9:00 am, November 23, 2024
Well, it’s official – one of the biggest perks of being a used car dealer has been torn away from me by those who, to use a technical term, haven’t a bloody clue.
I’m a Brummie, and ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper I’ve had a fondness for cars built in the West Midlands. Growing up in what was once the heartland of the British Car Industry means that cars are a part of who I am; locally made ones even more so. My favourite? A Jaguar, of course.
There are many things to like about a Jag. The looks, the comfort, the performance, the classiness; but for me the biggest one is that, historically, they’ve always got to an age where they go through a period of undesirability. It’s not much fun if you own one and are watching it depreciate, but it’s terrific for those of us who love a car that offers a serious amount of clout for the cash, or who smoke around in other people’s trade-ins.
As such, over the past couple of decades, with the exception of the odd Nissan Maxima or Citroen XM part-exer, which were once so unsaleable the only option was to drive them until the MOT ran out, I’ve usually been at the wheel of an XJ or S-Type. Indeed, parked outside my Portakabin right now is a 2003 XJ6; a car that’s worth about £1,500 if I can be bothered to sell it. It’s so lovely to sit in and drive that I can’t be bothered at all. I’d rather lounge around in it for my daily commute.
Alas, those days will soon be numbered, as Jaguar (or as it appears to be written these days, jaGuar) is being reinvented as a ‘premium luxury brand’ sold through ‘brand stores’, with a range of £130,000-plus electric super-luxury GTs and sports models.
As of the end of 2024, you can’t even buy a new one. There will be no 2025 Jaguars at all, as we supposedly wait excitedly for the new ones to arrive. I get more excited by waiting for a Chinese takeaway, though, because I can afford one of those.
The electric bit, I can deal with. I’d much prefer a big V6 or V8, but change is change. What bothers me is that I believe the new Jaguar is a massive own goal. It misses the point of Jaguar altogether – and that’s if it ever happens.
Make no mistake, the last couple of years haven’t been easy for JLR and it was European Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandates that made it impossible for the brand to continue as it was.
As ZEV rules tightened, the brakes were immediately slammed on development of new models and the XE and XF (which were nice enough motors) were left to putter out of their own accord. The F-PACE SUV remained on sale, supposedly, until the end of next year. Except it isn’t. That’s because for every F-PACE sold, JLR will weaken its ZEV mix and will face exponential fines. There’s no business case for that, so in the UK and Europe at least, it’s going for an early bath.
As a reversal of fortunes, then, an electric-only line-up seems the way forward. But it’s not an easy one.
You see, as well as ZEV mandates, European makers have been wholly unprepared for the rise of new brands and electrification from China. Companies such as Volvo and Polestar can capitalise on this as they’re owned by Chinese parents. Jaguar can’t. If it was to develop an entire range of electric cars, the amortised cost of design, engineering, development and tooling them in the UK would take years to claw back, if at all.
Its only future now is as a low-volume, high-end manufacturer, and while JLR is making aspirational noises about this, the world of vehicle manufacturing is so fragile that it’s only going to take a few small economic hiccups for the entire house of cards to fall over.
Then there’s the rebrand. I’m not sure what Jaguar sees as classy, but its new badge looks like a set of magnetic letters thrown together on the fridge door by a six-year-old. It doesn’t look classy at all – it looks a complete, disastrous, amateur mess. But then so is Jaguar right now – I fear that we could, quite feasibly, lose it altogether.
In my eyes, though, it’s pretty much lost already. A £100k electric sports car that launches itself toward the horizon like Thrust 2 isn’t what Jaguar means to me and it never will. To me, a Jag is a classy, beautiful and well-equipped saloon car that a normal person can aspire to if they’re prepared to work their conkers off, and it’s why I like them so much.
I’m not the kind of person to resist wholesale change, but as it stands, whatever the new generation of Jaguar looks like, the likelihood of me owning one is close to non-existent, not least because I don’t want one. And that upsets me terribly.
