The first thing that must be done to correct a problem is to acknowledge there is one. Jaguar has finally done that – by not just firing Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern but (reportedly) escorting him out the door.
McGovern is the guy who shat Jaguar’s bed – by equating the brand with an agenda that literally has nothing to do with cars.
You may recall the ads. Create Exuburant.
What you saw was a group of luridly dressed weirdos doing weird things; no car was even mentioned. The question arose: What does this have to do with selling Jags? It ended up costing Jaguar sales, for the same reason that those Bud Light ads featuring a weirdo caused sales of Bud Light to plummet. Men – and it is mostly men who drink Bud Light – are interested in beer. Not other men dressed up as girls. Just as people who buy Jags aren’t buying agendas. In both instances, it is not because they are “phobic” – i.e., afraid of weirdos or agendas. It is because they aren’t interested in weirdos or agendas when they are wanting to buy beer – or a car.
This is a distinction lost on executives such as McGovern and that woman who put that man on the Bud Light can.
Jaguar’s bigger problem is that it is owned by Tata, which isn’t British. Tata is run by an Indian guy named PB Balaji. Which is kind of like having Winston Churchill run an Oktoberfest. Put another way, understanding the history and culture of something is important, if you don’t want to run it into the ground. Tata has been doing an excellent job in that respect – in part because it is as British as bulldogs are German.
But it is not all the Indians’ fault.
Tata bought Jaguar (and Land Rover) after the British had near-bankrupted both brands. Jaguar had – for decades – relied upon making cars that were so beautiful people were willing to overlook that they just weren’t very well-made cars. It was said of Jaguars such as the E-Types and XJs – that they looked better on the lift than most other cars do on the road. And Land Rovers were storied for their sturdiness; for a long time, there weren’t many other rugged 4x4s like them.
Then Jaguar got into bed with Ford – as part of what was then styled the Premier Auto Group (PAG) and shat the brand by bringing out “Jaguars” that were really Fords. The Ford Contour – sold in Europe as the Mondeo – became, et voila, the “Jaguar” X-Type. It was not a bad car.
The problem was everyone knew it wasn’t really a Jaguar. It was a Jaguar-skinned Ford Mondeo-Contour. It didn’t sell well. Neither did the not-really-a-Jaguar S-Type, which was really a Ford (a Lincoln) LS with a “Jaguar” skin. Both of these not-really-Jags got cancelled after the 2008 model year. That was also the year Ford sold Jaguar (and Land Rover) to Tata. The Indians have tried hard to make Jaguar British again but that hasn’t been easy – although the Indians have done a very good job of resurrecting British motorcycle brands such as Royal Enfield, which is currently owned by a very German-sounding Indian company called Eicher Motors Limited. 
So maybe it’s not the Indian ownership that’s the real problem.
What could it be, then?
Well, a big part of it is the same problem that’s besetting every luxury car brand, which is that they are now chiefly just expensive brands. They have always been expensive, of course – but it was once the case that you got something more for your money than just a lighter wallet and the “prestige” – whatever that’s worth – of the luxury-car badge. You got things that were not even available in lesser cars, such as V12 engines. Today’s luxury-badged (and priced) vehicles come with the same 2.0 liter fours that you get in other vehicles for – literally – tens of thousands less. These cars also generally come with luxuries such as climate control and excellent audio systems and power-actuated just-about-everything. They have magnificent paint jobs and tight panel fitment.
Meanwhile, the luxury-badged (and priced) vehicles no longer even have the magnificent chrome-plated bumpers and grills that once set them in a class-apart from the lesser brands. Even quarter-million-dollar Bentleys have the same plastic-covered front and rear ends – and plastic-chrome grills. They have big LCD touchscreens, though. But the lesser brands’ touchscreens get bigger each year, because LCD touchscreens are cheap.
And they look it, too.
It’s hard to sell that for a luxury price. It is even harder to sell a luxury-badged device, which was what was on deck when the Exuberant ads debuted. They were meant to herald Jaguar’s transition from a maker of vehicles to a seller of devices badged as Jags. The problem there is that one device is pretty much the same as other devices. How doe one impart “Jaguar-ness” to batteries and electric motors? Or Mercedes-ness, for that matter?
Tesla’s devices sold – for awhile – because devices are different than vehicles. Some people want a device. But that does not mean everyone does. It certainly does not mean there is a market for more than a small handful of devices sold under different labels.
McGiovern does deserve credit for bringing back the Defender, which has helped to keep Land Rover going. The reason it has helped is because the Defender is a Land Rover, not just badged as one. It is not a reskinned someone-else’s SUV. And – above all – it is not a device.
Maybe the new guy at Jaguar will take a hint – and bring back some Jaguars, sans the weirdos.
. . .
