Imagine the bottles of bubbly being opened by the consultants to Jaguar on their re brand campaign. They will be delighted one ad has become a dominant news story. They will be even more delighted if the new typeface they have designed pays them well, alongside the new JJ insignia to replace the famous Jaguar Ā head. Consultants Ā like to get fees for re use or for repeat business to ā maintain and developā the brand.
The company executives should not join in the celebration. Someone has briefed that the new brand will lose them 85% of their past customers. So they need to start from scratch identifying who it is will like this new brand. They are also making it much more difficult by saying that instead of selling lots of Ā£40,000 to Ā£70,000 cars they now want to sell Ā£100,000 cars. So they need a good pool of new Jaguar buyers who are trendier, younger and richer than the more traditional customers. Good luck with that.Today they cannot even tell those people what they are being offered.
The main reason seems to be their wish or the looming legal imperative that they switch from selling petrol and diesels to battery cars. They have decided on big bang. The trouble is they do not yet have the new range of electric cars to show the public, hence no cars in the ad.
They brief that they are being true to the heritage, because in its glory days Jaguar was prepared to do something bold, different and modern. That is true. The launch of the iconic Jaguar E type for example created a car with wow and new graceful lines that produced love at first sight. It was not an ad or clever PR that sold the car. It was its beauty, pace and realistic price. Jaguar adopted the slogan Grace, space, pace Ā which the cars had in abundance.
If the rebrand is to succeed Jaguar are going to have to come up with a game changing stunning design and a great specification. They will need to wow. For Ā£100,000 they will also need to convince there will be no battery life, range and recharging problems. Somehow I expect they will produce another āsafeā range of SUVs and a GT saloon Ā that look much like others. The true brand produced icons of style in the XK, E type, XJS and F type, and the saloons including the Marks 1 and 2, XJ and the S type. They were brilliant and competitively priced. We are told the new brand will be dear.Can it be beautiful?
I can give them some good news. As someone who has bought their cars in the past I will not be buying an electric one and would not be spending Ā£100,000 on a vehicle. So their wish to get rid of me worked.
Whenever I ran a business I always found it easier to get more business from people who had been customers before or who still were customers, along with their circle of friends and family. That to Jaguarās consultants would Ā just show what an old fashioned view I had.
November 22, 2024
Never has tje phrase Go Woke, Go Broke been more appropriate. This is Jaguars Budweiser moment, completely divorced from reality
Just when other premium brands are rowing back on EVs, Jaguar goes the full monty
My friend has recently bought the petrol Pace model and I was toying with the idea. Apart from the fact it’d not as reliable as my Hondas, it seems dogged my silly little defects.
I for one won’t be spending anything like Ā£100k on my September purchase so Jaguar will be very happy.
Don’t you think it may be being done on purpose as TATA has successfully shutdown primary steel making and now they can take the marque to India
November 22, 2024
I shall stick with my ancient Volvo V70 and golf cab for as long as I can. Not much they can further depreciate & far cheaper to run despite the extra fuel and road taxes I have to pay. More like 30p a mile than Ā£2.50 a mile for a new EV Jag. Superior and more practical vehicles too.
November 22, 2024
My wife’s diesel Merc. C class has a special addition batter for the start stop system after 6 years it gave up and that small special battery cost me nearly Ā£400 to replace. I suppose the start stop system saved be Ā£20 over her thee years of ownership. So the whole system is pointless even in CO2 terms are more energy used for the battery manufacture and replacement than is ever saved by the system. Plus you have to carry that heavy battery around. Doubtless some idiotic EU regs. forced it on Merc and other manufacturers.
November 22, 2024
Lifelogic
It’s all about emissions, emissions, emissions, It does not matter about diminishing returns for excessive and increasing costs, the fools think they are saving the planet.
