer inspection. The concept silhouette is deliciously undiluted – from Type 00 show car to Type 01 showroom has added two doors but changed little else of significance. But the awe of the 1961 E-Type? Check. The continental-crossing promise of the 1973 XJC. Check. The shock of the long-nosed, short-cabin 1975 XJ-S? Check-mate.
What these pictures don’t convey, though, is Type 01’s extraordinary presence through sheer mass. The car is more than five metres long, two metres wide and yet sits as low as its F-Type sports car predecessor. Stack two of its vast 23-inch wheels atop each other and they’d be taller than the entire car sat kerbside. It’s a design statement, an indulgence, and the better for it.
It’s no more conventional inside than out – the cabin ripped straight from a Dan Dare comic that predicted the pilot of the future’s cockpit. An ovoid steering wheel, two modestly-sized screens (landscape for the driver, portrait for the centre console), a central spine housing storage and cupholders hidden from sight, no rear window but a dash-mounted monitor (splitting a lounge-inspired sound bar) sharing a roof-mounted camera feed.
And all about a raft of luxuriant materials – carpets than run into the doors to waist height, a warm blend of new-age synthetics and soft leather, anodised finishes in brass effect, a snug, enveloping environment bathed in the light of a full-length glass roof. There’s detail, and there’s borderline obsession. But as next-level, premium-priced New Jaguar it’s thoroughly convincing.
Which, perhaps, is the most important thing of all. The rationale, no the entire purpose, of Jaguar’s reimagining was to set this magnificent, revered 90 year-old stalwart of a brand on the path to long-lost profitability via a hard reset. Doing what they’d always done left them with smaller-than-viable sales volumes at an average transaction price of £64k. Type 01 lands at twice that, and yet somehow seems a value proposition given all that it offers.
We said as much to Rawdon Glover, Jaguar’s Managing Director: “You may well be right. This is the purest expression of New Jaguar spirit, laden with state-of-the-art technology. But value-for-money has always been part of the Jaguar DNA, and for us this price point is a significant advance in one leap. We can always move up, whereas coming down from a higher level would damage this once-in-a-lifetime repositioning.”
Strategically he’s correct, of course. But see Type 01 in the flesh for the first time and you’ll not easily forget the scale of reinvention, the richness of delivery – one Ultramarine blue satin exterior colour has so much colour pigment that any more would see the paint collapse – and the audacity of Jaguar’s ambition. Top-line output from Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz costs a little less, Bentley or Rolls-Royce offerings two or three times as much. This is a daring tilt at a would-be sweet spot.
Turns out Jaguar knew exactly what it was doing all along. Type 01 won’t be for everyone, and those that created it and will build it are fine with that. Trying to please all of the people all of the time is never less than a fool’s errand.