“Type 00 is the first lines ever drawn for new Jaguar – its origin story,” said managing director Rawdon Glover, describing the dramatically styled car that features a bluff front end, long bonnet, sweeping roofline and coupé fastback profile with huge rear arches, as well as the brand’s new multiple-line strikethrough design element on the front, rear, bonnet, roof and dashboard.
Auto Express saw the concept at a secret preview event last month, and the blunt, upright nose looks more impactful in the metal than in the arty rendering shots Jaguar has chosen to release. The side profile has been kept deliberately clean, with the brass ingots featuring the revised Jaguar ‘leaper’ logo housing pop-out rear view cameras, and the concept riding on huge 23-inch wheels.
Jaguar has gone without a rear window for the tailgate, a feature that previously published shots of a disguised production car hint will be carried over due to the lack of a visible rear view mirror.
The development car does, though, have actual wing mirrors, rather than the pop-out cameras that feature on the Type 00 concept. The strikethrough design element on the rear houses full-width rear lighting sitting centrally between the huge arches.
The stripped-back interior, accessed via rising ‘butterfly’ doors, features a 3.2-metre brass spine that splits the pair of large digital screens which can be folded away for a “digital detox”, at which point the key driver information is shown on the slender display running round the base of the windscreen.
“The past decade has seen Jaguar pursue a mass-volume strategy and the cars have not been distinctive enough,” said Jaguar Land Rover chief executive Adrian Mardell. “This is the time to do something special.”
Jaguar Land Rover chief creative officer Gerry McGovern added: “We don’t want to appeal to everyone; the car will shock. It will take the Jaguar brand back to when it was a manufacturer truly loved because it was unique; we needed to create something that was jaw-dropping and never seen before.”
The two-seat coupé concept revealed in Florida won’t itself make production, but according to Jaguar it shares clear design cues with the four-seat GT production car, including its long bonnet and bluff front end.
“Type 00 is a clear illustration of what you can expect; its exuberant properties will be shared with all future Jaguars,” continued Glover. “The proportionality is really important; in an era where all EVs are cab-forward and all about aero, we’ve created a vehicle that has real presence and exuberant, long-bonnet proportions. It’s low-riding when everyone else is quite high because of their battery stack, and while everyone is focusing on tiny wheels to get the range, we said that’s not right for us – we need presence and drama.”
Comparing the concept car with the production GT, Glover told Auto Express: “You will see the lineage very clearly, the proportions, the pure surfacing, pared back and very simple, and you can take all of the iconography – the use of the leaper, the strikethrough, the face of the vehicle, how it plants itself, the longitudinal interior: a lot of those design features will be manifested in the vehicle.
“Similarly, that stance, the large-profile wheels, the beautiful fastback profile from the A-pillar down to the rear of the vehicle… you will see it.”
aguar is yet to give any information on the technical aspects of the concept, including where the battery is positioned in such a low-slung car, given that the production GT car will take on a similar profile. That car will be built on the new Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA), which will also underpin a further two models by the end of 2028, expected to be a large SUV and a luxury saloon.
The GT will cost around £225,000 and Jaguar is aiming for a range figure of 478 miles and charging speed that could add 200 miles in 15 minutes. The brand has also reaffirmed that despite the slow uptake for
electric cars, there will be no turning back to hybrids or petrol engines in its future models.
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