Jaguar finally unveils the most talked-about car of the decade – and its eye-watering price

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After nearly two years of arguments about logos, pink paint, what’s woke and what’s not, and what a Jaguar really should be, here’s the car customers will actually be able to buy. The new Jaguar Type 01 has been revealed in New York and its vital statistics are as striking as the production car’s looks.

This is an all-electric four-door GT with up to 1,016bhp, an expected maximum range of 450 miles and prices expected to centre around £125,000.

Jaguar’s advertising campaign in November 2024 featured brightly dressed models, but no car. Then came the Type 00 concept at Miami Art Week that December, shown in pink and blue. Supporters welcomed a bold change; critics questioned what was left of the Jaguar they knew.

Now, fully revealed, the Type 01 turns that two-door design study’s ideas into a four-door production car. I’ve seen it in the metal a few times now, already ridden in a disguised prototype, and we showed you the interior in August. With the whole car uncovered, the long bonnet, huge wheels and missing rear window have all survived the journey. So has the Jaguar leaper, now found on the side finishers.

The price jump is deliberate, too. Managing director Rawdon Glover describes that expected £125,000 centre of gravity as “double where we were”, although it isn’t a confirmed starting price – he sees an opening between premium cars costing up to £120,000 and the luxury market at £300,000 and above.

But why not a big-selling SUV? That will come, for sure, but the GT was chosen to introduce the new Jaguar because it could better change perceptions, not because it’s expected to be the biggest seller.

Glover said: “Jaguars should be objects of desire and culturally relevant – that’s their natural habitat and where Jaguar is returning.”

Orders are expected to open in early 2027, with the first customers getting their cars in the second half of the year.

There’s been a change from the figures discussed alongside the Type 00, too. Jaguar originally targeted a maximum claimed range of 478 miles for its production GT; the expectation now is up to 450 miles from a 118kWh usable battery. The charging claim has improved, though: a 200-mile top-up is now a little quicker at 13 minutes, against the 15 minutes discussed in 2024.

For all the talk of starting again, there are some familiar Jaguar ideas beneath the new look. Take the Luxury Gap. I know it as an album by Heaven 17, but to a car designer it’s the distance from the centre of the front wheel to the leading edge of the front door. Here it’s 898mm, or 17 per cent of the car’s length – almost the same proportion as it is on an E-type.

Proportions came up repeatedly in my conversations with the people behind the car. At 5,235mm long, with around 3,200mm between the front and rear wheels, the Type 01 is big, but stands just 1,403mm tall. There’s very little bodywork ahead of the front wheels and an extended tail. The standard 23-inch wheels and tyres measure 763mm across, more than half the car’s height, although a smaller, 21-inch alternative is available.

The four-light signature across the nose will become a Jaguar calling card, with the brand’s slimmest headlights yet, at 84mm high. Each has 17,000 pixels to control its beam. At the back, the lights hide within horizontal bars until switched on, beneath those broad shoulders.

Making that rear end has taken rather more than a designer’s pen. The sharply folded bodywork around the rear side window required what Jaguar calls the Impossible Panel. Engineers spent more than 1,500 hours working out how to produce it, eventually using six stages of pressing in a machine four storeys high at Halewood. The frameless doors close directly against the body without visible seals or extra trim, while the flush handles can apparently push through 4mm of ice.

Inside, that low roof becomes rather more personal. Chief engineer Jon Darlington told me: “It’s important to sit in a Jaguar, not on a Jaguar”. The Type 01 has Jaguar’s slimmest seats yet, and although I usually lower a seat as far as it will go, here I was inclined to raise it, otherwise it felt a bit like sitting in a deep bathtub. A central spine divides the cabin into four individual spaces, with brass-effect trim running along it and the tops of the doors.