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Random Jag thoughts…
Back in the day when I worked at a big name auto parts store as a driver, I hated Jag V12 heads. They were big and heavy and always needing to be resurfaced at our machine shop. More than any other engine type, by far. Jag V12 sounds cool until you see how often they went to the shop.
When I was a kid, the absolute coolest limousine I ever saw was a Jag Xj6 stretched into a limo. It was gorgeous, especially compared to the stereotypical limousine of the day. I cannot think of a Jag today that would look sexy as a limo.
Hi J,
Yup! I’d love to have a Jag V12 on a display stand in my TV room. Much more appealing to look at than anything that’s on TV!
I’ve owned two of them, rusted out XJS’s. They looked awful in the engine room with the factory smog/hoses strewn all over. I had entertained thoughts of cleaning them up and putting them in an open hood roadster.
But what made them worth having was the sound…
https://youtu.be/70nyn9LH_bQ?si=JacSZi8tM8njg9bC
Can Jaguar be fixed, I doubt it. Just like every other car company, they are driven by accountants and government mandates. My father in law owned an 82 XJS V-12 that I got to drive on occasion, smooth and fantastic handling, FUN. But yeah, the repair shop knew him on a first name basis, but he kept it running and it good repair. He spent more keeping the Jag going than he did on his airplane I think. When he passed and we sold it, it wasn’t worth much on the market. I can only hope to one day drive a new car that drove like that XJS.
I’ve always had convertibles. When Jaguar introduced the (Ford) XK8 in 1996, I had to have one. I could buy it with the advance on my third book. (Now ex-) wife said “no way”. Flash forward 25 years and I found a 1998 XK8 on Bring a Trailer. It had 5,000 miles on it and still smells new. Horrible in the snow and even rain, but it can’t be beat in the summer.
When I saw the Teletubby ad, I could feel the car depreciate in value. I wonder if there’s room for a class-action lawsuit by all the Jaguar owners who experienced rapid depreciation because who wants to be seen associating with a brand that is so faggy.
‘It’s hard to sell that for a luxury price.’ — eric
Luxury is about taste — exclusive taste: hand-finished burled walnut surfaces and jeweled chronograph gauges in the dash, for instance. Such features are not affordable in middle market vehicles, and never shall be.
Luxury is also the avoidance of vulgarity. Though rich, the early 20th century British aristocracy, which Jaguar arose to cater to, considered the display of money vulgar. Most of them carried no cash at all. They ran a tab with their vendors and victualers. If prompt payment was demanded, a servant would take care of menial matter.
Cell phones are the ultimate in vulgarity. In the Before Time of landlines, powerful people were insulated by secretaries who answered the phone, screened callers, and took down messages. A New York City businessman used to have his secretary ring me and announce, “Please hold for Mr G*****,” when he could just as well have punched in the number himself. But he refused to stoop to such tedium.
Being inspired by cell phones, LCD screens in cars are equally crass and vulgar. Being obliged to operate them with their puzzle-palace menus and childish icons (in place of English words) is demeaning. With their bright primary colors, douchescreens recall ol’ William Faulkner’s appendix to The Sound and the Fury, revealing the fates of its characters:
‘T.P. Who wore on Memphis’s Beale Street the fine bright cheap intransigent clothes manufactured specifically for him by the (((owners))) of Chicago and New York
sweatshopsad agencies.’Now fashion victim Jaguar lies bleeding in the gutter — and I feel fine!
‘Tata’ — is it ill-bred to snicker every time I hear this name?
Tits; knockers; melons — LOL!
Where’s my squeeze toy?? 🙂
Jaguar isn’t so exclusive that they are not bound by market forces. They are factory-made, global supply chain reliant company like any other. They want to think they’re this plunky little company of petrolhead Brits turning out interesting cars from a converted aircraft factory in Solihull. They’re not Ferrari.
I, for one, applaud the impending Sovietization of Jaguar. The middle managers need to reap the chaos they sowed. Kill it before they completely trash our fond memories of series Land Rovers and E-types. Long live INEOS!
Grace….
Space…
Pace
THAT is how you market and sell Jaguars. Understated, British, and undeniably true.
Volvo- they’re boxy but they’re good should have been adopted out of the movie by Volvo for the same reasons.
The lazy, stupid, academic lunatics who have infested all corporations, are a blight and a festering pimple on humanity’s collective ass.
I used to lust after Jags. Obviously the 60’s E-types were OMG. Almost bought a wrecked one when I was a kid until I figured out how much the parts would be. Then the XJ-L came out when I was older, and OMG again. This was in the days when all cars were getting smaller and smaller, and the XJ-L came with V6 and V8 supercharged engines, OMG again.
Then I almost bought a XE for the wife, same good supercharged engines.