November 22, 2024
As a reader and contributor here I think I am probably comfortably within the bell-curve of the demographic that participates, and entirely agree with you. However, because of our age and experience and prejudice, perhaps we are wrong? Perhaps Jaguar’s big brains really have done their study and business planning, starting afresh for a new millennium, with a very new product that is both technically and design cutting edge, and will be more ‘bespoke’ and sell in lesser numbers but still make a profit…. possibly…
November 22, 2024
IW ;
The Woke are anti-capitalist, anti-democracy communists. The phrase āgo woke, go brokeā is not some unintended consequence but the sole purpose of the woke, when they have taken over a successful western company or brand, to destroy it, in this case Jaguar.
The woke are intent upon driving western democracies into poverty with the false claim that the emissions of anthropogenic CO2, amounting to 3% of total global CO2 emissions, can somehow cause CAGW and hence the need for the economy destroying Net Zero.
November 22, 2024
For some years now I have been used to the Jaguar logo on cars that look like pretty much any others. Often great big heavy SUV-type things. I’ve thought how beautiful and appealing their iconic models were, compared to these anonymous chunks of steel.
Now they will need to find replacement customers, who buy into their woke marketing. It seems a tall order as I believe we’re approaching a post-woke World, thank goodness.
November 22, 2024
I do agree with the distaste for homogeny in modern day vehicle design. But one has to wonder if this is driven by customers or designers. Do customers buy homogenous cars or are they only being offered facsimiles?
Jaguar producing SUCs rather than sports cars must be a market driven decision as not enough “old white men” buy their top end sports cars (although the middle Eastern market is expanding in the UK). You have to think that the huge error here is in going only electric at that price but Jaguar hasn’t shifted volume in a ling time and don’t command a premium like real super cars so they need to do something to shift volume. Electric isn’t it.
November 22, 2024
For a moment I thought I had been in a coma and woken up on April 1st. I have never been a lover of Jaguar the car, thinking its essential place was in a golf club car park. The only one that clicked was a friends Mk 2, part of a racing team of yore. Tight precise steering, better gear ratios, and a very responsive D type engine. Not forgetting the revamped suspension. It was the catalyst that got me into a not without success rallying career, only curtailed by the growing cost by 1967. However if Enzo Ferarri described the E type as the most beautiful car in the world it confirmed its place in the automobile hall of fame. A good one has climed from an initial Ā£2500 from memory to the Ā£100,000 you would not pay for a new one. Lets not forget the outstanding competition history of Jaguar around places like Le Mans. It is one hell of a legacy to trash for a newly conceived JJ. I wish them luck, but it is not a marketing gamble I would be prepared to take. I would veer in the direction of Ā£20,000, and something iconic in design to compete at every level with Mazda’s little MX5 and grab the 20 to 30 age market. But not an EV in the present state of their acceptance. Once grabbed they might stay with something family sized in later life, but it has to be good and totally reliable. Hence my love affaire with japanese cars since 1992.
November 22, 2024
Few 20 to 30 year olds (where I live, at least) drive MX5s. If you see anyone in West Dorset driving a convertible, sports or saloon, it will be a gray haired bloke with an old woman next to him who invariably looks as if she is sucking a lemon. The days are gone where young people drove their MGB, or Sunbeam Alpine or Midget or Sprite – nowadays they drive tiny little, very old cars because the insurance costs them Ā£3k even with a black box fitted.
I donāt know – massive rents, high insurance on cars, massive mortgages – life is no fun for young people.
Etc Ed
November 22, 2024
I’d live ti buy an MX5 but have difficulty getting in and out. I had Midget, MGB and Spitfires as a 20 ti 30 year old. Sadly as you say this generation will never know the exhilarating feeling of open top driving.
I also joined the Bavy and saw the world. Another pleasure denied generation Z.
November 22, 2024
Traditional wisdom was that it cost seven times more to gain a new customer than to retain an old one.
Research has also shown that Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by over 25%.
What a shame that so many companies don’t seem to understand the value of customer loyalty there days.
Or Political Parties either…. š
November 22, 2024
Interestingly our granddaughter has an MX5 as well, is 8 years old but in absolutely beautiful condition, she loves it, and as a new driver it’s cheaper to insure (with a Black Box) than a Ford Fiesta, because it only seats one passenger.
