Enzo Ferrari once stood at the Jaguar stand at the Geneva Motor Show and reportedly said of the E-Type: "Congratulations! What a truly beautiful car... it must be the most beautiful car in the world!"
The man who built Ferraris for a living said that about a British car. Let that settle for a moment.
That is the company that just confirmed its new flagship will be called the Type 01, a boxy, geometric, 5.2 metre electric slab that looks like it was designed by someone who has only ever seen other cars described in words. For the record, I was hoping the whole rebrand was a threat they would eventually walk back. It was not a threat. It is a production car. It will be built. It will go on sale. And it will carry the Jaguar badge.
The name, at least, has a logic to it. Jaguar says "Type" references its historic nomenclature, which started with the C-Type Le Mans racer in 1951 and ran through the E-Type and two generations of F-Type. The zero stands for zero emissions. The one marks the first model of a new era. Fine. The name is fine. The car behind the name is another matter entirely.
Now, I want to be fair here. Jaguar has wobbled before. The Ford years gave us the X-Type, which TIME Magazine included in its list of the 50 worst cars of all time, describing it as the English version of the Cadillac Cimarron, a tarted up insult to a marque that once stood for something. The S-Type was widely considered one of the least attractive cars Jaguar ever produced, wearing a pastiche retro face that embarrassed itself next to the genuine article. The XJ40 had an identity crisis that took years to recover from. These were stumbles, but they were stumbles within the bounds of the Jaguar design language. You could still see what they were trying to be.
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The Type 01 is not a stumble. It is a full departure. The "Copy Nothing" campaign that launched this era told us to forget what came before. Jaguar boss Rawdon Glover said the car "looks and drives like no other electric car, yet reflects a unique provenance." The provenance he is referring to built the E-Type. The car he is describing looks nothing like it was made by the same civilisation.
Yes, the numbers are impressive. three motors producing more than 1,000 horsepower, 958 lb ft of torque, a 120 kWh battery with 850V architecture and a 350 kW charge rate, over 400 miles of claimed range. It will be enormous, expensive somewhere between £100,000 and £150,000 and, by early test drive accounts from journalists who have ridden in prototypes, genuinely quick and capable. None of that is the point.
The point is that beauty matters at Jaguar. It has always mattered at Jaguar. The E-Type was designed not by a traditional car designer but by an aerospace engineer named Malcolm Sayer, who applied aircraft aerodynamic principles to a road car and produced something so correct that the Museum of Modern Art in New York put one in its permanent collection. It was so clearly and undeniably beautiful that Enzo Ferrari, whose ego operated on a geological timescale, apparently felt compelled to say so out loud.
Jaguar has decided that car, that legacy, that standing, is something to be left behind in pursuit of a buyer who wants a bold, provocative, futuristic luxury EV with no rear window and the general proportions of a modernist airport terminal. Maybe those buyers exist. Maybe the car drives brilliantly. Maybe in ten years the Type 01 aesthetic looks prescient and everyone arguing today looks like they were wrong.
But right now, looking at what this company used to make, and looking at what it is about to sell, I can tell you that Enzo Ferrari would not be stopping at this stand in Geneva.
Sources:
- Autoblog — Jaguar Type 01 Is the Official Name of the Car That Will Lead Jaguar's Reboot
- Motoring Research — New electric Jaguar GT car to be named Type 01
- duPont REGISTRY — Jaguar's 1,000 HP Electric GT Finally Has a Name: Meet the Type 01
- Top Gear — Jaguar's new 986bhp electric car is called the Type 01
- Electrifying — Everything we know about the new Jaguar Type 01
- RM Sotheby's — Enzo and The Most Beautiful Car in the World
- Yahoo Autos — The Car Enzo Ferrari Called The Most Beautiful He'd Ever Seen
- TIME Magazine — 2001 Jaguar X-Type, The 50 Worst Cars of All Time