How Jaguar rebuilds from a position of 'no equity whatsoever'
JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern was scathing of the ‘British BMW’ experiment that brought Jaguars such as the XE
British brand on the rebuild to become £100,000-plus luxury car maker as "pleasing every type of customer leaves you with mediocre products"
Jaguar today has “no equity whatsoever”, JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern told investors at a conference in June.
So how will JLR build up a brand and capture buyers in the £100,000-plus luxury space it wants to occupy if it has no meaningful brand power in the market?
We already know Jaguar will relaunch as an electric brand in 2025 with a “four-door GT” car with a range of around 435 miles. That will be followed by two more cars, creating a luxury brand as part of its fourth overhaul in as many decades.
McGovern, who is overseeing the design of the new models, was scathing of the ‘British BMW’ experiment in the past decade that introduced Jaguars such as the XE rival to the 3 Series and its first SUVs.
“What we won't worry about is being loved by everybody, because that's the kiss of death,” McGovern said. “That's what's put Jaguar where it is today with, which is with no equity whatsoever.”
Try to please everyone and you’re “going to end up with mediocrity”, McGovern said.
Today, Jaguar is winding down sales of its more conventional range. Production of the XE and XF have fallen to a trickle at the Castle Bromwich facility as JLR repurposes the old Midlands plant to become a stamping facility as well as other, unnamed activities.
Sales of the F-Pace SUV, built at JLR’s Solihull plant, are the healthiest of the range at 4822 globally in the three months to the end of June, accounting for almost a third of total Jaguar sales and slightly up on the year before.
JLR’s contract with Magna in Graz, Austria, to build the I-Pace electric car and E-Pace compact SUV doesn’t run out until 2027 but sales are tailing off, with the combined total of both cars behind that of F-Pace for the second quarter of the year.
Already Jaguar is pulling out of global markets such as South Korea almost two years ahead of its big relaunch.
As the curtain slowly closes on the Germany-chasing era of the Jaguar story, it’s clear that JLR is relying on a E-Type shock moment to pin a restless audience back in their seats for the next act.
It was fitting, then, that the key Jaguar presentation at the day-long investor event held at JLR’s HQ in Gaydon, Warwickshire, was handed to McGovern, the overseer of their design.
“When Jaguars appear for the first time, they need to have that jaw-dropping moment: ‘Wow, Jesus, what's that?’” McGovern said. To hone that design, McGovern split the JLR design department into three teams and between them they created 18 full-size models in just three months, after which an executive team “unanimously” picked the winning team, McGovern told analysts.
JLR has only shown the haziest of teaser shots previewing the car so all we can do is picture what McGovern means by “exuberant proportions” on a car that is “modernist in its surface development”. McGovern displayed his usual confidence that the design will have the desired effect. “I don't think I've had any failures and I didn't feel like having a failure with Jaguar,” he said.
What is clear is that Jaguar is now a niche player in the JLR 'House of Brands' makeover that includes Range Rover, Defender and Discovery. Jaguar might be one of four but it will only account for 15% of JLR investment in the future, JLR CEO Adrian Mardell told analysts at the event. Even that’s not guaranteed. “Each of the pillars [brands] will have to determine success to actually drive the new investment,” Mardell said.
Mardell’s prediction of breakeven on Jaguar is £200 million revenue a month, he told analysts, with a target “above” £300m. A range of £2.4 billion to £3.6bn annually is not huge, given that JLR overall is expecting revenue of £28bn in this current financial year ending next March, rising to more than £30bn in the 2026 financial year.
Going on those figures and based on a £100,000 price, Jaguar’s sales target is somewhere between 24,000-36,000 a year, the lowest at any point within Tata’s 15-year ownership. To put those numbers into context, it’s around double Bentley’s.
McGovern told the event that special editions will play a big part in driving up pricing, with the Panthera name used for one (hypothetical) special edition.
Panthera was the original name for Jaguar’s brand-specific platform, now called JEA for Jaguar Electric Architecture. Initially JLR said it was working with Canadian supplier Magna on the architecture, although it’s unclear whether that’s still the case. It’s also unclear how JLR is paying for a complete new platform.
McGovern’s desire that the Jaguar design will be “a copy of nothing” extends to the platform, head of vehicle programmes Nick Collins said that the event. JEA “will enable the volume and proportions of our design-led renaissance,” Collins added. Batteries for the car will eventually come from owner Tata Group’s new Agratas battery unit, which is developing prismatic cells for JLR and others.
Production of the new-generation Jaguars will take place in a “bespoke facility” within JLR’s Solihull facility, where it currently builds the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, as well as the F-Pace.
The new-era Jaguars will be sold using “a completely new business model,” JLR chief commercial officer Lennard Hoornik said during at the event. “It's all about client intimacy so we need to sell this in a different way,” Hoornik told the audience. Not all JLR dealers will stock Jaguars, while some outlets will be stand-alone boutiques. It’s possible JLR will operate Jaguar via an agency model whereby the sale rests with Jaguar rather than the dealership, more so than with the Land Rover brands. “It's all about experience. [It’s about] really totally effortless ownership and we're completely redesigning those journeys,” Hoornik said without clarifying.
It’s clear the US is a key target market. Mardell referenced a period during the Ford era around 1998, when Jaguar had been revived again following the American company’s purchase of the brand in 1990 for $2.5bn. Back then, Jaguar sold just the XJ saloon, including the XJR, and the XK grand tourer, with the S-Type saloon yet to be launched. “This brand was incredibly successful in North America 25 years ago before we took the compromises and the decisions we made,” he said. “A lower-volume, higher-price positioning is absolutely the right position for Jaguar today.”
Mardell acknowledged to the assembled bankers the scale of the work ahead: “There has been a [25-year] void in between. So it's reasonable to assume there's a lot of work to build that brand equity.”