Jaguar will show off its new design direction in Miami on December 2.
Forget everything you knew about Jaguar — the age of “Exuberant Modernism” is here. That’s the overarching theme from the past few days’ worth of press and teasers covering the brand’s dramatic transformation. You can’t even access any of the brand’s past news or models on its social media pages, as everything’s been nuked as it pushes its new “copy nothing” mantra.
For a brand that traces its roots back over a century, killing off all your current cars, nuking any hint of your past endeavors across various platforms and claiming a completely new direction is a ballsy move. And it’s certainly generated some buzz, particularly with an official shot of Jaguar’s all-new, all-electric sedan and the aforementioned branding campaign. “A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing,” the top brass say.
Then Jaguar offered up this teaser showing some elements of its forthcoming concept set to debut on December 2. The response has been polarizing, to say the least, as the ad campaign drew sharp criticism for the fact that it doesn’t actually focus on cars, as such, and this hyper-focus on bright colors, models in expressive outfits and catchphrases without much context (at least for now) drew quite a bit of hate from the online community. Even looking at the teaser above…well, the concept rendering’s complete lack of a rear window, air conditioning-like slats and lack of any real “Jaguary” elements confuse at best, and anger at worst.
It seems like that’s exactly what Jaguar wants, though. After scrapping its electric follow-up to the XJ sedan because it was too business-as-usual, the automaker is evidently keen to shatter the mold and start over nearly from scratch. That has definitely upset fans steeped in Jaguar’s rich heritage of the old-school XJs, the E-Type and so on. On the other hand, we’ve had it on good authority for awhile that the company was taking a huge step away from that world moving forward.
The “I-Type”, an unofficial name for the production sedan coming down the pipeline, is not aiming for the same customer base as the past couple decades. Instead, this car will leap upmarket to try and compete with six-figure luxury sedans. Based and size and price, it’s most likely Jaguar’s next production model will home in on rivals like the BMW i7 and Porsche Taycan, though even higher-end flagships like the Cadillac Celestiq could be a target as well.
One burning question in my mind leading up to this dramatic transformation, of course, is whether it will actually work. The collective opinion on social media is deeply skeptical for the moment, but at least this campaign has everyone buzzing about Jaguar once again. We’ll get a much clearer idea of where Jaguar’s going with this during Miami Art Week in early December.
What do you think?
