This is to say that the British manufacturer Jaguar is no longer a shadow of its former self, having notably seduced the most famous of Her Majesty’s secret agents – James Bond –, Her Majesty herself and even members of the London government. More than half of its European sales are made across the Channel.
The situation is set to get even worse in the coming months: Jaguar will in fact reduce its model offering to the sole F-Pace SUV in 2025, having announced that five of its six models will simply be scrapped. The reason? They bring nothing to the JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) group.
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Production of the XE, XF and F Sport models has already stopped in May. In December, the assembly lines will produce the last E-Pace and I-Pace. Stock models will of course continue to be available on the market.
Maintain some visibility
Jaguar will therefore be limited to a single model for at least a year. The choice logically fell on the model that alone represents a third of global sales (5,292 vehicles out of 15,324 in the 2nd quarter) for a starting price of 67,000 euros in Belgium. Enough, despite everything, to maintain a little visibility in the group’s showrooms even if this model is no longer really in its prime. It was in fact presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September… 2015. An eternity in the world of automobiles.
Is the Jaguar brand doomed to disappear? Quite the opposite, if its bet is crowned with success. In fact, Jaguar has revised its roadmap to turn to an exclusively electric offer, which should finally be marketed from 2026 (it was initially 2025).
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The bet seems daring today, to say the least, as sales of electric cars are struggling in Europe and also in the United States, forcing Stellantis, for example, to stop production of the Fiat 500e for a month. Luxury cars are no longer spared from this decline. Within the JLR group, Land Rover is also taking its foot off the gas on the electrification of its range and will instead focus on plug-in hybrid models, whose sales have taken off, by increasing their production capacities.
quotation mark“By 2025, Jaguar will have completed a complete transformation.”
The failure of electric
It is in any case paradoxical to say the least that Jaguar has drawn a definitive line under its only electric model, the I-Pace, when the objective is precisely to be a 100% electric brand in the short term. European Car of the Year 2019, the I-Pace has never really taken off, except in the wake of this title envied by manufacturers. It is then 19,000 total sales, which will quickly decline (4,894 for the first half of 2024) to reach a cumulative volume of around 70,000 cars over the entire marketing period.
The I-Pace sums up the problems that Jaguar has suffered. Launched in 2018, the car is nevertheless the most recent of the British manufacturer’s cars while competitors are real steamrollers in terms of new features and innovations. However, the I-Pace has not been renewed since then. And then, there is its price (starting at 93,700 euros) which can prove dissuasive while the market is now full of premium electric cars at more affordable prices and more in tune with the times.
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This lack of new products and a delicate positioning between premium and luxury explain why Jaguar sales have continued to decline since the record of 2018, with 180,833 vehicles put on the roads. Hence the decision to go and tickle only the luxury car segment like Porsche or Bentley, more profitable for a manufacturer, also enough to have consistency for the entire JLR group.
Complete transformation
“By 2025, Jaguar will have completed a complete transformation. It will then be a 100% luxury brand % electric with a new portfolio of models”,announced at the beginning of 2021 the boss of JLR, the Frenchman Thierry Bolloré (ex-Renault group) as part of the Reimagine project. The bar was even set very high. The brand will be equipped with “of a new portfolio of models of spectacular beauty and design at the forefront of next-generation technologies. Jaguar’s purpose will be to design extraordinary automotive experiences in a way that makes its customers feel unique and special.”the manufacturer had specified. Thierry Bolloré was replaced at the end of 2022 by Adrian Mardell.
What to expect? Jaguar will now offer only three models. The first will be a sedan Granturismo over 5 meters long. All will have a range of some 700 kilometers. They will all have another thing in common: “ Every decision we make, we ask ourselves whether it will make people think about Jaguar the way we want them to. If it doesn’t make them want to pay £120,000, we don’t do it.s,” explained Rawdon Glover, brand director.
This first model was to be unveiled by the end of the year, put into production in 2025 and marketed in 2026.