Agree with you about Japanese cars, our first Toyota Corolla GTi lasted us for 18 years, traded it in for a new pre registered Corolla D4DSR now 17 years old, and still good for many years yet.
Traded my 22 year old Mitsubishi in for a 4 month old Mercedes diesel last year, and very pleased with that purchase so far, even though it is more like a computer on wheels.
November 22, 2024
I’ve just been checking the generation profile and it looks like gas which is the main supply is taxed at around Ā£70 per mwh
This means the actual cost is around Ā£40 per mwh without the carbon tax.
Is their any wonder that the UK has the highest electricity prices in the developed world when it’s all artificially ramped up by the government.
November 22, 2024
It certainly is and they keep lying that so called “renewables” are cheaper – they are not at all after you consider the inconsistent supply and thus the back up needed from on demand gas etc. They do not even save significant CO2 when properly accounted for. The electricity cannot be stored cost effectively once generated. Best stored as a pile of coal (or wood at Drax though this is worse than coal or gas) or a store of gas and generated only as when when needed.
November 22, 2024
I reckon “2 jags” Prescott would have had a few choice words about the ad.
November 22, 2024
Often new cars have less headroom (batteries under the floor raising them, and often slope at the sides in to make slightly less wind resistance. So they might have upset his wife’s hair do – ideal for the 200 yards range though that he did in it at Brighton was it to keep her hair out of the wind?
Blair say he was the most talented politician he knew. Well he was in the Labour party. Prescot would have done far less harm than Blair and Brown did – they were a total disaster. See David Starkey videos on this.
November 22, 2024
Prescot pushed the green agenda and new, “green” building regulations. But, to give him is due, I think he would have offered a few robust comments on the video.
November 22, 2024
I once had the opportunity to discuss Jaguar cars with him. His classic sports cars, the C, D and E types, were shaped by Malcolm Sayer using “mathematical curves” as Lyons described them, derived from log tables and slide rule. Sayer was an aerodynamicist. The Lyons method of signing off a design was to get the prototype delivered to his house overnight so that he saw it, as an owner would, when he first stepped out of his house in the morning to drive the car If it looked right at that moment it was right. He designed cars that he liked for successful people like himself.
I am unable to comprehend what market the current custodians of the brand are designing for.
November 22, 2024
Your last Paragraph says it all John.
Always try to keep the customers you have, whilst searching for new.
Jaguars may well be able to be made less expensively if they are made abroad, as it will be less costs all round, cheaper buildings, cheaper labour, cheaper energy, lower taxes, less employment regulation, etc etc. unless we start putting tariffs on imports (unlikely)
Looks like another manufacturer will eventually go overseas, so more jobs, skills and customers money lost from the UK economy.
Off Topic:
I see it is being reported in the media today that Milliband is going to re-instate the gas Boiler tax again in an effort to push heat pumps.
I see it is also reported in the Media today that our Government is sending aid to African Farmers, almost exactly the same amount (Ā£560 Million) as it plans to take from UK Farmers in Inheritance tax.
Difficult to make it up really, our Government has well and truly lost the plot utterly and completely, Clueless absolutely Clueless.
November 22, 2024
They’re also planning to permit noisier heat pump units since noise currently restricts where they may be used.
So they’ll be adding to noise pollution and no doubt causing a number of disputes between neighbours.
November 22, 2024
Yes I had read that as well, increased noise pollution !
Can you imagine the hummmmm at the back of a row of terraced houses or a block of flats.
Just out of interest, where will they locate all of the heat pumps in a block of flats?
All on the ground floor in a line with unbearable noise, or up at each level where you will need scaffolding to service them ?
November 22, 2024
Imagine what it will be like on a new 500 unit housing estate when they are all going on a quiet winters day. Lunatics, the lot of them.
November 22, 2024
Exactly.
“For Ā£100,000 they will also need to convince there will be no battery life, range and recharging problems”Ā£20 which will require new breakthroughs in battery technology which we do not have yet.
