Might As Well

Drive Time

I’ve sounded off before about the stupid management of Jaguar, who’ve turned what must be the most iconic British car company into some kind of purveyor of microwave ovens by going all-electric.  So their latest move comes as no surprise:

Jaguar has ditched its teeth-baring big cat logo as part of a radical electric rebrand that it concedes won’t appeal to the majority of its traditional customers.

The ‘growler’ logo, the universally-recognized snarling Jaguar head badge used for decades on the grilles and bonnets of iconic cars including the E-Type, has fallen victim to a revamping of the firm’s style and identity as it seeks out younger, wealthier and more diverse customers for its next generation of expensive EVs.

Yeah well, who cares, seeing as the latest product offerings from Jaguar bear only the slightest resemblance to any cars at all, looking more like vacuum cleaners and Lego toys anyway.

And this supercilious fuck-you statement typifies their entire attitude towards their market:

Highlighting that 800 people had worked on the radical redesign and re-branding, Jaguar design chief Gerry McGovern jokingly promised: ‘We have not been sniffing the white stuff.’

Fucking plonker.

Just a reminder of the heritage they’ve thrown away:

I sincerely hope that they go out of business — and who would have thought that I, of all people, would ever say that about Jaguar?

A pox on them.

25 comments

  1. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHAT A WASTE OF AN ICONIC BRAND:  Might As Well.

  2. With breathless anticipation we await the ditching of the Jaguar name. Suggestions for its replacement on the back of a postcard addressed to the VP of DEI at Tata Motors.

    1. Ta-Ta, Jaguar.
      Maybe in their next auto design, if there is one, they can wedge all the batteries in the back, aft of the wheels, with the electric motors just over the rear wheels. They can call it the Jaguar T87 or T97 and make any old story up about what the T number stands for.
      They’re abandoning their market, their traditions, their engineering, indeed all their standards. Why not make a car that is all swoopy-sexy and posh inside, with every sort of luxury feature, one capable of 120 MPH (200 KMH should be a big selling point), with such rubbish handling that the gentlest curve in the road causes it to roll over or crash backwards.
      Like the Tatra 87, which killed more German Generals than the Soviets, the Finns, the British, the Americans and all the partisans combined.

    1. The new logo ( https://images.hgmsites.net/hug/new-jaguar-logo_100949594_h.webp
      ) looks like the cross-section of some kind of under-engineered brush assembly
      for the DC motors in 1950’s Japanese toys.
      =====

      Sometime in this millennium I read that Jaguar (in America?) ranked the absolute worst
      in a survey of owner satisfaction with dealer service departments.

      I was gonna say I think about that every time I pass the Jaguar dealership
      in Madison, NJ.

      https://maps.app.goo.gl/nf94nFHb1jsp8yTu7

      But apparently it’s closer to the truth to say that for the past decade,
      I think about that every time I drive down Main St.

      https://maps.app.goo.gl/9EJ4xGLRvF1rhoubA

      The brand claims to have subsequently dug themselves out of that pit.
      That’s not what they say where they’re living rent-free in _my_ head.

  7. Sad news. When I lived in Germany for a year I had a 9 year old XK. It got 10mpg but that was because I would run it at 150 mph going to work. I lived 22 miles from where I worked with 20 miles of unrestricted Autobahn.

  8. from fierce Jaguar to Pussification Motors. Who on earth could have fucked that up any more?

    Now Stay the fuck away from the firearm industry and the liquor industry. We already have White Claw and Micholob Ultra and light beer to fuck up the liquor industry

  10. I unassed both my Jaguars last year as soon as they announced they were going all EV. Within 90 days, my local dealers had lost 80% of their mechanics and started deferring recall and warranty work up to a year. I really liked my 2018 F Pace, and flat out loved my 2019 XJ50, but without a company to stand behind them, I abandoned them like a sinking ship. Replaced both with a respectable land barge (MB E450 wagon) that has a better ride, and a far better dealership experience. I don’t go anywhere outside 50 miles from home, so my 2014 Ford Transit Connect is my go to ride. I’ve put fewer than 2500 miles on the MB since I bought it, so at 67 it will probably be the last car I own and I’m ok with that.

  11. My wife and her first husband owned a 1964 Jaguar much like the one pictured. E-type, right? She stopped driving it shortly after he died — too expensive to maintain — and, a few months after we met she finally sold it. She told me stories about the attention it drew such as going to the market and coming back out to see men standing around gawking at it. She learned a lot about the particular model so she could answer the inevitable questions.

    She has dementia now and I doubt she remembers much about it besides having owned it. I am not about to ruin those memories by telling her what Jaguar has become. Bastards.

  12. In days of yore I would have expected the above to be a joke headline akin to the Babylon Bee. Today nothing like that surprises me anymore.

    Never owned a Jag, but they always had a badass look to them, in spite of “quality” issues. Now that the decisions are made by fem-boy tiktok influencers, they don’t even have the badass ethic going for them anymore.

  13. > A pox on them.

    Considering the video they’ve put up to go with this rebranding (or whatever it is), I’m pretty sure there’s a pox in circulation among them. A pox of a simian nature, more specifically.

  14. ‘a revamping of the firm’s style and identity as it seeks out younger, wealthier and more diverse customers’
    Seek all you want, it may work or it may not, BUT, but you do not alienate your CURRENT customers in the process !!
    Do a little research into what has already happened to companies
    who swallow new fads whole and then choke on them !!
    ‘……that 800 people had worked on the radical
    redesign and re-branding……………’
    That’s a big piece of their problem right there.
    Someone or several someones, authorized by the stock holders / owners needs to go through that company like a reaper through a wheat field.
    They have been sniffing something and I’ll bet that whatever it is, it’s expensive as hell !!
    I’ve owned only one British car, 1969 Triumph GT6, and that was
    about three too many !! Between the maintenance, overpriced parts and just general expensive repairs and upkeep, I wouldn’t go near another one with a 10 foot pole and wearing a hazmat suit but
    I also don’t like seeing companies literally die because of, not poor, but totally idiotic management and practices !

  15. Gerry McGovern jokingly promised: ‘We have not been sniffing the white stuff.’
    Nope, they’ve been sniffing feminazi/trannie ass, and it woke them up.
    Fuck them. And their shitty overpriced, abominably unreliable cars.

  16. I wonder why The Stupid runs so rampant in the automobile business.
    Ford’s EV sector lost all the profit the other business segments made so far this year.

    Jag on it’s best day is a boutique car company. It served it niche quite well and built up a loyal following. Big companies bought it and it was doomed to follow the pack as a Me Too! production.

    Just because Tesla can make an EV at a profit, doesn’t mean other car companies can. I recall when the Big 3 were trying their hands shoe horning diesels into the products.

    Draw and quarter the fool.

  17. Almost all the profit that Tesla made in the early days came from selling energy credits to the other car companies not from their EV sales. The stock price skyrocketed because the Fan Boys kept pumping it up to just shy of 1,000 before it split and it collapsed back 50%. Now it’s back to all time highs. A lot of people who followed closely sold the highs and bought the lows correctly made a lot of $.

  18. When I was a beardless youth I was smitten with an unrequited love for the E-Type Coupe. Wanted one so bad I could taste it, reliability issues be damned — I was a gearhead and could handle it. It was (including most of the various subtypes) one BADASS sled.

    Screw Jaguar for destroying their marque. May they sink without a trace.

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