The Jaguar Type 00 concept car is a little different

Well that worked, didn’t it? Ever since Jaguar revealed its colorful brandscape video the social media landscape has been ablaze with commentary and conjecture. Even Twitterer-in-chief Elon Musk took time out from shipping Cybertrucks and catching rockets and schmoozing Donald Trump to ask: “Do you sell cars?” Yes, everyone’s been talking about a faintly fusty British automaker that a few months ago seemed destined to slip into quiet oblivion. And here’s what all the fuss is really all about: The Jaguar Type 00.

The most important concept car in Jaguar’s 90-year history, the brave and uncompromisingly provocative Type 00 kicks off a bold strategy designed to reinvent Jaguar as a 21st-century modernist luxury brand that can make money selling significantly fewer cars than before at much higher prices. “It is our first physical manifestation and the foundation stone for a new family of Jaguars that will look unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” says Gerry McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer.

The extravagantly proportioned Type 00 snaps a brutalist middle finger to Jaguar tradition. There are none of the usual Jaguar tropes in this car, no curvaceous sensuality or feline aggression; just pure surfaces punctuated by a handful of crisp lines pulled tautly over massive wheels and bluntly bookended by upright front and rear panels. “The Type 00 commands attention, like all the best Jaguars of the past,” says chief exterior designer Tino Segui. That’s true, though few people are likely to see this car as the logical heir to the gorgeous E-Type that stole the 1961 Geneva Motor Show.

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There’s a lot of concept car eye candy on the Type 00, such as the butterfly doors, the rearview cameras hidden under hinged brass panels on the car’s flanks, and the windowless “pantograph” rear hatch. The interior features woven textile trim and brass and travertine stone highlights, as well as screens that deploy from the dash. Totems made from brass, travertine and alabaster and stored in a case located behind a powered door on the front fender, are used to modulate the mood of the interior, changing the ambient lighting and soundscape and screen graphics.

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Underneath it all, though, the Type 00’s basic form and proportion and broad shouldered stance, along with the details such as the textured parallel line graphic at the front and rear (the tail and brake lights are hidden in the upper and lower lines) that’s also repeated on the wheels, on the panorama roof, at the base of the windshield, and in the interior, all preview what we’ll see when the first of the all-new Jaguar EVs, a low-slung, coupe-like four-door GT, hits the road in 2026. “The first production car was chosen quite consciously because it is the purest embodiment of Type 00,” confirms Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover.

Don’t expect the forthcoming GT, which will be built on the all-new Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA) platform, to have quite as dramatic an interior as that of the Type 00. But the Type 00’s use of unexpected materials and colors, along with technologies such as the deployable screens and indirect ambient lighting, indicate the new electric-powered Jaguars will have far more luxurious interiors that any of the outgoing internal combustion engine models. They will need to: Rawdon Glover says the least expensive of the new Jaguar EVs will retail for more than $120,000.

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Though Jaguar has released photos of a camouflaged GT prototype undergoing testing in the UK, no technical details have been revealed other than it will have an EPA-rated range of up to 430 miles and an electrical architecture that will enable it to take on 200 miles of range in just 15 minutes on a fast charger. The GT will almost certainly be an all-wheel drive vehicle powered by two e-motors, with multi-link suspension front and rear. That range number suggests it will have at least a 100 kWh battery pack.

The JEA platform has been specifically designed to package the battery under a low floor to enhance handling and allow the dramatic proportions previewed by the Type 00. The second model to come off the platform is likely to be a two-box high-performance SUV, though Jaguar insiders hint it will have a lower roofline than putative rivals such as the Aston Martin DBX707, Ferrari Purosangue, and Lamborghini Urus. The third Jaguar to be based on JEA is likely to be a two-door sports car in coupe and convertible format.

Gerry McGovern says the Jaguar Type 00 is not a car that “desires to be loved by everyone”. He’s right: The Type 00 is deeply polarizing. But it’s also the most progressive Jaguar in 50 years; the first Jaguar since the XJS to openly challenge accepted notions of what a Jaguar should look like. The Type 00 and the strategy it represents is a huge gamble. But JLR has little to lose. The purists might howl, but the reality is too few people loved the old Jaguar enough to keep it profitable. A new idea of what Jaguar could be, should be was needed. And love it or loathe it, here’s what it looks like.