Is Jaguar Heading For EXTINCTION?

jaguar's third relaunch in four decades has failed the hopes of everyone who holds affection for the brand and there's loads of us me included and now pinned on relaunch number four what's happening to jaguar we like to think of the company as a big car brand especially in the uk but last year the jaguar xf was outsold by the jeep wrangler in britain the small jaguar xc jaguar's mass market answer to the bmw 3 series was outsold by the bigger more expensive and in no way mass-market mercedes s-class neither of jaguar's sports saloons sold over a thousand models in the uk i'm sorry but that officially puts you into niche territory and globally it's just as bad jaguar sold 14 000 cars in the last three months of 2021 according to their own figures to put that into perspective it was the worst quarter for the brand since 2013. and 2013 is significant because that's when the management team at jaguar land rover was still busily laying the groundwork for the dream of becoming britain's bmw with the goal of a million sales a year last time i checked 14 000 is about a million short of a million back in 2013 the two saloons the xc and the xf were only on the road as prototypes and the e-pace and f-pace suvs only existed on computer or in clay in the design studio what that means basically is that jaguar's third relaunch in four decades has failed the hopes of everybody who holds affection for the company and there's loads of us me included and now pinned on relaunch number four when they rip it all up and go entirely electric but before we look into jaguar's future let's remind ourselves why jaguar still exists let's take it back to the late 50s and early 60s when the brands found that so william lyons presided over error-defining machines like the 1959 mark ii the 1961 e-type and the 1968 xj those plus the early sports cars the c types the d types and the cool variants like the xj coupe with the dna for the jaguar brand they signify the effortless call and glamour that every successive new owner has tried to recapture very long story cut short in the 1980s british industrialist sir john egan wrestled the company out of the dead hands of british leyland for a brief moment of glory and that culminated in the xj220 supercar before they seduced ford into buying the company for 2.5 billion dollars in 1990. that led to travesties like the x-type which was based on a mondeo and other corporate crimes against jaguar's past designs fast forward a bit more because needless to say ford's relaunch failed current owners tata an indian company bought jaguar land rover in 2008 for 2.3 billion dollars less than what ford paid 18 years earlier and they set about creating a premium powerhouse the new boss ralph spieth came from bmw and he knew all about what customers wanted from a jaguar it looked to me like he was trying to turn jaguar into a proper rival for bmw he signed off a rear-wheel drive bias platform called d7 that cost 1.5 billion pounds and made wide use of lightweight aluminium to give jaguar's cars the handling performance that bmw customers had come to expect jaguar head of design ian callum created svelte understated bodies for both the xc and the xf the xc was described as arguably the most important car in jaguar's history when it launched in 2014. they drove well as well they did except the designs were maybe a bit too understated and today when you're looking at an xf or an xc instead of going ooh an english bmw you kind of think maybe i'll just go and buy an actual bmw the suvs especially the f-pace worked better visually and the i-pace electric suv is still an eye-catching car four years after its launch but for whatever reason it didn't work jaguar failed to convince enough customers out of their german premiums and once again the brand was carried by the success of land rover check this out analysts conservatively predicted the xc would sell 63 000 at its launch but it only managed to peak at 43 000 in 2016. the lesson we can take from this is that they moved quite slowly and delivered a product that people just didn't want i actually remember there was a lot of debate back then about whether jaguar should make an suv because everyone else was doing that and then when they finally did the f-pace it was the big seller it sold 72 000 in 2017 way more than the xe the f-pace helped them to achieve one of their biggest sales years in 2018 when they sold 180 000 cars but it's been downhill ever since last year they sold 86 000. so jaguar needed another revolution in 2020 former renault executive thierry balor took over from ral spieth and the first thing he did was to say look we're not going to take on the german premiums anymore that's clearly not working we're going to copy tesla all right so maybe he didn't say those exact words not out loud anyway but he might have been thinking it because as we heard last year jaguar will become all-electric from 2025 and the current models everything they make including the i-pace will be left to end their days in a slow decline without direct replacements everything is going in the bin fresh start yet another relaunch so what do we know about the new electric jaguars from 2025 well we know they're going to go up market a long way up market jaguar's head of design jerry mcgovern said we're going to make jaguar wonderful again and by the way he's the guy who took over from ian callum and also the guy who does an amazing job with land rover i mean you might have strong views about whether range rovers need to exist in this world but look out your window and tell me how many range rovers you see versus how many jags are out there people love them and they're good too mcgovern's vision is that jaguar needs to recapture what made william lyons is jaguar great not looking back in a retro way but channeling some of that magic to get the brand on top again last year right after the announcement that jaguar would go all electric mcgovern promised jaw-dropping designs that would be a copy of nothing forget about matching the model lineup from bmw audi and mercedes now jaguar is going to try to pinch customers off the likes of porsche and bentley the brand will be lower volume more exclusive and a true luxury experience at least that's what they say they're going to be more expensive too obviously you can expect new jags to regularly break the 100 000 mark and these new jaguars will not share any underbody bits with land rover in the past they were going to use the mla platform which stands for modular longitudinal architecture and there was a plan for the new all-electric jaguar xj to use this platform but they cancelled that plan because they realized the platform basically wasn't good enough it was designed for both electric and combustion engines which meant it was built partly for the past and not exclusively for the future if they'd have continued with it they'd have been playing catch-up with companies that are already doing it properly and building dedicated electric platforms so now jaguar is creating its own platform which they won't share with land rover and this is a very expensive thing to do so it's found someone to work with to help share the costs a canadian engineering group called magna and this platform has a cool name panthera if you're wondering yes this is the name for the genus of big cats that includes jaguars lions tigers and leopards so it kind of fits now jerry mcgovern is very keen to have his say in this new platform he's so keen in fact that he said he's designing the cars first and then creating the platforms to fit the designs normally this happens the other way around because as we said earlier platforms are expensive remember jaguar spent 1.5 billion pounds on the platform for the xc which failed so they lost that money but this way he gets to make the car exactly to his design which bodes well i'll tell you what using a bespoke platform also does it allows jlr to sell jaguar if it wants jerry creates a knockout design magnet helps design a platform and boom you can sell jaguar as a going concern or list it on a stock market which seems to be a trendy thing to do these days look at the stories about porsche lotus and polestar etc could relaunch number four actually work it's probably a bit like when you walk up the aisle with husband or wife number four you're always gonna think yeah this is the one for life this time and then there's always gonna be that lingering doubt in the back of your mind that maybe i don't know maybe they'll be in number five if there'll be a number five still at least we can enjoy some new designs from jerry they better be good mate and cross our fingers that this one sticks what do you guys think they couldn't take on mercedes and bmw but can they take on bentley and porsche is this the right direction would you spend a hundred grand on a jag let me know in the comments below [Music] you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 651,024

