Jaguar, Reimagined.
Through a series of attention-grabbing images, and now a shocking concept car, Jaguar has announced to the world it's new brand identity.
The response so far? Loud, rampant, many parts of shock, bewilderment, even anger.
And it appears that's exactly what the brand was aiming for. In an exclusive interview with brand executives, Sgcarmart took the opportunity to dive deeper into the thinking behind this brand relaunch, and to better understand the choices that went into this radical reimagining.
The harsh reality
It's worth taking stock of where exactly the Jaguar brand is in 2024. Based on a broader Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) Annual Report 2024, the Jaguar brand recorded 62,521 sales in FY22/23, and 66,866 units in FY23/24. According to an ACEA report, global car sales was around 66m in 2022, and 72.4m in 2023. In that context, Jaguar's new car sales account for about 0.0009%.
Clearly, recent times have been rough-going for the Jaguar brand. It has been relatively quiet on the product front too, with no brand new product since 2018 (the automotive space has heated up significantly since 2018, with many new entrants and brands especially in the EV space).
In Singapore, Jaguar sold just 49 cars in 2023, so around 0.002% of the 30,225 new cars registered in 2023. Slightly outperforming global performance, perhaps, but it's still ultimately a tiny number (Bentley, Ferrari, Maserati, and Rolls-Royce all sold more cars here in 2023 than Jaguar). Some brands probably sold more in a week, possibly a day.
And with more candour and honesty than executives typically are willing (or allowed) to provide, the Jaguar brand actively acknowledges this reality. "Over the last 15 or 20 years, Jaguar has traded on what we've described as a unit volume of a value proposition of that territory. And whilst many of our products were critically acclaimed, notably the F-Pace, the I-Pace, winning multiple global awards, design awards, we didn't maintain that position, that value proposition, that distinctiveness that we had in the past," Alistair Scott, Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover, Asia Pacific Region, tells us.
Put simply, the Jaguar brand was struggling - dwindling volume does not a successful business model make. And so the Jaguar brand will undergo a radical transformation.
Shocking intent
During the interview, the term "polarising" came up multiple times.
And that is perhaps the most immediate way to describe the first reactions to Jaguar's brand relaunch. The uproar and backlash that you are hearing? That's quite intentional.
'Exuberant Modernism' is what Jaguar is calling its new identity. Bold graphics. Unconstrained and vibrant colours. And a radical and hard departure away from existing perceptions and visual associations. "And that's extremely intentional. It will polarise people," says Scott.
In the words of Adrian Mardell, Global CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, "We have given ourselves a clean sheet opportunity to reimagine this wonderful brand. With no limitations on fresh and radical ideas."
"We can't just re-design the product range. We really need to look at the brand. Brand is the distinguishing factor, and brands should lead the product, the design and the whole experience," says Tom Child, Regional House of Brands Director.
Everything gets a fresh look, even longstanding elements like the logo and wordmark. Buzzy phrases like "fearless to push boundaries", "compelling nature", "exuberant nature" and "embedded in culture" are easy to dismiss as simply marketing spiel, but the intent behind it is clear - Jaguar is being purposely and provocatively different.
In specifically aligning itself with the art world (the new Design Vision Concept car made its debut at Miami Art Week), and with several of the relaunch visuals making clear associations to the world of fashion, Jaguar is pursuing a louder, highly-extroverted vision of itself, and trying to change long-standing impressions about the Jaguar name.
And of course, the Type 00. A vociferous statement from the brand, and likely a clamorous uproar to accompany it. With its bold loudness, clean slab-sidedness, and intensely heavy and imposing proportions, the Type 00 has zero shy intentions.
It's telling that with this brand relaunch, Jaguar has said little about product nor technology. The focus is on design, but more broadly about redefining the brand identity.
Why?
Which of course begs the question: Why?
The answer is clear and simple: Luxury. "We're moving out of volume territory that we've operated in the past, and into more niche territory," says Scott.
If you can't compete in volume, the other obvious choice is to compete on margins.
Looking across the industry, we've also seen other brands make the move upwards on the luxury ladder alongside their electric transformations. The likes of Alfa Romeo, Alpine, Lotus, Maserati, Polestar, Smart - these brands may span market segments and price points, but share one thing in common: Low volumes.
Amidst the expected PR/Marketing chatter about targeting more premium positioning, this could also be driven by necessary economics, such as the still-higher cost of developing and manufacturing EVs, and the hard reality of smaller-volume manufacturing. And given the ever-present uncertainty of the EV market going forward, chasing volume and duking out with the big boys was never going to be a viable option. Solvency is contingent on profit - profit that's hopefully found in higher margins.
The same is true for Jaguar. "We're looking to reposition the brand in people's minds. We're moving into a new space, somewhere we've not been in in the last 25 years - a more luxury position," says Sam Goldsmith, Jaguar Brand Director for Asia Pacific.
But, it's also clear that Jaguar is courting a particular kind of luxury. Luxury takes different forms, and mean different things to different demographics. Old-school, understated luxury? Almost certainly not. Instead, this design/art-driven approach looks to be courting the 'new money' demographic - younger, louder, bolder, and with a greater appetite for standing out.
Scott does not shy away from the reality of this approach, "It will be an entirely new client base […] different to the client base who were buying our vehicles in the past. It will be a significant shift from perhaps where we are currently perceived to be today, and where we will be moving to in the future."
The aim is to make the new Jaguar brand much more aspirational and desirable - to a certain sort of buyer.
What about legacy and history?
History. Heritage. Legacy. Words that come up all the time in any discussion of brand and identity - more so for a brand like Jaguar that for a long time made those elements a core part of the brand story.