The missing rear window has a practical answer, and one that works particularly well even with my ageing eyesight. Jaguar hasn’t put a camera-fed screen where a rear-view mirror would normally sit, its ClearSight display is further away, at the base of the windscreen and level with the door mirrors. I’m long-sighted and usually need glasses for close-up screens, so that extra distance made the image easier to see.

The screen sits within a soundbar containing 13 of the Meridian audio system’s 38 speakers. The other 25 are tucked around the cabin, including the roof lining, rear doors and headrests, leaving the front doors free of speakers. The front seats can pulse with the music, while the headrest speakers help cancel road noise. There’s a bespoke Jaguar soundscape, too.

Jaguar worked with Aachen University in Germany on how people interact with the cabin. A 24-inch OLED display puts driver information on its outer section, with media and navigation towards the centre. Separate seven-inch portrait touchscreens front and rear handle temperature, seats and music with familiar taps, swipes and dragging gestures. Jaguar says most functions are available within two taps, and conversational voice control can even open the charging flap.

The Nvidia-powered computer is claimed to be ten times faster than Jaguar’s previous generation and supports over-the-air updates. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, alongside charging for two phones and a hotspot for eight devices. There are streaming and gaming apps, with video on the front screen available when parked. Some connected services will require renewed subscriptions after the vehicle warranty expires, though.

Cupholders and air vents stay hidden until needed, storage compartments reveal flashes of colour and the standard panoramic glass roof has an electronic shade. All four seats are heated and cooled, with 12-way electrical adjustment and hot-stone-style massage in the front. Four-zone climate control, air purification, a fragrance diffuser and cabin mood settings are included, too.

There’s room for luggage as well as people. The powered tailgate opens onto more than 450 litres of boot space, increasing to 1,000 litres when the rear seats fold in a 50:50 split. Further storage sits beneath the floor, with space for emergency kit under the bonnet.

As for how it should drive, engineers went back to the classic V12-engined XJC for inspiration, to study its blend of performance and comfort. The Type 01 is Jaguar’s most powerful road car yet, with 0–62mph taking 3.2 seconds, but the team is particularly keen to talk about its ability to go from 62–112mph in four seconds. The intention is to have plenty of power left when you’re already moving, rather than concentrating only on getting away from the traffic lights.

Three electric motors provide all-wheel drive and 1,365Nm of torque, with one motor at the front and two at the back. Power delivery favours the rear in a 30:70 split, rising to as much as 87 per cent rearwards in Dynamic mode. Weight is shared evenly between front and rear, with double-wishbone front and integral-link rear suspension, variable air springs and twin-valve adaptive dampers. Pirelli has developed tyres specifically for the car.

When I went for a ride in the Type 01 with Jaguar’s chassis guru Matt Becker, I was surprised how nimble the car felt for something so large and so heavy, yet even on the roughest roads around JLR’s test track, it still had a good degree of comfort – just as that XJC did all those years ago.

For the less glamorous business of turning the Type 01 around, the back wheels steer by up to six degrees. That gives this large GT an 11,500mm wall-to-wall turning circle, comparable to a compact family car. Surrounding cameras work with the rear-view display for tighter manoeuvres; the assistance systems use ten external cameras, five radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors, with the front radar behind a heated Jaguar badge.

Drivers get Jaguar, Dynamic, Efficient and Ice & Snow modes, plus their own combination in Curated mode. There are three levels of energy-recovering braking, too, and a separate one-pedal setting.

Beyond the headline range figure, Jaguar is being bold enough to quote up to 320 miles at a steady 75mph, not that I’d be doing that, obviously. And Jaguar’s analysis of journeys by 920,000 JLR vehicles found 99.7 per cent covered no more than 303 miles.

At a suitable rapid charger, the Type 01 can take up to 350kW, with a 10–80 per cent charge taking around 22 minutes. Its 850-volt system can also charge the battery in two sections, allowing up to 250kW from a suitable 400-volt charger. Jaguar says US cars will have NACS compatibility for Tesla Superchargers, too.

