New Jaguar Type 00 teased further with rising rear ‘window’
The Type 00 concept was unveiled weeks ago – although Jaguar isn’t finished with it just yet
As rebrands go, Jaguar’s is certainly one of the most controversial the automotive industry has ever seen – and central to it was the Type 00 concept car. While the car was revealed at Miami Art Week in early December, Jaguar is still posting new information about its radical electric car – including an eye-catching rear-window arrangement.
A fresh social media post from the British brand showcased the two-door grand tourer’s rear ‘window’ sliding up and forward to reveal a boot space. The mechanism also allows the driver to see behind them; as with the new Polestar 4, there’s no traditional window back there, with a camera doing the job instead.
While we’ve seen official images of a disguised prototype already, it’s not clear whether this rising rear-window function will come to the production four-door EV that’s due to arrive in 2026 – although the disguised production model does lack a visible rear view mirror.
The development car does, however, have actual wing mirrors, rather than the pop-out cameras that feature on the Type 00 concept. Meanwhile, the strikethrough design element on the rear houses full-width lighting sitting centrally between the huge arches.
The Jaguar Type 00 concept is a precursor to a four-door GT production car due to be revealed next summer, ahead of first deliveries in late 2026. The name, pronounced ‘type-zero-zero’ combines Jaguar’s historic use of the word ‘type’ with 00 to signify both the resetting of the brand and its zero-emission future.
“Type 00 is the first lines ever drawn for new Jaguar – its origin story,” said managing director Rawdon Glover, describing the dramatically styled car that features a bluff front end, long bonnet, sweeping roofline and coupé fastback profile with huge rear arches, as well as the brand’s new multiple-line strikethrough design element on the front, rear, bonnet, roof and dashboard.
Auto Express saw the concept at a secret preview event a month ahead of the global unveil, and the blunt, upright nose looks more impactful in the metal than in the arty rendering shots Jaguar has chosen to release. The side profile has been kept deliberately clean, with the brass ingots featuring the revised Jaguar ‘leaper’ logo housing pop-out rear view cameras, and the concept riding on huge 23-inch wheels.
The stripped-back interior, accessed via rising ‘butterfly’ doors, features a 3.2-metre brass spine that splits the pair of large digital screens, which can be folded away for a ‘digital detox’, at which point the key driver information is shown on the slender display running round the base of the windscreen.
“The past decade has seen Jaguar pursue a mass-volume strategy, and the cars have not been distinctive enough,” said Jaguar Land Rover chief executive Adrian Mardell. “This is the time to do something special.”
Jaguar Land Rover chief creative officer Gerry McGovern added: “We don’t want to appeal to everyone; the car will shock. It will take the Jaguar brand back to when it was a manufacturer truly loved because it was unique; we needed to create something that was jaw-dropping and never seen before.”
The two-seat coupé concept revealed in Florida won’t itself make production, but according to Jaguar it shares clear design cues with the four-seat GT production car, including its long bonnet and bluff front end.
“Type 00 is a clear illustration of what you can expect; its exuberant properties will be shared with all future Jaguars,” continued Glover. “The proportionality is really important; in an era where all EVs are cab-forward and all about aero, we’ve created a vehicle that has real presence and exuberant, long-bonnet proportions. It’s low-riding when everyone else is quite high because of their battery stack, and while everyone is focusing on tiny wheels to get the range, we said that’s not right for us – we need presence and drama.”
Comparing the concept car with the production GT, Glover told Auto Express: “You will see the lineage very clearly, the proportions, the pure surfacing, pared back and very simple, and you can take all of the iconography – the use of the leaper, the strikethrough, the face of the vehicle, how it plants itself, the longitudinal interior: a lot of those design features will be manifested in the vehicle.
“Similarly, that stance, the large-profile wheels, the beautiful fastback profile from the A-pillar down to the rear of the vehicle… you will see it.”
Jaguar is yet to give any information on the technical aspects of the concept, including where the battery is positioned in such a low-slung car, given that the production GT will take on a similar profile. That model will be built on the new Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA), which will also underpin a further two models by the end of 2028, expected to be a large SUV and a luxury saloon.
The GT will cost around £125,000, and Jaguar is aiming for a range figure of 478 miles and a charging speed that could add 200 miles in 15 minutes. The brand has also reaffirmed that despite the slow uptake for electric cars, there will be no turning back to hybrids or petrol engines in its future models.
How rebrand got the whole world talking
The reaction to the new Jaguar logos and brand repositioning caused something of a stir across the world last month – especially the social media video that featured plenty of colour, but no cars.
The strength of negativity may have surprised the company, but Rawdon Glover told Auto Express that nothing has changed his resolve. “Transformation is never straightforward, and we know that Jaguar is a brand that’s loved for its heritage and respected for its heritage,” he said. “But the reality is that that love of our heritage has not led to people buying our vehicles in sufficient numbers. So the need for change is very, very clear.
“What we wanted to do was to get the world’s attention that Jaguar was changing, and in that context, we’ve done exactly that,” he continued, highlighting that the brand has recorded more than 170 million interactions with its social media activity. “There are only 2.5 million luxury car customers on the planet, so the vast majority of those people commenting about and talking about it probably won’t be those people who purchase either our vehicle or another luxury vehicle.
“Did we expect to be the number one trending subject on certain social platforms for a few days globally? Absolutely not. So it’s been a much more significant reaction than perhaps we'd expected,” Glover concluded.
“I think there’s an awful lot more people interested in what we do next. People are talking about Jaguar in a way that they haven’t talked about us in decades, whether they like it or not.”
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