Design Professor: What the Jaguar Type 00 Gets Right and Wrong

I don’t envy the people in charge at Jaguar.

The brand may have top billing in its parent company’s name, but by its own management’s admission, it has so far proven nothing but an expensive liability.

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In many ways, this storied British icon’s current predicament reminds me of Alfa Romeo’s. Both brands are motoring legends with a heritage to die for, but whose halcyon days predate the Moon landings. As a result, they mean the world to thousands of enthusiasts and collectors the world over. Yet nothing at all to new car buyers who, for the most part, remain utterly oblivious to their existence.

But while it seems not even Stellantis really knows what to do with Alfa Romeo, JLR’s management is now done with half-measures, and their bold new approach to the Jaguar problem is one Emperor Nero would have approved of: Burn everything down and ignore the screams.

Now, I have to admit that I was just as puzzled as everyone else after watching the video in which Jaguar announced its controversial rebrand, which looked like a perfume ad and felt just as vacuous and insincere.

But what matters in the end in this business is the product, and even though the Jaguar Type 00 concept car leaves me with more questions than answers, I get what Jaguar’s designers are trying to achieve – and why. So, let’s break down the Jaguar Type 00, possibly the most divisive design in the brand’s history, and see whether there’s genuine substance behind the pastel-coloured facade.

The upcoming all-electric Jaguars, whose design the Type 00 previews, are set to move dramatically upmarket compared to the outgoing models. Having realised that to keep chasing Jaguar’s long-standing ambition to become a British BMW only meant throwing good money after bad, its management has now set its sights on a smaller, much more rarefied market. However, Jaguar’s offerings must make the strongest possible visual statement to have even the slightest chance to play at this new level. The kind of people the marque is aiming at have it all and have seen it all, so they will be tempted to join a new club only if it offers something they can’t find anywhere else.

And I must say the Jaguar Type 00 definitely delivers on this count, even if it does so with all the subtlety of a punch in the face. Love it or loathe it, the new Jaguar concept car is the definition of a “statement vehicle,” recognisable a mile away and looking every bit as expensive as its makers intended.

Jaguar’s designers achieved that by playing a game almost as old as the automobile itself. It may guzzle electrons rather than the good ol’ dinosaur juice, but the Jaguar Type 00 concept’s proportions hark directly back to the days when more speed meant packing a larger engine. With enormous wheels, a preposterously elongated bonnet, and a squat, low roofline, the new Jag has cartoonish, exaggerated proportions straight out of a car designer’s wet dream and one hell of a road presence as a result.

Jaguar, of course, is no stranger to overtly long bonnets. But while cars like the XK 120 or the E-Type were sexy, svelte-looking homages to the cult of speed, the Type 00 is an unapologetically ponderous, imposing beast. The voluptuous curves and overall sense of dynamism that have long been associated with Jaguars are gone, replaced by the kind of visual heft one would much rather expect from a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley.

This effect is primarily due to the new Jag’s tall, sheer, and unbroken side surfaces. The whole composition is minimalist to the point of starkness: Just two character lines break the tall bodysides, and the overall surface language is the most brutal I’ve seen in a long time, Cybertruck aside.

The Type 00’s large, unbroken surfaces and pin-sharp edges seem, to my eye at least, a throwback to the early days of 3D digital modelling in car design. I don’t know if that was the Jaguar designers’ intention, and it certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I can get behind the idea. I just wish the execution wasn’t so inconsistent, though: Some areas, like the rear quarters, appear to be very expertly sculpted, but others, like the upper edges of the windscreen pillars and the awkward way the car’s nose tapers ahead of the front axle, look as if they were modelled late on a Friday afternoon.

After the proportions and the sculpture, the last ingredients of an automobile’s design are the so-called graphic elements – the windows’ contours, lights, and grilles, right down to the shutlines between the body’s various components. This may be my favourite aspect of the Type 00, as I like how Jaguar’s design team identified a simple graphic theme and exploited it in a coherent and rather original way.

The Type 00’s rear end features a tall stack of parallel slots, whose upper and lower elements double as taillights. The same theme is repeated at the base of the windscreen and continues on the upper surface of the dashboard, creating a nice continuity between inside and outside. I also love how the same concept is applied to the panoramic roof, which has been painted over, leaving just tiny parallel slots for sunlight to filter through. Nice touch!

However, I’m much less enamoured of the clumsy, ham-fisted way Jaguar’s designers treated the Type 00’s front end. Kudos to them for not putting in a fake grille, but what’s in its place may well be the poorest substitute ever imagined. By far the weakest part of the design, the Type 00’s front end simply looks unfinished and unresolved, as if the team found itself suddenly out of time and had to finish the job no matter what.

Jaguar’s new direction ultimately leaves me cold, yet I can’t help but applaud the company’s management and design team for having the courage to challenge everyone’s view of what a Jaguar should be. The Type 00 is far from a design masterpiece, but if it had worn a badge like Rolls-Royce or even Cadillac, people likely wouldn’t have felt anywhere near as strongly about it. In fact, I could see something like the Type 00 becoming a coveted status symbol among the most privileged members of our society, as it’s got such a unique look.

The trouble is that the Type 00 isn’t the car that Jaguar will actually put on sale in 2026. “When you first see the car up close it is a real ‘wow’ moment as its side profile has real presence. I love the impression of speed it creates and its wide stance, but the road-going version will have to achieve some practical compromises and for that impression we have another wait.” That’s the take offered by Michael Quinn, grandson of Jaguar co-founder Sir William Lyons. 

Quinn is right on the mark. Jaguar’s future now hinges on how much of the Type 00 concept’s undeniable “wow” factor will make it through to the production model. If Gerry McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer, and his team get that right, Jaguar may have a fair shot at sticking around for years to come, despite the naysayers. But if they don’t, if their bold vision gets watered down too much on its way to the showroom floor, I’m afraid we’d better all get used to speaking of Jaguar using the past tense only.

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Matteo Licata received his degree in Transportation Design from Turin’s IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in 2006. He worked as an automobile designer for about a decade, including a stint in the then-Fiat Group’s Turin design studio, during which his proposal for the interior of the 2010–20 Alfa Romeo Giulietta was selected for production. He next joined Changan’s European design studio in Turin and then EDAG in Barcelona, Spain. Licata currently teaches automobile design history to the Transportation Design bachelor students of IAAD (Istituto di Arte Applicata e Design) in Turin.