Jaguar Type 01 is the name of the brand’s new luxury electric four-door GT, a neat little badge for a very large gamble.
Jaguar has spent the last year blowing up its own drawing room while the internet had an attack of the vapours. Sadly, this is one of the worst managed transitions in corporate memory. Now the car has a name and it is the Type 01. Short, sharp, and laden with history veneered in walnut, retired colonels and cigar smoke that is now considered baggage rather than an asset. While Chinese car makers are busily hoovering up all the ye olde worlde brands they can scope out, Jaguar took a scalpel to the ribbon that once threaded its way back to old Bill Lyons hikmself.
The Type 01 badge sits on the strikethrough motif where the bonnet meets the windscreen. Jaguar says the 0 indicates electric propulsion and accompanying zero tailpipe emissions smugness, and the 1 marks the first car of the new era. I rather like the simplicity yet dread its acceptance as something that may remain beyond its grasp. For one of our favourite and most loved brands, trust is earned and continued trust requires continued care.
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ABOVE: Jaguar Type 01 prototypes in camouflage
A name with baggage
Type is not just a word, it is a signal, a banner, a clear direction to a place of love and admiration. Jaguar used it on the C-type in 1951, then the E-type became the shape every designer has coveted since. More recently, F-TYPE gave Jaguar one last proper snarl before a graceful retirement.
That makes Type 01 a fitting choice rather than a lazy one. You do not summon C-type and E-type ghosts unless you are prepared back it with punch. This new GT has to be beautiful, fast, calm, strange, and still be Jaguar without dressing up as grandad.
Jaguar says the new body architecture gives the car its presence, while tri-motor all-wheel drive delivers more than 1,000PS and over 1,300Nm of torque. Those are big numbers, and they need to be. The luxury EV end of town is where silent leather-clad missiles sit waiting for attention while their owners have jetted off to a sunny island in the Pacific.
Monaco gets the camouflage
Prototype Jaguar Type 01 cars will appear on the streets of Monaco during the E-Prix weekend wearing a “subtle” camouflage wrap. If you are going to introduce your reborn British luxury GT to the public, do it somewhere glamorous, pretentious, and full of people wearing sunglasses indoors.
The Monaco run also links neatly with Jaguar TCS Racing, and gives the new car a stage that is synonymous with money. It will not give us the full reveal, but it will give the obsessives something to freeze-frame an Insta shot into history.
The reset is the point
As we said earlier, Rawdon Glover says the zero also means a complete brand reset, and the 1 means the first car of a new chapter. Jaguar is not trying to make a slightly cleaner XF with a plug, it is a reinvention that can’t be overstated.
The old Jaguar audience wanted grace, pace, space, and of course, veneer. The next Jaguar buyer may be younger, richer, more design-led, and less interested in whether or not it suits being parked up on Downton’s driveway. If Jaguar pulls it off, the Type 01 could feel like a real grand tourer for the electric age. If it misses, the internet trolls will be unbearable, and nobody needs that. Is Jaguar aiming at Aston Martin or Rolls Royce?
Still, I would rather see Jaguar swing for the chandelier than keep polishing the same silver tray in an empty room. Type 01 is a clean name for a messy, ambitious reinvention and one can’t help but keep one’s fingers crossed.
More Jaguar Stories
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- Iconic SS Jaguar Meets Future Type 00 in London for 90th Bash
- Jaguar TCS Racing Begins 10th Formula E Season in São Paulo
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Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
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