New Jaguar Type 00 reveal. It's a revolutionary design but is it still a Jaguar?

Well welcome to a new Harry's Garage video and this one is all about the new Jaguar concept, the Jaguar Type 00 that points to the future of Jaguar and they literally just launched it in Miami at Miami Art Week. Now I saw the car a few weeks ago and I've been busting to talk about this car. All that noise around that video release that was on the 19th of November, I'm going to explain a little bit behind that and then go wad up my first impressions of the car, what it means for Jaguar, where they're heading. There's quite a lot to talk about and I've just gathered together the three Jaguars that I actually own. My Jaguar Coupe and then the Project 7 and the Project 8 because I care about Jaguar. Lots of people care about Jaguar but I'm one of the few people who have bought new Jaguars in the past. Unfortunately not enough people are buying new Jaguars but this one is going to change all that. Well that's what Jaguar hopes and well let's kick off what they say in the press release. Right at the beginning it says a fearless statement, an object of desire, this Type 00 concept car. That is the impression. I want to just talk about the impression when you walk into the room and see it for the first time it is a wow moment. So the boxes tick there, it was nothing like I expected. I knew it was going to be sort of edgy but it is really striking and it's particularly so in the colours that they chose for it. There's two cars and they show it initially side profiles. We walked in, that was your first image and I'd noticed in the previous sort of preamble before we actually saw the physical car it was all about the E-Type at Geneva where they had two cars and they wowed the crowds when they took the covers off those. The thing I think it's just worth mentioning when they did that in Geneva they were the production cars. That was the first time the public had ever seen a production car and you could buy that car you were looking at. This is a design statement that points to the future of Jaguar and I think it's just worth looking at the timeline. Here we are third of December in the UK, 2024. We will not see the real car for just around a year's time so not until later in 2025 we actually see the physical car that you will be able to buy and then that production of that will land with customers at the end of 2026. So it's quite a journey. We are two years away from actually driving a production customer car at your dealership. But let's just talk about the design first of all. Well the first thing that strikes you when you see it side profile is the length of the sort of bonnet which you don't normally get on a pure EV and then the enclosed cockpit area it's almost like a visor look windscreen looking out almost looks as though the roof has been chopped it's low it's hunkered out big arches on it and makes a real visual statement. This is not like any other electric car I can think of and it's odd that's that stance of it and if you walk around the back the next thing you notice there's no rear screen it seems to be on that trend of no rear glass their history you just have a rear view mirror that's a camera rather than an actual mirror and then just the streaks on it and they talked about this design language that this was a new direction for Jaguar it's how it's instantly recognized when you look at the what we might term a grill that isn't a grill those streaks are on the the fronts and hiding the the badge Jaguar which we'll discuss in a moment is repeated at the rear as well and that actually houses the lights if you like the indicators are stop lights they're all leds within those streaks when you look at it other things that you notice is the panoramic roof but it has this has paint in it so when you look at side profile you don't realize it's got a panoramic roof it just looks body color and you move around you look at it from the back and you see it's striped again it is a signature now of this concept and we're apparently going to see it on Jaguars of the future as well minimal badging on it and no rear view mirrors at the side and I saw the doors actually open up the dihedral doors or they call them dramatic butterfly doors and then the tailgate as they term it is a pantograph tailgate which means it opens to the side it sort of lifts out doesn't actually lift up on a conventional hinge or anything and that exposes its interior which in the show car was this two-seater design very stylized wheel no dashboard as such but when you brought it to life the car these two screens angled up either side and that was how they display all the dials and information that you need for the car there was a beam going down the center of the car as well which is very show car really and inside there was clever use of wood there was textiles there's no lever in there that you might expect from Jaguar but there's also travertine stone of all things in the car that they supported the seats and with just very odd I found the interior but I wouldn't take too much notice we're nowhere near production with this car but Gotham City was mentioned on the day I saw it it is that striking this car it's the width of it and it's an aggressive look it's a modern take and all up to now if you have an EV it's CD factor how it goes through the air is critical and they're narrow wheels this thing was on big fat 23 inch wheels the big expansive bonnet what's that all about that doesn't make any sense with an EV it's not you haven't got to hide an engine in there you can package that where you want you're not going to put the battery up the front what was that all about so it almost created more questions than answers seeing it but what was a non-discussion point it was very striking and a very modern take on what Jaguar could go to so I think from that point of view it was a real success I have to talk about the dreaded video that went out when they were trying to launch a brand 19th November and funny enough we saw that during the presentation but we were quickly into the detail of the car so to us it was a bit odd but it wasn't key to the day I spent with the car because it quickly moved on to more physical more interesting bits but the reaction to that video has been off the freaking scale and I don't understand Jaguar's strategy for releasing it and and it was bold but it was beyond bold because it seemed to alienate their potential customers and I just can't see that's ever a good thing and it has no bearing on the car it's a car brand I want excitement he wanted desirable product that didn't seem to enhance me thinking this is going to be a desirable product it was just plain weird fortunately they then did those teaser photographs and then it got a bit more sensible but I'm going to mention the logo I don't understand why that had to be reinvented a car company is all about product and if you look at the really strong brands they don't play around with the logo they tweak they modernize but they don't just reinvent and it seemed to be chucking out all the heritage of Jaguar maybe this is what they wanted to do they don't like the past sort of 20 30 years