Jaguar is in trouble – but not because (per President Trump) of the Drag Queen Story Time ad it put out a few months back. The executive responsible for that has been let go but if he (and that) were the only problem, there wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is that Jaguar is trying to sell luxury cars – luxury crossovers, now – at a time when everyone else is selling the same thing. Just for a lot less because without the luxury-brand price.
This is an industry-wide problem for all the luxury brands.
Take a time-trip back to say 1995-ish and compare a Jaguar with a Hyundai. Or a Mercedes with a Ford. The differences were as obvious as the differences between Taco Bell and a sit-down dinner at a fine restaurant. Not that there’s anything wrong with Taco Bell. The point is that what you got at Taco Bell was not what you got at the fine, sit-down restaurant. Now try to imagine if what you got at Taco Bell was damned close to what you got at the fine, sit-down restaurant except that it cost a lot less than what the fine, sit-down restaurant charges.
What do you get, today, at the dealership equivalent of Taco Bell?
Everything on the lot has climate control AC, a good stereo, full instrumentation – including a probably large LCD display. Power windows and locks, cruise control, tilt wheel, electric defrost and intermittent wipers are a given. These were all once-upon-a-time considered luxury features that were not standard (and often not available) in non-luxury-cars. As recently as about a decade ago, only luxury cars had the then-futuristic-looking flat screen dashboards that are now available in many non-luxury cars that cost less than $35,000. Most new vehicles in the $25k range come standard with LCD touchscreens, some of them just as big as the ones in luxury-priced cars.
Formerly luxury-brand exclusives such as heated seats (and steering wheels) and even once-exotic gadgetry such as a Heads Up Display (that displays a floating holographic image of such things as the speed you’re driving in the driver’s line of sight) and headlights that turn with you in the curves are to be found in Subarus and Toyotas. Not – again – that there is anything wrong with either Subarus or Toyotas.
That’s just the point, though. Why pay extra for something when you’re not getting something extra. Speaking of which . . .
Many new luxury -brand vehicles have engines as small as what you get in non-luxury cars. A Mercedes E-Class sedan (which is a $50,000-plus sedan) used to come standard with a 3.5 liter V6 engine. The same car today comes standard with a 2.0 liter four cylinder engine, which happen to be the same size and type of engine you get for half the money in non-luxury vehicles. Adding insult to injury, the current Mercedes E-Class is the most expensive E-Class ever.
It is like Taco Bell charging people $30 for a Chalupa.
Jaguar has this problem, too. The $57,000 to start F-Pace crossover comes standard with a 2.0 liter four that touts 246 horsepower. A 2025 VW Atlas – which is a similar-in-size crossover – comes standard with a 2.0 liter four that touts 269 horsepower. It also has a 10.2 inch “digital” dashboard and a secondary 12 inch LCD touchscreen, dual-zone climate control, adaptive LED headlights, heated and cooled front seats covered in synthetic leather, a heated steering wheel, six speaker stereo and proximity keyless entry, among other luxuries.
The Atlas lists for $37,190.
How much is the Jaguar badge worth? Apparently, $19,810. Plus tax.
Back in 2000 – which feels like it was only yesterday – Jaguar was selling cars like the XJ8 sedan, which came standard with a V8 engine. The XJ8 was also beautiful and exclusive rather than anodyne and expensive. Non-luxury sedans of the era such as the Ford Taurus did not even offer V8s or the luxuries that the Jag did and a Taurus did not look like a Jaguar. That’s perhaps better said the other way around: A Jaguar did not look like a Taurus. Today, Jags like the F-Pace – while not ugly, per se, do look pretty much like everything else because just about everything else is another crossover, just like it.
Including under the hood.
They are no longer exclusive; they are merely expensive.
Jaguar (and Mercedes) also had this really stupid idea that making them electric would make them different when of course all that did was make them compliant and even more the same – just even more expensive. “Copy Nothing”? This is copying everything.
Mercedes has already had to fire-sale its “electrified” models (the EQS and EQE) and the same is all-but-certain to happen when Jaguar – under its new leader, PB Balaji, the CGO of Tata Motors, the Indian conglomerate that owns Jaguar and Land Rover – launches its range of new devices this fall. The timing could not possibly be worse for that. The EV bubble burst last year. “Electrified” Jaguars lacking the engines – and the elegance that once defined the brand – are going to go over like airship tickets across the Atlantic after the Hindenburg debacle.
And the Hindenburg was elegant. It also wasn’t the great airship’s fault, really that it went down in flames. The Germans were forced to use highly flammable hydrogen gas rather than helium because the American government barred Germany from purchasing helium, which the Germans lacked at that time. So the substituted hydrogen and the rest is history.
Just as Jaguar is likely to soon be.
. . .
