New Jaguar Type 00 stirs up more hype by shutting down the streets of Paris
The Type 00 concept was unveiled in December 2024, previewing a bold new direction for Jaguar
The Jaguar Type 00 concept successfully broke the internet when it was unveiled in December last year, at Miami Art Week of all places. Now the radical electric two-door coupé has shut down the streets of Paris for its dynamic debut, sporting a unique matt paint finish called ‘French UltraMarine Blue’.
Images of Type 00 in the French capital highlight how ridiculously low to the ground the car is, as well as showcasing its enormous 23-inch wheels, equally massive hypercar-worthy ‘butterfly’ doors and eye-catching retracting bootlid.
The two-door grand tourer’s rear ‘window’ arrangement slides up and forward to reveal what looks to be a sizable 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.
The Type 00 is just a concept though, and won’t itself make production. Instead, it shows the new direction of Jaguar, and shares clear design cues with the four-seat, all-electric GT production car that’s due to be unveiled in late 2025 and should start arriving on customers’ driveways the following year.
According to Jaguar, the Type 00’s long bonnet and bluff front end will be carried over to the production model, as is obvious from images of various prototypes we’ve seen testing. But it’s still unclear if certain details – such as the unique bootlid mechanism – will feature on the final car.
Jaguar Type 00 design
The Jaguar Type 00 concept 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 released. 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.
Jaguar Type 00 interior
The stripped-back interior, accessed via rising butterfly doors, features a 3.2-metre brass spine that splits the pair of large digital screens. These can be folded away for a ‘digital detox’, at which point the key driver information is shown on the slender display running along 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.”
What the Type 00 says about Jaguar’s future
“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.”
Platform, powertrains and price
Jaguar hasn’t provided any information on the technical aspects of the Type 00 concept, including where the battery is positioned in such a low-slung car, which is key given that the production GT will take on a similar profile.
The road-going, as-yet-unnamed 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 according to executive director of vehicle programmes, Steve Marsh, it will cover an incredible 478 miles on a single charge. It will also boast ultra-rapid charging speeds that allow drivers to add 200 miles in only 15 minutes - ideal for continent-crossing trips.
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. Rawdon Glover made that very clear to Auto Express recently, saying: "No, we won't be putting a plug-in hybrid in that lovely long bonnet.”
How Jaguar’s rebrand got the whole world talking
As rebrands go, Jaguar’s is undoubtedly one of the most controversial the automotive industry has ever seen. The reaction to the new Jaguar logos and brand repositioning caused something of a stir across the world, especially the social media video that featured plenty of colour, but no cars.
The strength of negativity may have surprised the company, but Glover told us 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.”
What do you think of the new Jaguar Type 00 concept? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...
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