One of the simpler ideas could save some parking shuffles: there are AC charging sockets on both sides, behind powered flaps, accepting up to 22kW. As you’d hope, there’s a suitably stylish Jaguar home wallbox available, while the new Jaguar app can cover scheduled charging, route planning and public charger availability, with participating public networks in the UK and Europe brought together on one monthly bill. The car is smart enough to prepare its battery temperature before a charging stop and recycles warmth from the motors to heat the cabin or battery.

Getting that large battery into such a low car helps explain why Jaguar developed entirely new underpinnings. Rather than stacking more cells beneath the seats and raising the roof, engineers put 32 of the 200 nickel-rich cells ahead of the passenger compartment, protected by a new front crash structure. Those extra cells contribute up to 70 miles of range and 148bhp, while gaps in the pack under the floor leave foot space for rear passengers.

Such was the no-compromise approach to the Type 01, Jaguar had to develop its own platform. The new Jaguar Electric Architecture is 73 per cent aluminium, with the battery helping form the brand’s stiffest body-and-battery structure yet – even the electrical junction box doubles as a brace for the front suspension.

The design team clearly set their engineering colleagues some tough tasks, but they’re still talking. And the end result is the purest of looks with some clever engineering solutions. For example, there’s just 133mm between the front wheelarch and bonnet, 100mm less than on the F-Type sports car, yet there’s still 22mm more room for the wheels to move up and down. It’s no surprise, then, that more than 360 patent applications came out of the development work.

The motors borrow control technology from Jaguar’s championship-winning Formula E programme, with gearing chosen for efficient high-speed cruising. When their performance isn’t needed, the rear motors can be switched off, contributing up to 18 miles of range.

Small changes to the body have helped, too. More than 7,000 wind-tunnel tests produced a drag figure of 0.23, Jaguar’s lowest yet, without any individual aerodynamic change to the shape exceeding 8mm. Tweaks around the front corners and sides added 12 miles of range; opening vanes across the nose contribute up to 27 miles. All wheel designs have lightweight aerodynamic inserts, and a three-stage rear spoiler works with a 15mm drop in ride height when cruising.

The clever aerodynamics even generate a small forward push from air pressure at the back of the car, equivalent to 4kg at around 87mph, helping reduce overall drag.

Buyers get eight paint finishes, including satin blue and copper, and three interior colour schemes combining wool-blend textiles with leather or an Ultrafabrics NeoGrain alternative. The launch Design Vision edition pairs satin silver paint with its own 23-inch wheels, brass-effect side finishers with the Jaguar leaper embossed in them, plus an Orchid White or Dusk Grey cabin. The Chromatic Moments collection will be limited to 60 cars worldwide, in French Ultramarine Blue or London Red.

The thinking behind the car predates the public arguments. Project Pantera began in 2021, following an explorative Project Renaissance, when three design teams produced a total of 18 models to explore a new direction. Glover says powertrain type was only eighth on potential buyers’ list of priorities, with just 20 per cent rejecting a car without a combustion engine. The Type 01 name links Jaguar’s new Type models with zero tailpipe emissions plus it’s the first car of a new generation.

Having been totally designed and engineered in Britain, the Type 01 will be built at Solihull alongside the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport – which might be a bit of a concern as neither of those models have the best reliability reputation. However, after all the debate about Jaguar’s appearance and ambitions, Glover has been clear about another priority for the car customers will take home. “We must get the quality right,” he said.

Whether all that adds up to a winning formula for Jaguar remains to be seen, while plenty of effort has gone into the way the car is sold at those Jaguar retailers that stayed with the brand over the recent fallow years.

Of course, one car doesn’t make a company, and the Type 01 will undoubtedly be followed, at least, by Type 02 and Type 03 – one of which is likely to be a more practical crossover type car and the other an SUV, of course. But the Type 01 lays down a marker for what comes next, and has to do the heavy lifting of repositioning this famous old British car brand into more esteemed, and more profitable circles.

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