There was nothing, short of girls and the occasional guitar, that excited the adolescent me quite as much as cars.
And there was no car quite as exciting as the classic Jaguars of the 1960s.
And those cars remained a part of popular culture for a long, long time:
Even though they were about as reliable as, well, a British car.
The 1970s were a terrible decade for British cars - the merger and government acquisition of much of the industry worked about as well as socialism always does, and turned most of the British automotive market into overpriced Ladas. It took years for Jaguar to bounce back. But it did; while the marque never quite regained its 1960s luster, it remained a prestige brand.
In terms of branding, that may have gotten wiped out last year, by one of the most misbegotten ad campaigns of all time.
You remember. And if you don't - here you go:
Copy nothing. #Jaguar pic.twitter.com/BfVhc3l09B
— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024
I'm sorry. I won't do it again.
The campaign turned Jaguar into the Bud Light of the automotive industry. Of course, Bud Lite had the option of swinging back the other direction - campaigning with pickup trucks and 'Murca and maybe even a B-52 flyover (I don't know, I don't drink beer. What did they do with their ads?).
But car brands can recover from bad advertising. Even bad cars; Ford survived the Edsel and the Pinto; Chevy, the Chevette.
But one thing car brands can't recover from is...not building and selling cars.
Sales are one thing: Jaguar, plagued with years of uninspiring designs, has seen its sales drop from over 180,000 in 2018 to 33,000 in April 2024. That's bad.
And in the UK and Europe, this past April? 49 cars.
I'm at loss to think of a car that's had such a catastrophic drop-off. Maybe pre-1945 Volkswagens?
But it's not (entirely) a matter of getting woke and going broke. Stephen Green:
Jag's nosedive isn't because of the brand's woke rebranding, although it does stem from the same mindset — one they'll teach in business schools for decades as an example of what not to do.
You see, Jaguar stopped selling cars because they stopped making them...Remember when Coca-Cola switched to New Coke that tasted more like Pepsi? This is like Coca-Cola switching to New Coke but then not making any to put on store shelves or in soda fountains.
How do you "go to market" without being...in the market?
“From November 2024, new Jaguar sales will come to an end ahead of our new brand reveal later this year and product launch in 2026,” Jag’s parent company, JLR, told British magazine Autocar recently. JLR, or Jaguar Land Rover, is part of the Indian Tata conglomerate, which includes everything from steelmaking to hotels, tea and information technology.
Automakers are notoriously reticent to discuss their future product plans. That’s never more true than when there is no plan.
Fresh sheet metal, features and designs are lifeblood to a car company. The auto industry is about fashion at least as much as engineering, manufacturing and technology.
Or as Motor Trend put it:
Recently, the storied British automaker’s lineup has dwindled as its vehicles aged out of relevancy. For 2025, it will continue to produce only one vehicle and attempt to sell through backstock of discontinued models like the I-Pace, E-Pace, XF, and F-Type. Although this isn’t an encouraging situation, Jaguar is undertaking a daring effort to reinvigorate its business for the future. Read on to see what’s new for Jaguar in 2025 and what to expect from it in the next few years.
Hint to Jaguar (or, let's be honest, Tata); you want to recover? Reboot the X-series for the modern road. Even the 1990s era XK8, for crying out loud. Make it an EV for all I care, but put something like this on the road again:
Hope we've settled this unpleasantness. Good luck.