of Jaguar production they want to have a new beginning and that's how they saw fit to do it but for me it's in a very odd decision the logo is okay it's a bit awkward I can imagine if I was still running Eva magazine trying to get that font and a capital g and a lowercase j and r at the end would just drive you nuts and you're just going to write Jaguar or put it in capitals again and I don't think when I saw it on the front of the car the rear of the car there was no great statement and then they have those the roundel that were putting in the wheel sort of like a copyright stamp every now and then incorporates the j and r characters from the Jaguar logo pretty weird to me when you think you had the cat here has served them well for the throughout their history but no they wanted to do a different design of it it's something that didn't really need redesigning in my view and they've also just about kept the leaper but it's flush it's out of brass it didn't seem to make much impact because they had the straights behind it and you sort of lost the 3d nature if you look at the back of the project 7 and the project 8 it's very definitely there that was again a logo I didn't think needed reinventing but this is a new beginning for Jaguar and I'm really intrigued how this is going to go and it's a really bold statement what they're doing I think there's some headwinds heading towards this car but they've got they've gone in deep with this one they've gone full on this concept car is then going to be followed by three production cars and the first car we will see is this four-door GT car they're describing as and they did this release because there's now disguised cars doing road miles and that'll be the first car we get which is customer version is 2026 then saying very little about it but they are saying that it is a GT car and will have excellent range past 400 mile real range 430 miles is what they're hoping for and very fast recharge but nothing saying nothing more about the tech as I understand it they're not saying anything about the tech because it's still in development they want to get it as good as they can they will announce it at the very last minute but it suggests an 800 volt 900 volt architecture we don't know the size of the battery but it must be pretty big to be able to do that sort of range the only other little snippet I got it's got four-wheel drive the car's rear steer on it as well but there was very little description of the driving experience this was all about the luxury and the price points is put at around 120 000 I thought I heard dollars but perhaps pounds but up in that ballpark and this is going to be incredibly exclusive they're talking about opening these Jaguar houses in the most important cities around the world the first one is going to be in Paris and that's going to be followed by one in London and it's chasing this fashion this design is what they're all about and the whole launch seem to be catered around there Jaguars used to be about dynamic driving excitement that wasn't within any pitch of this description of it on the day I visited they are thinking this car will appeal to 80 percent new customers to the brand only 20 of existing Jaguar customers are gonna buy new Jaguars there that's their figures they also think America is going to be the top market followed by China followed by UK and then Europe I wondered when they put that business plan out they had factored in a potential Trump victory in America and the China market isn't so healthy for these premium brands and I see this car as a almost a Rolls-Royce Spectre-esque that's the only luxury full-on electric car I've driven and it actually suited the experience very well but that is priced well 350 to 450 000 pounds once you've got options on it but almost 120 000 sounds almost quite cheap it's then a Taycan Sport Turismo type of rival but think of how powerful the Porsche brand how much that is all about the driving can they install this luxury because I bought the Project Seven and the Project Eight fantastic cars really hugely enjoyable but these were expensive cars as well I think it was 140 000 in 2015 multiply that up that's 170 000 in today's money and then the Project Eight I think was 163 000 pounds in 2018 today that's over 200 000 pounds if you put it into an inflation calculator and my experience of buying those cars at Jaguar was not good there was no follow-up there was no sort of exclusive feeling the club feeling the dealers did their little bit but nothing from the factory and I think if they're going into this marketplace it's actually how they treat their customers is equally as important as the car they say they're putting a massive amount of effort in there and that is the bit I'm going to be very interested to see if they can get a sort of passion behind the products and people want to engage with it and how they're going to lead off appeal to this new customer base and talking to Rawdon Glover who's MD of Jaguar they see this this Type 00 what they want is luxury and desirability that's the combination they're looking at and it just strikes me within the Jaguar portfolio there's another car that does that and that it will be the electric Range Rover that comes out next year I can see this Jaguar appealing to the same customer so yeah timing of this car when I tackle them that you really don't want to be launched in this car at the moment they say well remember this car is not appearing to 2026 so a pure electric GT car might seem more appealing by 26 27 and it will be on sale right through to 2032 so we're quite a way in the distance and maybe our tastes of the type of cars will change by then and the other thing I picked up from this launch is JLR are actually doing extremely well they've produced a profit of 1.1 billion in the first six months of the current financial year they're in that is a very healthy company on the on the volume that they produce and therefore there is real intent real muscle they're not betting the house for the company on this Jaguar but they have the money to really give it their best shot and Jaguar when was their peak it's it's an interesting one it's looking back you know you say D-type when they're racing at Le Mans and they couldn't sell D-types they had to do that XK-SS to move the final few cars it was probably when E-type launched they were very strong then and then they were also strong I remember them in 80s and 90s every company director had an XJ or an XJS or something and that was probably peak Jaguar as well in volume terms and profitability will this be a new beginning for Jaguar well there's a long way to go but looking at type 00 when I saw it it was a wow moment so that was the great thing about this car will the production car look like it well the MD of Jaguar says yes it's very close but it's got four doors I can't see it or have butterfly doors but there we are new Jaguar is coming this way I hope you enjoy this video and looking at the details of this new Jaguar let's see where they are when we see the production car in a year's time so I hope you enjoyed this video if you did keep watching keep driving more videos coming along very soon