Let’s get the looks out of the way first. Its proportions are less exaggerated than the concept, there are some more fussy details, and of course the Type 01 has production car bits like real side mirrors and windshield wipers, but it’s really damn close to the show car — at least more so than most people expected. When the Type 00 was first revealed I made a strong argument that it has total shades of the E-type and other classic Jags, and I think what I said applies to the Type 01 as well. Yes, there’s a lot of straight, hard lines, but the Type 01 is plenty curvy, too, and has plenty of details and elements that remind me of past Jaguars. As my colleague Brad pointed out, all the best Jaguars have looked like spaceships.
Jaguar
The Type 01’s available 23-inch wheels are the same size as the concept’s, and that should give you an idea of just how big this thing is. Jaguar says it’s 208 inches long and 55 inches tall, 9 inches longer and an inch lower than a Porsche Panamera, and it’s got a total chop-top greenhouse with a dramatic roofline. It has a drag coefficient of 0.23 cD according to the automaker, with the car having gone through over 7,000 wind tunnel tests. A three-stage spoiler automatically deploys to reduce drag or increase downforce, and the car lowers by over half an inch at highway speeds.
Jaguar didn’t say exactly how long the Type 01’s wheelbase is, but the dash-to-axle ratio (Jag calls it a “luxury gap” but if you’re a VWVortexer you know it as “prestige gap”) is 35 inches long, making up 17% of the car’s length. What Jaguar calls the Fender Ingot is a piece of trim stretching that distance, the only place on the car with the old Leaper emblem. 21-inch wheels are standard, which I imagine will not look nearly as good as the 23s.
Jaguar
Up front there are the thinnest headlights ever fitted to a Jag, stuffing 17,000 pixels with cornering and projection tech into just 3.3 inches of height. It doesn’t have a grille, instead a ribbed panel with the new Jaguar wordmark, but the angular lower bumper does have active cooling vanes. Yeah, it’s a totally new and strange sort of face for Jaguar, but I do think it looks feline. The Type 01 retains the concept’s awesome hood strakes at the base of the windshield, which follow through to the top of the dashboard.
Like on the concept there’s no rear window, with the Type 01 instead using a camera mounted in the roof shark fin. The hatchback panel has a thin piece of trim that houses the CHMSL, with the Jaguar name stamped on it. The Type 01’s most outrageous design feature is probably the entirety of the rear end, which has over a dozen strakes that Jaguar says will be “a key visual graphic” for the brand. A pair of full-width taillights are hidden between the strakes, illuminating when needed. The company says these went through 4,000 hours of engineering development.