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Has GB really lost that much testosterone? The whole crew who did that belong in W.Hollywood rubbing each other while designing sex toys.
Like someone said, Jaguar was once something special, but now it’s not.
You’re really paying for the logo on the hood.
But what happens when people stop paying for the logo on the hood…?
Sometimes you get what you deserve. I think it’s called karma or just deserts.
The only Jaguar I’d be interested in purchasing:
The Draguar
https://i0.wp.com/engineswapdepot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Randy-Pobst-races-the-Draguar-Roadkill-Episode-41.jpg?ssl=1
Does anyone remember the Whitesnake music video (“Here I Go Again”) with Tawney Kitaen posing sexily on the two Jaguars? They need to make those kind of Jaguars (and videos) again!
Androgynous Malthusian pessimism drove the thinking behind Jaguar’s marketing. They hate their customers, just like Budlight, because some of their customers don’t think like they do.
We’ve become a binary society, in lieu of great ideas, innovation, elegance and grace, it’s either you’re for us or against us. Woke business is betting we’re with you, so buy our product to reflect your thinking and join the crowd. What ever happened to being your own man and as Frank once sang “I did it my way”. Where is the Marlboro man now when we need him?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The headline to your article, along with the picture says it all. Was Jaguar so tone deaf they thought we Americans were like the impoverished cucks in Britain, and we’d just accept the nasty slop they tried to force on us?
When I was young my parents friends had a beautiful XJ6. And from the first time I saw it, and rode in it, I decided, someday when I had a lot of money, I’d have one. Had a chance to get a nice, low milage 77 a few years ago. Got a Mercedes SL 5OO instead. So glad now I made the right choice, [sort of].
And lest we forget, its the Black-rocks/stones, Swartzman/Finks of the world pushing this kind of retarded nonsense. Buying board seats with their ill gotten, free Fed, filthy lucre, then forcing this dead ender ideology into our daily lives. Destroying once revered companies, and doing their best to break civilization. They cant be doing it for the money, or for the power. They already have it all. What is it then that drives these people? Is it perhaps their father, Satan? Whatever it is, I cant wait until they get cattle car’d off to Turkmenistan, thrown into the Darvaza gas crater, and die screaming.
Indeed, Norman!
I had a similar experience growing up; the father of one of my friends had a Jag with the V12. We would raise the hood and just look at it, almost like young guys do a Playboy. That’s what’s not there anymore – and that’s why Jag is dying.
Nice.
My parents friends came up to visit us on vacation in Laguna beach. They picked us up, then drove us down to Dana Point to show us their new home. I could just imagine how cool it would be to drive one of those Jags up and down the PCH. To my young mind the ride was smooth as glass. Although it was probably more about being the first luxury car I rode in, and the accompanying scenery. Still a good memory of my folks.
When I was a young woman, my dream car was a Jaguar V12; supremely elegant, classy and with an engine that purred with power. The dreck that Jaguar is producing now looks like something out of a Jetsons cartoon.
Of course the plutocrats and hedge fund money people, mainly of a certain ethnicity, hate Western Civilization and everything created by it. They’re nihilists after all. They see the hoi polloi as lower than whale crap on the bottom of the ocean. We are the carbon they’d like to eliminate. They worship the Father of Lies, either directly or indirectly.
Jaguar should emphasize big, SMOOOOOOOOTH engines like that silky inline 6 that made the XJ6 not only a gorgeous vehicle to look at, but a great grand touring car. Jag is Connolly leather, real burled walnut trim and a relaxed elegance. I’d argue the E-type is the most beautiful car ever created.
Put one of us in charge of Jaguar and we’d abandon that awful Hot Wheels device they’re pushing and go back to what made Jags wonderful: Grace and style. The F-type’s V-8 was a honking beast of a motor. Promote that in a new saloon/shooting brake (SUV for us nimrods in the U.S.)/sports car, develop a dealership experience second to none (just copy what Lexus does) and watch the money roll in on trucks. If I was CEO of Jaguar, I’d tell the designers to look at classic Jags and design something that gives the average person goosebumps when they see one roll down their street. That’s the mission.
You’re absolutely correct. The money would roll in, if they returned to what worked in the past. Other companies would probably follow suit. The only thing stoping it, Too Big Too Fail. Being backstopped by those that issue the fakest currency on the planet means they don’t have to answer to shareholders and don’t really care about profits.
Darvaza gas pit??
That’s one of my checklist items for roasting marshmallows and camping out in the middle of Nowhere…..beaucoup “steppe” bullshit (Ahem flyover state boring “flat earth stuff “to get to it however)…
Misbehave enough and you might end up there.
Sadly, WRT $30 chalupas at Taco Bell, Trump says “Hold my beer and watch this”……
Jaguar has been irrelevant for a long time….so have BMW and Mercedes….just twitching carcasses awaiting the grave….