The life of the car (before they become virtually worthless) is likely to be about 7 years. Depreciation and finance costs on the Ā£100K is likely to be about Ā£140K so Ā£20K PA. I it does 10,000 miles PA that is Ā£2 per mile before insurance, types (both are more for EV cars) or electricity and other running costs. Who will want the car after five years or so when it will need a new Ā£25K battery?
Keep your old Jag, BMW, Volvo or E class and (if you must) buy a small city car or hybrid to get the tax breaks for short city journeys.
More market rigging by moronic Ed Miliband on heatpumps/gas boilers as well as cars. The man is a dangerous nutter. If people switch to heat pumps and EV cars the grid will need to be circa 10 times capacity (vastly expensive and time consuming to do) as nearly all the extra electricity will be needed over the few winter months. Also electricity cost three times+ what gas does and much of it comes from GAS or Wood/Coal anyway. So even with the CoP of heatpumps they well cost more to install and more to run and maintain. Noisy too.
Before you buy an EV look carefully at the battery guarantee small print replacement costs and think about a who would buy on second hand. They leave and keep you old car until they get the tech right. The right tech will prob. not even be battery cars but ICU cars with synthetic fuels unless we get a a huge advance in battery tech.
Batteries need to be cheaper, last much longer and depreciate more slowly, work better are low temperatures, are far lighter, charge more quickly, hold more energy, be lighter, smaller and rather less dangerously flammable. Less likely to write off the car in a small crash too.
A plastic diesel tank costing Ā£100 might take you 1000 miles and refill in 4 mins and weight very little.
The same as a battery (tank) might cost Ā£40,000 take 8 hours to charge, only last 7 years and weight 1,000KG taking up much of the car space too.
So batteries do still have rather a long way to go waste technology jumps are needed and may well not happen. Battery costs, rapid depreciation, weight, fire risk and charge times the main issues.
November 22, 2024
In China one of the EV brands have implemented the āswap the battery for a fully charged oneā. I saw a video in it a while ago. They are building a network of battery swapping stations – it takes 5 minutes to change the battery. You, apparently, buy the car and rent the battery and get unlimited swaps. Of course, it could not happen here. It would take 20 ye to get planning permission to build a battery swap station and, no doubt, there would have to be 100 laws and regulations in place making them not viable.
November 22, 2024
Mike why purchase a new car, with the cost of a new battery and then shove an older used battery, (with less range than the original) in it after 200 miles.
I could perhaps understand it if you purchased a car without the initial battery cost, and then rented a fully charged replacement at every recharge/swap.
November 22, 2024
The woke idiots running Jaguar over a cliff have surely destroyed the brand as comprehensively as Gerard Ratner killed the jewellery empire he inherited back in the ’80s.
There simply aren’t enough young, wealthy Alphabet People to buy the product, fund the nonsense and keep the company afloat.
Still, Schwab and his puppet politicians in the Westminster Uni-Party will be celebrating as their mission to destroy British manufacturing and another iconic brand moves up a gear.
November 22, 2024
The jobs and the money now being made are all in the make-believe world of PR. I doubt many Jaguars will actually be manufactured from now on.
November 22, 2024
Jaguar, the latest in a long line of British manufacturers/industries to be driven (no pun intended) to extinction.
How sad that in this case, it’s a combination of idiotic government policies accompanied by self-inflicted wokery.
November 22, 2024
When Boris Johnson announced the end of true conservatism through the future ban on the purchase of new ICE
cars that was the time for the UK car industry to raise hell. Instead it has, until recently, meekly gone along with government policy to destroy the car industry as we know it. Jaguarās marketing rebrand is sadly understandable in that context, and is a representation of our governmentās fully intentional destruction of our traditional way of life.
November 22, 2024
It’s going the way of AC, Bristol etc isn’t it?
I think it’s an attempt at creative destruction, except that nobody seems to have created anything that anyone wants to buy. Perhaps somebody’s sensed that it’s just not viable to make cars here now. Actually quite perceptive. Keep the brand on ice.
November 22, 2024
I am appalled by the Jaguar re-brand as they are about to lose their identity. They are now just another faceless, prosaic car manufacturer whose products are likely to be electric gimcrack. I believe their new car sales will get clobbered as a result as their customer base does not want this.
