You have to feel sorry for Jaguar. By any standards it’s been a terrible year for the British carmaker.
First came dealing with the continued fallout of the December 2024 reveal of the Type 00 concept. The brand wanted the EV’s radical design to be polarizing, but it seemed unprepared for what forms such polarized views might actually take. Elon Musk, of course, couldn’t resist taking a pot shot at the now infamous ad campaign that didn’t even show a car.
According to Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover, the supposed “wokeness” of the ad campaign, which featured a multiracial cast, resulted in a barrage of online “hatred and intolerance” directed at both the brand and, deplorably, Jaguar staff.
Then, in August, following this controversial rebrand (and with spectacularly poor timing), the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, Adrian Mardell, announced he was stepping down after just three years as chief executive. This was mere weeks before all hell broke loose at JLR when a cyberattack forced the company to stop all vehicle production completely. To make matters worse, amazingly, JLR was not insured against cyberattacks at the time, leaving the company to bear the significant financial losses directly. At an estimated £1.9bn (about $2.5 billion) with nearly £200 million in direct expenses to JLR, it has since been called the costliest cyberattack in UK history.
Just as this disaster was on the ebb, and only months after PB Balaji (previously chief financial officer of Tata Motors, Indian owner of JLR) was installed as the new chief executive, reports emerged that JLR had supposedly fired design boss Gerry McGovern, the very man behind the Type 00, bringing to an undignified end a 21-year career at both Land Rover and Jaguar. After initially declining to comment, it took Jaguar 10 days to deny it had fired McGovern.
And we’re not finished yet. As Jaguar is finally ready to start showing off the capabilities of its flagship car, its big swing on a luxury EV future, the Western auto industry is retreating from electrification. On Monday, taking a $19.5 billion write-down, Ford killed its Lightning F-150 along with several other electric models. High-end EVs are not selling. And now—coinciding with Jaguar’s embargo on this first-ride piece—the European Commission announces it’s set to backtrack on EU plans to ban combustion cars from 2035, allowing sales of some non-electric vehicles following intense pressure from European auto brands.
No, sir. You wouldn’t want Jaguar’s luck.
Enough. Now to some much-needed good news for the storied British brand that’s just turned 90 years old. Earlier this month, WIRED was invited to Jaguar’s UK headquarters to get a short, “spirited” passenger experience over two private circuits on the company’s grounds. It was a chance not only to feel what the coming flagship EV is like on the road and track, but also to see the final four-door GT design underneath the camouflage wrapping.
Zero Hero
What is certainly possible to appreciate, even with the camo cover, is that the four-door GT version of the Type 00 works better visually than the pure concept that has been on a seeming nonstop global PR roadshow since it was revealed. The hood, though still very long, is slightly shorter, apparently, and this, combined with the addition of the second set of doors, makes more sense of this divisive design. It’s a little more approachable, less polarizing. Jaguar has made such successful tweaks intentionally, I’d wager. After all, Rawdon Glover tells me they have been through 150 prototypes to date on this, but six months ago the hardware was fixed.
Inside the EV, it doesn’t look like a finalized design. It’s very much a Heath Robinson affair with exposed wires and bolted on displays. But it does have one of the nicest steering wheels I have seen in a long while. Matt Becker, JLR’s vehicle engineering director and general dynamics wizard, takes the driver’s seat and starts to show off what the car can do, even in this unfinished state.
Becker claims that the development team went back through classic Jaguars and attempted to catalog what made each model work in terms of handling. The very definition of fun homework, one imagines. The overall idea was to imbue this new electric Jaguar with the best driving traits from the brand’s back catalog. Now that tweaking EV handling is just as much a software issue and as hardware one, such a goal, one hopes, isn’t beyond the reach of Becker and his team.
Indeed, much like BMW’s new iX3, much attention has been paid to give this new GT the computing power to deliver instantaneous adjustments while driving. BMW has made much of how its “Heart of Joy” central computer controller for driving dynamics cuts conventional ECUs time lag of 10 to 20 milliseconds to just one millisecond, therefore delivering a genuinely analog feel to handling. Becker tells me the new Jag hits the same standard: one millisecond. It feels like it, too, seeming much lighter in agility than it has any right to be considering its size and weight.
Cornering is also mighty impressive. With the rear wheels contributing to turning as well, considering it’s about 5 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, this EV GT goes around corners with a sharpness and accuracy that you simply don’t expect from a car of these gargantuan proportions. Such is the digital trickery that can now be played when you pack autos with processing power to match the performance of more than 1,000 PS. (The PS stands for Pferdestärke, a measurement nearly equivalent to horsepower.)
On Jaguar’s track, Becker tries to show me how they have got those classic driving traits into this new EV—things such as composure, and agility at speed. The most obvious achievement in the few laps I get to experience the car, however, is Jaguar’s notion of having “power in reserve.”
The car seems to keep accelerating with ease way beyond the 100-mph mark. It’s predictable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t impressive. It’s also thanks to more software, as such an effect comes about mainly through throttle mapping—training the car to respond in a certain way as you continue to depress the right pedal. A soundproofing side note: it’s also easy to hold a normal conversation in this GT even when going way over 100.
This all bodes well for when we eventually get to drive the final production of the Type 00. But of course there’s much that can still go wrong between now and then. And considering the company’s form of late, you wouldn’t bet against fate dealing Jaguar yet another bad hand.
Glover is clear all this was necessary, however, to ensure the survival of the brand. “Jaguar had to change. Jaguar was not commercially viable,” he says. “We think there’s a space right at the top end of premium, but underneath the uber luxury of the Rolls Royce, the Lamborghinis, the Bentleys. There’s a big gap between 140,000 euros and 300,000. There’s not a lot going on there in terms of volume. Jaguar has been successful in that place in our past.”
Glover adds that this four-door GT is “not going to be the largest volume seller in the range of Jaguars that are to come—but the role of this car is to position us at this price point.” What’s more, Glover confirms Jaguar is already way down the road developing the EV coming after this GT, which will land in the same price bracket.
“The next car is locked,” he says. “We know exactly what it’s going to look like—inside and out. And it’s going to follow pretty quickly.” Jaguar has already made the first battery prototype of this next car, and, unlike the GT, Glover says this “car 2” will be the volume seller, the EV to turn around the brand’s financial fortunes.
However, considering the seismic shifts taking place this very week in automotive land, might Jaguar use this last opportunity to hedge its bets, take a leaf out of Ford’s book and rethink to producing combustion versions of these relaunch electric vehicles?
Glover looks doubtful in the extreme: “Anything’s possible, but it’s not in our plan.”
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