In other news, Trump seems bent on entering a nuclear conflagration with Russia that will make all this irrelevant. Been nice chatting with you folks…..
How many here saw that ad Jaguar ran? It featured a bunch of rather freaky people but there wasn’t even ONE car in the ad, leaving me to wonder if Jaguar was trying to sell woke freak shows or automobiles. And Jaguar also made a big deal about their vehicles going ALL ELECTRIC, which was likely also a factor in their current woes. It seems to me people are as interested in getting EVs as they are in getting the latest COVID booster jab.
Demolition Man Taco Bell invitation:
https://youtu.be/p-7zED_o62w
We all laughed, but look at the restaurants that made it through COVID, inflation, increasing minimum wages and labor shortages. Not to mention that lunch at a fast food joint costs as much as a sit down meal did in 2017. And the “fast casual” segment is basically just fast food with nicer dining rooms and a beer menu.
The joke in the film was that Taco Bell looked like a fancy trendy dining experience. No plastic laminate booths or harsh lighting, wait staff and fancy plates. Taco Bell went up market, like Hyundai. Because the tech that made Jags interesting (other than the tearing silk sounds produced by their finicky V12) got cheap. So why not add it to the Sonata? It adds a lot of value without much effort.
The thing I can’t get past is Cadillac. They were famous for the floating on a cloud ride and cruise ship handling. Let the kids have their BMWs and Audis, the old man earned his Caddy by getting to the top. But they wanted to go after the boomer market and ended up overshooting to the rappers and drug dealers. Now it’s a has-been brand without much of a marking plan at all. It wouldn’t have taken much to grab a GMC frame and drivetrain and bolt on a nice big Coupe De Ville chassis, with airbag suspension and maybe even offer an AWD option. Sure it won’t make it round the Nürburgring in any sort of impressive time, but who cares? That’s not the point.
In other words, now all restaurants are Taco Bell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFiDoOgRTpk
Eric has pointed out many times that the reason all cars feel luxurious is because there’s no options available. What passes as a luxury car today is McDonalds with Five Guys pricetags.
Honestly if you ask me it’s a pretty good car. The F pace I have is quite good. Is it the fastest, but definitely more spacious than a Range of the same platform, and more soul than a german (whos engines are completely muffled here in the UK). Not as sporty as a Cayenne, but much cheaper.
But I guess with mostly Karens deciding on SUVs – they dont care for the ability to get some rear wheel spin or an engine with an actual sound….
Their other market – the sports cars – I think that is completely dead because nobody can afford them. And the real advantage they had, one of the only 4 seat tourer cars was discontinued like 15 years ago, replaced by a 2 seat. Which is fine but it really gets rid of a lot of buyers like myself who need back seats for kids….
‘It wasn’t the great airship’s fault, really, that it went down in flames.’ — eric
If only we could say the same about Jaguar. This news about its own special EeeVee Clownworld emerged several months ago:
‘Jaguar’s sales in Europe dropped by a whopping 97.5 percent year-over-year in April 2025, figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (AECA) reveal. Jaguar sold just 49 cars in April 2025 compared to almost 2,000 in April 2024.
‘Around the world, Jaguar sold under 27,000 vehicles for the 2024/25 financial year, 85 percent fewer than just six years prior. It’s the most catastrophic decline in the history of the company, and it comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/jaguar-sales-plummet-975-after-awful-theythem-rebrand
How do you totally vaporize an auto maker’s sales? EASY — go all-electric!
‘A spokeswoman said: ‘”Jaguar’s transformation towards a new portfolio of pure-electric vehicles was announced as part of the Reimagine strategy in 2021. JLR always envisaged a period when the current range would ‘no longer be on sale’ before the introduction of the new Jaguar collection.”
EeeVee Fever [remember that, four long years ago?] claims another pathetic victim. Four hundred volts DC applied directly to the parietal lobes of Jaguar’s purblind managers might have zapped their distorted, woke suicide fantasy. But that’s all over.
Why can’t you just get it through your head
It’s over, it’s over now
Yes, you heard me clearly now I said
It’s over, it’s over now
— Boz Scaggs, It’s Over
Jim: “JLR always envisaged a period when the current range would ‘no longer be on sale’ before the introduction of the new Jaguar collection.”
Well Jim it looks like we won’t have to imagine new Jaguar collection being on sale as it is rapidly becoming apparent that it would put the company out of business.
Perhaps if they went back to their roots and sell gasoline only cars it might save them. An affordable luxury car with a gasoline only engine with the gas guzzler tax clearly visible on the invoice to show why might help. Luxury cars cost more for what you get and don’t get. Difference costs more and I bet some people will pay more to get it. The question is will enough people pay to get it?