But because we are very practical, we decided that without the dealer being close, we couldn’t do it.
They discontinued the XJ’s in 2020? Stupid. Compliance issues for sure.
The F-Pace and F-Type are still pretty cool, and they still have avail. a 5.0 V8 supercharged (yay!), for bukku bucks, but the rest of their engines are 2.0T, yuk……
And they made a huge push towards EV’s, sorry for them…………..
It’s interested to me that when you look at the offerings on their website there is zero mention of what ‘kind’ of engines they are. Just names like P250, P300, P450, etc… You have to separately search for what they are. Their marketing dept. knows that potential Jag buyers don’t want these small 4-cyl T engines and hides it on purpose.
To be fair, Caddy also discontinued their pretty cool big CT6, but still offer it in China. Sales of the CT6 in the US suffered because of GM’s typical horrible packaging, IMO. 4cyl-T std., hahahaa…….. had to go way up trim to get a half decent engine, pass…….. so did others I guess. It’s a big reason I switched to Jeep, Dodge and Ram, cause you could get a decent engine in lower trims.
Marketing is hard. Especially when trying to sell something to people who don’t want it.
Take the domain name ericpetersautos.com. Sounds like a snooty boutique car dealership. But add the tagline “Your libertarian car guy” and suddenly the domain name doesn’t matter. That’s good marketing.
Trying to sell beer to effeminate men while holding your existing manly-men customers is pretty much guaranteed to fail. Why no one caught it is beyond me. If they wanted to get into the man-in-a-dress demographic they should have introduced a new brand. That’s how it’s done. People respond to what it says on the tin. If Bud Light had come up with a pink frilly beer can and named it Betty Light or something, well, maybe that could have worked -heck, might have become a joke with the boys.. “Hey Bob, let me buy you a Betty Light. It’ll go great with your Ridgeline!”
But in the case of Jaguar, I’d say if they rolled out the big new campaign quietly and selectively it might have worked. Unfortunately that’s hard to do in this age of sharing and viral video. Someone gets the ad on their timeline and LOL’s it to trending, and pretty soon the whole thing is being mocked relentlessly. That’s when it becomes an obviously bad campaign. You can’t sell everything like perfume just because your target audience positively responds to perfume ads.
This is the problem, carmakers are too busy marketing homogenized crap to different groups. Carmakers are never going to learn, but they need to start selling the product, the car, pointing out the features, the performance and the utility of the vehicle itself. The 1960s through the early 1970s were peak vehicle marketing periods. After the arab oil embargo, they started to sell gas mileage then saaaaaaaaafety in the 1980s. That’s when they stopped selling cars.
Jaguar has done the same. Of course, their cars were never that good anyways. They looked nice, though.
The Fords that were reskinned as Jaguars were probably too reliable to be real Jaguars. Perhaps if Ford had engineered in a few oil leeks and seepage’s combined with a Lucas level of intermittent electrical problems it might have convinced buyers that they were real Jaguars.
That said the biggest problem they have is that with fuel economy ratings being deemed so important and wind tunnel testing picking the optimal shape should we be surprised everything looks the same now?
Perhaps if they were willing to pay the penalty for different styling and bigger engines their customers might well be willing to pay more to get a car with real chrome plated bumpers, actual automatic or manual transmissions and V8 or even V12 engines instead of a twin turbo 4 with a CVT and plastic everything.
I owned an S type. It had a lot of Ford parts amd also some German and yes British plastic as well. The British plastic coolant reservoir failed and leaked everywhere. The windows and the ac failed.
It still was way more reliable than a 70s or 80s model Jag.
In 2009 the xf model was introduced. Due to changing tastes and government rules it no longer looked like a jag.
Hi Swamp Rat.
Knowing an X type is essentially a Ford Contour I would almost be tempted to buy one but at this point parts would be even harder to find for it than a Contour and let me tell you used trim/ body parts are hard to find for them now.
The S-type is a better car all the way around. Proper. Rear wheel drive and a damned good caricture of the original 1963-68 S-types that became teh 420
Devices have no soul.
That ugly blob in Porcine Pink is as insulting to the C-type as Luzzo is to Loren (Sophia, that is). It’s what the collapse of a once great civilization looks like.
Remember, a civilization is not just some faceless, amorphous mass of humanity. It’s the mosaic of individuals bringing their individualities to the societal mix. It creates vibrancy, uniqueness and joy to lives as a cornucopia of choices for our consumption and enjoyment.
That pink Jag is the automotive equivalent of the McRib. Sure, you can eat it. But, after one bite, who wants to?
I like the way you described civilizations! So true.
Thanks.
Remember Pixar “Cars 2”? Mater said of British cars, “if there ain’t no oil under ’em, there ain’t no oil in ’em”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WSNKsgVsfk