Jaguar today has “no equity whatsoever”, JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern told investors at a conference in June.
So how will JLR build up a brand and capture buyers in the £100,000-plus luxury space it wants to occupy if it has no meaningful brand power in the market?
We already know Jaguar will relaunch as an electric brand in 2025 with a “four-door GT” car with a range of around 435 miles. That will be followed by two more cars, creating a luxury brand as part of its fourth overhaul in as many decades.
McGovern, who is overseeing the design of the new models, was scathing of the ‘British BMW’ experiment in the past decade that introduced Jaguars such as the XE rival to the 3 Series and its first SUVs.
“What we won't worry about is being loved by everybody, because that's the kiss of death,” McGovern said. “That's what's put Jaguar where it is today with, which is with no equity whatsoever.”
Try to please everyone and you’re “going to end up with mediocrity”, McGovern said.
Today, Jaguar is winding down sales of its more conventional range. Production of the XE and XF have fallen to a trickle at the Castle Bromwich facility as JLR repurposes the old Midlands plant to become a stamping facility as well as other, unnamed activities.
Sales of the F-Pace SUV, built at JLR’s Solihull plant, are the healthiest of the range at 4822 globally in the three months to the end of June, accounting for almost a third of total Jaguar sales and slightly up on the year before.
JLR’s contract with Magna in Graz, Austria, to build the I-Pace electric car and E-Pace compact SUV doesn’t run out until 2027 but sales are tailing off, with the combined total of both cars behind that of F-Pace for the second quarter of the year.
Already Jaguar is pulling out of global markets such as South Korea almost two years ahead of its big relaunch.
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