Rawdon Glover Admits Jaguar Lost the Narrative With the Type 00, But Sees the Payoff in the Type 01
Observer · · g5128581
After a controversial rebrand that overshadowed the 2024 concept launch, the managing director says engineering, not advertising, will define the future of the British marque. The production version of the electric grand tourer arrived in New York earlier this month, with 1,015 horsepower, 1,007 lb-ft of torque and up to 400 miles of range—all backed by 90 years of history.
The 2024 announcement of the Jaguar Type 00 concept was a massively important moment for Jaguar, and it became a case study in an ad campaign working against its own product. Now, with the production-ready Jaguar Type 01 finally ready to hit the road, it’s time to see which buyers will embrace the new identity of the nearly century-old automaker. At a recent event in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, the celebrated and the beautiful— Florence Pugh , Roger Clemens and António Félix da Costa among them—joined journalists to witness the debut of the road-ready Type 01. A long, stately EV aimed at the high-end luxury market, it will be the only car Jaguar sells for some time as the brand works to reestablish itself.
The Type 01 runs on an all-wheel-drive, tri-motor system, with one motor mounted up front and two independently controlled motors in the rear. Torque vectoring determines which wheels have grip and how much each motor needs to contribute for the best acceleration. The result is a shocking 1,015 horsepower and 1,007 lb-ft of torque, good for a 0-60 mph time of 3.1 seconds and an electronically limited top speed of 150 mph.
Challenging the idea that EVs make poor grand touring cars, the new Jaguar promises up to 400 miles of range and a 10 percent to 80 percent charge in about 22 minutes. Yet those startling numbers have been drowned out by reactions to the Type 01’s hypermodern styling and the ad campaign that heralded its arrival. Facing frustrating sales before 2024, Jaguar’s higher-ups decided it was time for the heritage brand to look toward the future. Along with a new logo and a commitment to an all-electric lineup, Jag unveiled that future with Art Basel-worthy ads featuring bright colors, androgynous models in diaphanous fabrics and buzzwords like “exuberance” and “vivid.”
The campaign landed like a buzz bomb blitz over London and split the Jaguar fan base. Amid all that sociopolitical strife, the car causing the fuss got a little lost. Rawdon Glover, managing director at Jaguar, acknowledges the controversial debut rattled chassis around the world but insists it put eyes back on the brand, for better or worse. “We lost the narrative at times,” Glover tells Observer. “We wanted to reiterate the fact that the heritage is important to us. With all of the new EV brands coming in from around the world, the one thing those new entrants don’t have is a 90-year history.”
Glover knows some Jaguar purists curled a once-stiff upper lip at the brand’s reimagining, but the rollout leaned into the no-publicity-is-bad-publicity model. “The initial approach did many things,” Glover considers. “We’ve got a huge amount of interest in what we do now. That’s the purpose of a tease—to get interest. A couple years farther on, we’re about to launch the real car into the real world. It makes a lot more sense for the car to be the star now.”
Gearheads will know the Type 01 on sight; those who aren’t “car people” will wonder what they’re looking at. That’s because Jaguar broke with concept-car tradition to build something very close to the vehicle it first teased in 2024, but Glover wants buyers to look beyond the car’s design and explore its engineering and performance. “I think the initial thing that attracts people to this car is that it looks like nothing else,” he says. “But people will want to understand the technology, the craft, the driving dynamics and the real ingenuity that’s gone into this. When you experience the car, its stability at speed is incredible. Our test drivers say 150 mph feels like 80.”
There’s no word yet on how quickly the Type 01 can make a U-turn, but Jaguar’s ad campaigns can clearly pull one off in a blink. Leaving the Skittles dance team behind, Jaguar has turned to new short films focused on performance. Backed by a Hans Zimmer rumble and cut at a rapid clip, black-and-white footage of the powerful EV tearing through the terrified streets of New York will now introduce the Type 01 to the driving world.
The minds behind Jaguar’s rebirth are likely exhausted from the herculean task of redefining a company, so they won’t like hearing that their work is just beginning. The Type 01 symbolizes the brand’s rebirth, which makes the second car in this new design language all-important. Whether it’s an SUV, a crossover, a coupe or something else, that next EV will have to turn a one-car reset into a full lineup that could restore Jaguar’s luxury relevance or mark its final retirement. If future Jags have the Type 01’s presence, there should be plenty of feline growls to come.