Jaguar Stuns With Spectacular Type 00 Design Study

Recently, Jaguar revealed their plans for an entire brand refresh — and a more divisive ad campaign in cars we cannot recall – but so confident are they in this move that they’re taking the big stage at Miami Art Week to show off what that new branding means in practice.

Indeed, the amount of kickback seen on various channels can mean a lot of things, but it means one thing for sure: the Type 00 Design Study – as Jag’s calling it – has a lot riding on it. This aggressive, modern re-branding of a very classic brand is a big leap, and if it’s going to be successful – if all the doubters are going to be silenced – then the Type 00 has to be good.

“Jaguar is at its very best when it’s a copy of nothing,” said Rawdon Glover, Managing Director at Jaguar. “But it is a real balance. If you lean too much on your past, it’s very difficult to be innovative and progressive. We have to leverage (our history), but in a way that isn’t entirely retrospective.”

Why “Design Study” as opposed to “Concept”? Well, this is a look at what Jaguars are going to look like going forward and while there are no production plans for the Type 00 at this juncture, expect the recently-revealed and heavily camo’d Jaguar GT we saw two weeks ago to borrow many styling cues from the Type 00.

The official line is that Jaguar is moving upmarket going forward – into a Bentley-esque price bracket – and that can be seen in the Type 00 with little more than a glance. The “Rhodon Rose” colour fits well with the brand’s colourful re-brand, but that’s only the half of it. The Type 00 is an exercise in near-perfect proportions for a grand touring sports car: long hood, fastback (big nod to the classic E-Type coupe there, not to mention the choice to add “Type” to the name, which is a classic Jaguar naming convention), 23” wheels plus a wraparound brass strip that lowers everything to the ground is all right on. Speaking of brass: you see it on the ingots just aft of the front wheels as well. Not only to these draw the eye, but they’re functional and open up to reveal rear-facing cameras.

From the front, we see another new signature (along with the “J” logos on the wheel hubs) that Jaguar’s calling the “Strikethrough”; it may look like the Type 00 has a grille, but of course it doesn’t because there’s no engine there. That is part of the Strikethrough theme, which we will see repeated on the hood, the roof, ‘round back and inside as well. Speaking of the rear; it’s from the rear three-quarter angle that you can really see the fender flares and the Type 00’s squat stance. It’s an epic take on the grand touring formula.

Which brings us to the interior, which is every bit the occasion as the exterior.

Swing open the up-swinging “butterfly” doors – of course there are upswinging doors – and a ultra-modern interior is revealed. The “Strikethrough” theme appears on the dash, aft of the rear seats and the hub of the oval-shaped steering wheel. There are more brass accents plus a new material not seen on the exterior: something called a “travertine stone” insert dividing the two seats. At first blush, that’s all there is but twin digital displays emerge with the press of a button. Those, of course, display the gauge cluster and infotainment and the way they deploy is slick.

Here’s the thing, though; there’s a reason why they aren’t ever-present. Jaguar thinks that we could all use what they’re calling a “digital detox”; just a clean interior without the distractions a screen can bring. It seems the nouveau riche buyers Jaguar is aiming at like their tech, but they like their zen as well.

In an effort to further blend those two mentalities, the Type 00 works with seemingly non-digital objects called “totems”. You may wonder why a seemingly inanimate 1 x 3 inch piece of either brass, travertine (there’s that name again) or alabaster belongs in a slick EV concept, but they’re there because they aren’t entirely inanimate. When removed from their carrying case (which has it’s own fender-mounted storage bin) and inserted in a special slot within the centre console, they bring up a certain ambiance in the car by tweaking the lighting, audio and so on. We’ve seen drive modes in cars change all this before, but it’s never done in an analogue way like this; even once inserted, the process takes a few seconds to take place. It’s not instant as it usually is, and it’s done this way so, according to Jaguar, the occupants can relax and enjoy the experience.

A digital detox, indeed.