Keywords: jaguar, jaguar xe, jaguar xf, jaguar project 8, jaguar review, end of jaguar, failing jaguar, failing car company, jaguar extinct, rory reid, autotrader, auto trader, rory reid autotrader, electric jaguar, jaguar concept, jaguar future, history of jaguar, future of jaguar

Id: 6XVZudvYiNU

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Ultra-sphinx]

Have the goal of selling a million cars per annum

Only sold 14k globally in the last 3 months of 2021

That's comically bad. Then again, the german competition is very hard to beat unless you are bringing fresh ideas to the table like the Silicon Valley EVs.

[u/rayrayrayray]

No it's not. If Lotus can turn it's company around, Jaguar definitely can. It's one electric sedan away from being relevant again. In 2019 the I-pace won car of the year.

[u/mtlurb]

I love my JAG SVR, the only car that gives me a smile. And I had a ton of cars.

[u/purplegoldcat]

They’re so much fun to drive. Not fond of the new 6-cyl, the old supercharged one was more fun, but otherwise the current lineup is pretty good.

My problem, at a Jaguar dealership, is getting cars. We could sell so many more if we got them! Production these days in JLR world is going so much to Land Rover. Understandable to prioritize the Defender and new Range Rover, since they’re printing money for JLR, but we would like to sell some Jags also. And please bring us the plug-in hybrid F-Pace from Europe, I’ve had many an American customer ask for it. Pay attention to Jaguar, bring us that electric XJ, and it would be such a better brand.

[u/[deleted]]

THink they are the best cars to drive in the last decade. I have never liked the steering feel on any of the German cars i have driven the past decade and a half.

Their new inline 6 cylinder engine is the smoothest in its class. Plus they have a better warranty than like of Mercedes and Audi and BMW.

But a lot of people do not know about that. I think where they lost is in the social media echo chamber where people buy badges and not cars that are fun to drive.

Still they are going all electric by 2025. So the brand still has a chance to shine.

[u/reward72]

I'm willing to disregard abysmal reliability when a car look as great and sounds as glorious as the F-Type R. But I see absolutely no reason to buy any other car on their lineup when there are so many better alternatives.

[u/HoveringPorridge]

I've always thought JLR should exclusively use Jaguar for sports cars, grand tourers and supercars. If they want to keep making saloons revive Rover and use the Range Rover styling queues and interior on the XF and XE platforms. LR and RR are the strongest parts of the buisness. No one cares about the Jag saloons regardless of how good they are because all they care about in the Jag range is the F-Type.

[u/cahmed]

I love mine 🤷‍♂️

[u/LeifEriksonASDF]

As a murican I was always a bit confused by Clarksons "Jaaaaag" bit in Top Gear since people just don't hold Jags in that high regard here, but I just went along with it and assumed it was one of those funny Britishisms, like pronouncing Nissan like Nissin or saying "You're not a true petrolhead until you drive this one Italian brand I literally never heard of until I started watching Top Gear"