Ferry Porsche, Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford all established makers of automobiles that managed to remain intact, even once their founders had gone away. Unlike Jaguar, who had not merely been defined by Sir William’s business acumen and taste in commercial and aesthetic terms - but by his very instincts. As the most romantic and visuals-driven of car makers, unseizable, immeasurable emotions were of far greater importance to Jaguar’s fortunes than any specific engineering or sales approach. Emotions only Sir William evidently knew how to channel into sufficiently appealing a product. 

 

Rather than just its founder, Sir William was Jaguar’s foundation, to such an extent that he cannot be compared with another car industry executive - but an artist, such as Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, whose voice and sorrow informed each and every one of his band’s songs. Both proved utterly indispensable to the entities they'd created. 

 

Just as Joy Division had to turn into New Order in order to survive after Curtis' passing, those past four decades have taught us that Jaguar must become something else entirely, too.  

That something else, for better or worse, is Type 00. 

 

What it lacks in elegance and delicacy, it makes up for with bravado. It squashes the romance that had made people fall in love with XJs and E-types (more than five decades ago!), in favour of a literally brutalist aesthetic gesture that - whether one likes it or not - is more in keeping with the times than anything Jaguar has shown to the public in generations.

 

Type 00 frankly isn’t for me, being too blunt, coarse and massive a design for my tastes. Then again, so was XJ-S to the eyes of hordes of E-type and Mk2 owners and enthusiasts, back in the mid-‘70s. 

 

When I spoke with Gerry McGovern about ‘his’ upcoming Jaguar designs some years ago, he didn’t take my bait when I asked him whether wearing bespoke suits was fundamental to understanding Jaguar’s aesthetics. Instead, he was eager to mention XJ-S, on the basis of its having been the last brave Jaguar. 

 

Not in visual terms, but certainly with regards to its impact, Type 00 seems to follow in its sail-panelled predecessor’s footsteps - meaning history does repeat itself yet again, after all.  

 

May Type 00 - designed for people who don’t give a rat’s fart about Le Mans victories of the 20th century or Inspector Morse - repeat one of those distant stretches in Jaguar history when the marque was relevant. Not to mention: profitable.