I like classic cars and I was going to buy a beautiful, midnight blue Jaguar XJ6 from the mid-1980s. Given the brand no longer represents what I value in Jaguar (quality, heritage and speed) sadly I would not have the same pleasure driving it. So I will be buying a beautiful Rolls Royce Silver Cloud from the 1960s instead.
November 22, 2024
Car manufacturers are no longer living in a free market but are bounded by Government fiats. Planning anything covered by the these rules is bad enough but starting a whole new concept is an enormous risk.
November 22, 2024
Sir JR: “I can give them some good news. As someone who has bought their cars in the past I will not be buying an electric one and would not be spending Ā£100,000 on a vehicle. So their wish to get rid of me worked.”
Bizarre, isn’t it, that these consultants are behaving as if they are rebranding a pub chain, and looking to get rid of old men with flat caps and whippets who would nurse a pint of mild, the better to replace them with young trendies in search of overpriced cocktails. If we compare and contrast the price of a pub drink with the price of a new car, the size of the unit by unit risk comes into full perspective. Stark lunacy.
I am on my third Jaguar, an XF Sportbrake diesel, still going strong after 9 years. If I have to look to Volvo or Toyota for an ICE car when the XF is up for retirement, so be it. Jaguar’s loss, not mine.
November 22, 2024
I have noticed over the years how cars have lost their individual identity. We have had nothing to replace the MGs which I owned and loved. The Jaguar is the same. When you see an older version with the chrome bumper and such like, you warm to the beauty of the design. I can only think that design degrees and teaching standards have also disintegrated with time as all other standards seem to have gone down instead of up. Remember the Italian designs of the 20thC? They were so beautiful to look at even household items. We have really lost it and this latest thing they have produced is disgusting. No inspired thinking gone into this at all. I hope they go out of business as they surely do not deserve to prosper with this low type of product.
November 22, 2024
Whenever I ran a business I always found it easier to get more business from people who had been customers before or who still were customers, along with their circle of friends and family.
Word of mouth is the best advert in the world. That is why trust pilot, Trip Adviser, Reevoo and Amazon put reviews on their sites. One can only assume that Jaguar’s brand consultants (imagine putting that on your CV – do brand consultants need a CV or do you just know who they are because they are so good at promotion?) think that the online reviews are going to build a new market.
Worked out well for Budweiser as I recall.
November 22, 2024
Certainly Jaguar have alienated a lot of potential customers through their new extreme woke image. There is no logic to this new approach, but of course they wanted to be in with the latest trends. This is no way to sell cars. Was this the intention?
For the price of Ā£100,000 Jaguar would have to pull off a massive coup to get their cars appreciated for themselves. In today’s climate that seems almost impossible. A lacklustre design will go nowhere.
Such a shame to see a great historic company turn it’s back on tradition and join the irrational world.
November 22, 2024
Notwithstanding the general scepticism expressed here, which I share, I wonder if, in fact, there are a lot more people than one might think who would be up for the Ā£100k Jag. I say this because even here, in rural West Dorset, there are a surprising number of expensive (Ā£50k and more) EVs on the road. When I visit my sons in Berkshire, when I walk my dog around the are they both live, there are loads of very expensive cars outside the houses. All on Ā£600 a month leases, I presume. I think the new Jags may well find a market there. You see lots of giant EV Porsches and Audis there.
November 22, 2024
Too true and I thought there was a credit crisis….?
November 22, 2024
I’m now very pleased I just bought one of the last ICE powered Jags. I’ve long wanted one and wouldn’t have wanted one of the new electric ones, from what I’ve seen of it so far.
I wonder if the target market that JLR have in mind for the future of jaguar is the last growing middle class in India.
November 22, 2024
Jaguar lost my custom when I went to their showroom twice, and no salesperson was available to speak to me, and they didn’t even bother to phone me back. I’m so glad now that I didn’t purchase one of their cars. I’m afraid, like many other British brands, the woke brigade has destroyed them, and they will never recover from this. Sad, very sad.
