Jaguar Type 00, the story of the British brand's reset amid controversy and hype on social media
The British manufacturer unveils the Type 00, which physically symbolises the repositioning of the company and its new image. Beyond the controversy of recent weeks, the brand is embarking on an unprecedented path towards the 100% electric era.
3' min read
3' min read
A historical brand in trouble, a new brand image, a matt pink concept car, which, it has to be said, out of the blue, also becomes blue, or rather New York Blue.
It has been the month of Jaguar, which, with production at a standstill, stops the cars and takes a rudder stroke to veer towards 100% electric, continuing on the course towards all-in battery power, despite the crisis in electrics and the darkest hour of the automobile. And the JLR group's luxury brand is doing it in two stages: first on 19 November it announces a rebranding, then on 2 December it unveils a show car at Art Week in Miami, little more than a car-shaped sculpture that is the physical representation of the new stylistic and design direction and a distant anticipation of the four-door GT that, under development, we will see in a year's time: at the beginning of November Jaguar showed, under strict embargo, to a very few and ultra-selected journalists (Il Sole 24 Ore was present) both the new visual image and the concept car, in Rhodon Rose livery. at the Gaydon headquarters away from prying eyes.
The change of identity is radical: from the questionable choices, with unprecedented logos, to the mythical jaguar that is concealed in a screen-printed pictogram of a brass badge, to the all lower-case 'Jaguar' lettering with the specular J and R (which together generate the logo of the hubcaps) and a capital G that looks like Google's. And to put it bluntly, the font appears to be inspired by Dyson's (so much for the exhumed copy nothing slogan of Sir William Lyons, founder of the British company).
The whole thing triggered a series of criticisms and perplexities on the part of insiders, but also on social media where enthusiasts and even the most disparate social media managers and self-styled marketing experts went wild. All we needed was the opinion of Newmartina, the cover girl, and the circle of stances was closed, after that of none other than the divine doge Elon Musk. In short, a sudden huge wave of visibility (even if negative, it is always good for a brand in decline).
None of these 'commentators', however, had seen the show car, which is an interesting and at times ingenious physical manifestation of Jaguar's new stylistic course, or rather creative as the top management calls it, as if engineering and technology were bad things to be erased. And this is to push the positioning towards the vacuous planet of luxury and fashion brands. After all, the Type 00 was unveiled at Miami Art Week, an event far removed from the automotive liturgy.