Heritage is important. But its importance is also intrinsically tied to its ability to generate revenue. No point holding on to a relic-ed past, only to see current and future business fade away.
That said, Jaguar points to its history of aspirational and desirable products - the brand did start out making small-volume sports cars, such as the XK120.
Unsurprisingly, the E-Type comes up during the interview, arguably the brand's most famous car (and some may say most beautiful). Goldsmith notes that the car that followed the E-Type - the XJS - shows the brand's willingness to evolve. "At the end of the life of the E-Type, we had an opportunity to recreate that vehicle and to continue that success - but we chose not to," he says.
But references to heritage and history, at this point, feel slightly perfunctory. While it may be a step too far to say that Jaguar is discarding its past entirely, this brand relaunch feels like a hard and complete reset - more drastic (and possibly more risky) than we've seen with the Range Rover and Defender rebrands.
It's a risk, obviously, but also the calculation that Jaguar has made. It's going to grab attention, start conversations, and make people sit up and notice - not something the brand has been particularly successful at in recent times.
What's to come
Jaguar tells us that the first production model - a four-door GT - will be revealed towards the end of 2025, with production to follow the next year.
"But many elements of [the Type 00 concept] will then be taken through to production. So things like the long bonnet, the sloping roofline, the monolithic rear - all of these elements that make the car as distinctive as it is - will then be shared on future Jaguars," says Goldsmith. "And JLR - when we produce concept cars, and we've produced them in the past, whether it was the Defender or any other of our concept cars - we have a really strong track record of delivering on what you see.”
The new blank slate is contingent on an all-electric architecture. Goldsmith emphasises the design-first approach and how it will "redefine the future of Jaguar". This ground-up, blank slate redesign in fact informs the brand's electric direction. "Many other OEMs, when they design a car, they may be constrained in terms of what they can do with a certain platform. But we will create a fully dedicated platform for Jaguar to enable this design vision. And that is why we will go to EV. We couldn't enable the design, and we couldn't enable the visionary adoption of the approach that we wanted to take with a flexible architecture (the ability to have PHEV, ICE as well as EV). The most important thing for us is design, and therefore the best powertrain to enable that for us is electric."
Jaguar also claims unique dynamic characteristics. That, only time (and experience driving future production models) will tell.
With the move upwards into luxury, increased customisation is also anticipated. "We already offer Bespoke now. We will offer that for Jaguar as well," adds Goldsmith.
And this push towards luxury is not singular nor linear. “We acknowledge that the progression towards EVs across all the different markets that will have the Jaguar brand move at different paces,” says Scott. In fact, the brand relaunch will see Jaguar limiting the amount of markets that it will be available to in Asia Pacific. “Where previously all the markets had Jaguar, we will be limiting it to a finite number - maximum at the moment of only about 5 markets,” Scott adds.
Will it work?
Whether this will ultimately work is of course a much harder question to have an answer for. The correct answer, of course, is that we don't know. And neither can the Jaguar brand, really.
But optimism persists. Jaguar points to the successful rebranding of its other brands within its 'House of Brands', notably the Defender, as evidence of transformational ability and success. "When we announced we were relaunching the brand […] it was groundbreaking in its own right. And to say back then, we're going to triple the volume and double the price - it seemed an impossible task, but we've managed to reinvent Defender in a way, when no one thought we could," says Scott.
And the broader business outlines toward profitability can be gleaned - higher margins through more premium products, lower operating costs with reduced markets. Perhaps.
It is a gamble. And a big one at that. But, it might also be a gamble that Jaguar had to make.
When thinking about Jaguar's brand relaunch, it's perhaps also worth considering this: What other choice did the brand have?
The E-Type ended production 50 years ago, and no number of RM Sotheby's-record auctions is going to move the typical car buyer to the brand showroom. And as we've already outlined (and Jaguar frankly acknowledging), the downward trendlines were clear for all to see.
Trading in heritage and sentimentality can work, but it can also only go so far. Brand desirability, especially in the luxury space, is king.
With the brand slowly fading away in buyer's consciousness, a move like this could be seen as a choice driven both by explicit desire, but also by inherent necessity.
Cleaning the slate out requires some difficult choices using heavy-duty cleaner, but the blank slate that follows offers new opportunities unencumbered by baggage and legacy. When quizzed on specific design inspirations, Goldsmith tells us, "The design team were given a blank sheet of paper. They had the ability to design whatever car they wanted, and then we chose the one that best supported our strategy. And they also designed it without any constraints - they didn't have to worry about things like architecture, being able to share performance. It was purely design."
In chasing a new USP positioned so radically against brand history and precedence, the future of Jaguar is clear, but also filled with market uncertainty. The brand's design vision and electric direction is now finally overt for the world to see, polarising intent and all. Understandably, questions will persist long into the future with answers yet to begin formulation - product quality and reliability, manufacturing, after sales, all the necessary and tangible factors to any automotive brand's success.
And, the new Jaguar brand will not resonate with every single person. But that's also one other upside of going luxe - you don't have to appeal to everybody, just enough somebodies.
Scepticism, even cynicism, may weigh against Jaguar's big move. Branding exercise as this may be, the proof will ultimately be in the product(s). But agree or not, we have to at least acknowledge the bravery and boldness of the brand to pursue this new vision and direction, and to take a radical approach to (hopefully) turn the brand's fortunes around. Radically reimagining a long-standing brand is no simple feat, even if it may now be necessary.
All that uproar you hear? Might just be music to Jaguar's ears.