November 22, 2024
My only surprise, is that the Jaguar rebrand wasn’t some sort of government green mandate to reduce metal content in a company logo’s/emblems ….our government is intent on telling manufacturers what to make and how many to sell, ….so why not it design also
Maybe the UN/EU have a study group, suggesting that every car logo should be a 1cm X 6cm stricker in single font ….conformity is green
November 22, 2024
I’ve come to this site because I read about Freedom and Prosperity then I see in another place 72 million cost for King Charles coronation and am wondering if I’m living on the same planet
November 22, 2024
What it’s really about is that equality laws means that every large organisation must have a DEI Officer in its head office.
This official is basically a Marxist commissar recently graduated from one of our Marxist universities.
The re-branding and advertising isn’t really about selling cars, you see. It is about telling every single employee, director and shareholder who is in charge and how they must think.
It is an outright assault on capitalism and the branding and advertising is the rainbow flag being planted firmly on that hill.
No-one who looks like those in the advert will be interested in Jaguar.
Hopefully Trump will sort out this nonsense in America but Britain looks doomed.
November 22, 2024
The Jaguar DNA has flowed through each model, they were beautiful and always ahead of their time. My ābest manā was given a nice bonus just after the Cityās so-called ābig-bangā the first thing he did with was spend a chunk of it on a Jaguar 150. Drifting around the lanes of Kent on cross ply tyres was a hoot.
But Tata is emulating the UK Government rather than evolve, to get to the next stage with a true replacement, they have chosen just to ban. They still offer ICEāe in other Countries. They have Blackmailed the UK Government to give (itās a gift) them Taxpayer money so that the Company can bring in the Chinese to produce a battery for the up-and-coming cars. Nothing(taxpayer money) going around and staying in the UK there, just the export of its wealth by stealth.
November 22, 2024
If EVās are the future, why is it not happening without the Taxpayers money. We should those that canāt even afford a new car be forced to hand over their money to create a Luxury Jaguar car, let alone other Battery EVās
Why is the Taxpayer funding ācharging pointsā? ā the didnāt fund petrol stations. Then the Elephant in the Room, why is the taxpayer forced to fund wind and solar farms when if they are such a good idea they would be self-funding. Where is all the electricity to come from to feed all the cancelling that is emanating from Government? Wouldnāt people just head to electricity as a power source if our Government hadnāt made it the most expensive available when compared to our competing Nations
The UK has taken to Cancelling, or punishing before there is a viable alternative available. They have started to nurture the idea that the minions (the taxpayer) is just there to fund their personal self-esteem.
November 22, 2024
Jaguar had already made the decision to go all electric from next year. This absurd re-branding and woke advertising are simply nails in the coffin. It’s the death of yet another one-great British institution.
The biggest mistake of all was in letting foreigners own the brand. The same with Land Rover.
November 22, 2024
Itās clearly all about the export market, which is the export of British manufacturing and British jobs. All the car manufacturers are downsizing.
Most of us will be driving Classic cars, or not driving at all, unless common sense is given a chance.
November 22, 2024
Ed Miliband in today’s MsM
āAs long as Britain remains exposed to the rollercoaster of global fossil fuel markets, we will be vulnerable to energy price rises over which we have no control.
āThe Governmentās clean energy mission is the only way to take back control of our energy, with cheaper and more secure power, out of the grip of dictators like Putin.
āThat is why we are acting at speed on this mission to give families the energy security they deserve. Every wind turbine and solar panel we install, every home we insulate will help to protect consumers and bring down bills once and for all.ā
The UKs own fuel resources should and would not be held hostage to Global Markets( or as he says elsewhere in his piece Putin) when it is domestically consumed other than by Government decree.
It doesn’t answer why the Taxpayer is forced to find additional funds(subsidies, levies, extra taxes) for the UK’s ever so expensive electricity over and above what they are already paying over and above what our competitor nations are paying. Why is the bulk of addition funding the UK taxpayer is having to find leaving our shores to aid other Nations tax receipts, why is it not circulating around our own economy helping to create a future?
What addition capacity of electricity is required to power EV’s and heat-pumps?