| Jaguar’s recent ad rollout raised a lot of questions about just what the luxury car brand was thinking. Yesterday we got another insight when the company revealed its Type 00 design. Bloomberg Pursuits’ car expert, Hannah Elliott, is here with her interpretation. Plus: A California lab is working on mapping the brain in half the time for 100 times cheaper. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. On Monday night, Jaguar unveiled in Miami the concept car that’s the linchpin to its new identity. Not two weeks earlier, a preview video of the rebranding earned near total evisceration across social media and news channels for its radical divergence from the British automaker’s heritage. The new vehicle looks heavy-handed and blunt compared with previous Jaguar models, which seduced enthusiasts for decades with their elegant, feline curves. But it offers a sliver of hope for those who’d worried Jaguar had razed the sporting core of its 89-year-old brand. Called Type 00 (pronounced “zero zero”), the electric grand tourer is Jaguar’s vision of a production vehicle that will be revealed in late 2025, the company said. Characterized by its flush surfaces, a glassless rear tailgate and taillights spanning the width of its squared body, the concept vehicle has a long hood and sweeping fastback roofline. It comes with 23-inch alloy wheels and an interior of woolen textiles, brass and travertine stone. The company debuted it in two colors: “satin rhodon rose” and “inception silver blue.”  Gerry McGovern, Jaguar’s design director and chief creative officer, introducing the Type 00. Photographer: Jason Koerner/Getty Images “The purpose of this is to indicate that Jaguar is changing, and Jaguar is changing in a really bold and dramatic way,” managing director Rawdon Glover said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. He added, “It’s gonna drive like the very best Jaguars.” Jaguar remains opaque about the design’s future. The vehicle revealed at an Art Basel event in Miami’s Design District is a two-door coupe, but the production model will have four doors, a spokesperson confirmed. They declined to say whether the production version would include the butterfly doors noted in the design briefing and whether it would be released under the Type 00 moniker or a new name. First deliveries of the car will begin in 2026. “The proportions themselves are very Jag,” says Rebecca Lindland, an independent automotive analyst and innovation consultant. “Long wheelbase, tires pushed to the edges, the most sleek greenhouse roofline. If you take away all the emotion and just look at the technical part of it, what it equated to in my mind was a very brutalist architectural style.” Brutal is the word. Instead of following the sleek lines of historic Jaguars such as the XJ220, E-Type and XJS, Type 00 evokes a blockier version of the Rolls-Royce Wraith, with the same angular, flat elements of Tesla’s Cybertruck. The gendered pink and blue color scheme had some observers longing for the rich British racing green traditionally found on Jaguar cars. “They’ve got to make sure when presenting the new Jaguar there are still brand pillars that aren’t thrown away—I don’t think the colors help on that front,” says Tony King, the founder and chief executive officer of the New York-based branding agency King & Partners. “You’ve got to be sporting, you’ve got to have nostalgia, you’ve got to have heritage, you’ve got to have class.” The new model will use a unique dedicated Jaguar electric architecture to reach a projected driving range of up to 430 miles on a single charge. It can add up to 200 miles of range in 15 minutes when rapid charging, according to company estimates. The spokesperson declined to provide additional details about its performance and other capacities. The Type 00 is the latest attempt by the Tata Motors Ltd.-owned brand to find a way forward after years of lackluster products and declining sales. In 2021, Jaguar announced it would enter a period of hibernation before reemerging as a company that sells only EVs. Its rebranding video, a 30-second ad released Nov. 19, flashed vacuous phrases like “create exuberant” and “live vivid” across footage of a cavalcade of diverse models dressed in garish colors standing expressionless in a wasteland-like environment. “The important thing in terms of the campaign was to get eyeballs on Jaguar,” Glover told Bloomberg TV. “To get people interested in what we are doing. That was the most important thing in this context.” Not everyone agrees that all publicity is good publicity. “The campaign was a disaster—it got people talking, but not in a good way; they’re being ridiculed,” King says. “The car, if it’s toned down and they make it feel less juvenile, less like this Batman Batmobile and more like a sporting Jaguar, then maybe it will be great. But they’ve got to unravel that campaign.” | 
