For Jaguar Land Rover, this September’s been less Indian summer and more digital Armageddon. A cyberattack all but unplugged the lights three weeks ago at JLR’s Solihull, Halewood and Wolverhampton plants, turning off the hum of British manufacturing faster than you can say “two-tone Range Rover.” Production is frozen. As for Jaguar, it’s been on ice for longer, and not because of ransomware.

Let’s be honest: Jaguar lost the plot years ago. Somewhere between badge-engineered Fords and a sea of crossovers, the brand that once gave us the XKE became another sad entry among luxury automakers. But apparently, someone at Tata Group noticed. And now they’ve decided to blow it all up and start over. Production of all Jaguars save the F-Pace ceased in May 2024 as a sort of brand palate cleanser.

Now, Jaguar’s not just rebooting. It's reincarnating. The brand that once turned heads with E-Types and Le Mans trophies is going fully electric and unapologetically upmarket. The halo of this new era is a concept car called the Jaguar 00, a rolling sculpture that looks less like Coventry and more like it was designed by Tom Ford. It dropped jaws last December at Art Basel Miami, and not because it looked anything remotely like a current Jaguar. And that’s the point.

“The guidelines that we had from Gerry were words,” said Axel Goulée, Jaguar’s lead materiality designer, referring to Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern, the man with more opinions on sheet metal than most have on politics. McGovern wanted something that had presence and originality. So, he turns his team into a design Hunger Games: three design squads, 17 full-size models, one winner. The directive? Make something exceptional, not a retro remix nor a halfhearted homage. It had to feel like 2030 and still make you feel something.

“There were some beautiful designs,” said Jaguar Managing Director Rawdon Glover. But the one chosen sports a long hood, short overhangs and a roofline like a tense muscle. It’s not the past, but it knows the past.

Of course, designing a stunner is easy when it doesn’t have to move. Making it work on a real platform? That’s where most dreams die. Jaguar realized shoehorning this thing onto the existing Range Rover MLA platform would have ruined the proportions. The height, the stance, the vibe would all go out the window.

So they did the unthinkable: They built a new EV platform expressly for Jaguar. Expensive? Definitely. Necessary? Absolutely. Because, as Glover put it, “You don’t want to engineer all the joy out of the design.”

And now comes the driving. Jaguar engineers have been running laps in vintage big cats, decoding what made them feel special and alive. Because if this thing doesn’t drive like a Jaguar, what’s the point? It’s not just about quickness. It’s about romance. It’s about modern opulence. It’s about making you feel something inappropriate on a back road at dusk.

The production version of the Type 00, expected to drop in 2026, is a sedan. But don’t expect three-box boredom. Designers claim the front and rear ends of the Type 00 are nearly identical to the sedan. No neutering. No softening. This cat keeps its claws.

Jaguar knows it will be divisive. That’s McGovern’s plan. Love it or hate it, you won’t ignore it. That’s the kind of relevance money can buy if you spend it like you mean it. In the end, the new Jaguar has to be what a Jaguar always was: fast, sensual and just unreliable enough to feel human. It’s like a great affair: intoxicating, slightly dangerous and impossible to explain to your accountant.

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