\u201cA new era,\u201d the heritage carmaker calls it, and it\u2019s not wrong. But having test-driven the era (just with my eyes and imagination, rather than the car itself), I would like to return it to the showroom and choose pretty much any other era.<\/p>\n
Rawdon Glover, Jaguar\u2019s MD, speaks during the big reveal in New York. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images for Jaguar Land Rover<\/p>\n
Its gigantic size alone makes it look as if it wants to wage war on the future. The whole point of the electrification revolution in motoring was that we could wean ourselves off energy profligacy and on to elegant sufficiency.<\/p>\n
If you counteract all that with a car too wide (2 metres) and too long (5.2 metres) to fit into any UK car parking space, whatever advances you\u2019ve made with aerodynamics cannot overcome the fact that you are hulking around something that looks more like a tank than a car, the atmospherics underscored by the glassless tailgate and 23-inch wheels.<\/p>\n
To unpack that a bit, you can\u2019t see into the back at all, the preference for all the other glass is blackout, and the wheels on a Toyota Hilux, the Chad warlord\u2019s vehicle of choice, are between 16 and 18 inches.<\/p>\n
All the aluminium in the world (73%<\/a> of the car\u2019s makeup) can\u2019t put a dent in the 2.5-plus-tonne weight, and they\u2019ve bust their own balls to reduce the drag coefficient only to arrive at one (0.23) easily bested by any average electric saloon<\/a> (0.21).<\/p>\n The look it\u2019s going for, according to the literature, is \u201cmonolithic\u201d, but it\u2019s a thin line, isn\u2019t it, between an immutable colossus and a menace, so attempts have clearly been made in the design to introduce a note of friendliness.<\/p>\n The Type 01\u2019s interior. Photograph: Jaguar Land Rover PR<\/p>\n It comes in peace, the Jaguar 01 GT; you can tell by the rounded nose, and the body design creating the visual illusion of a front-to-back taper. If it were in a cartoon, it would be driven by the heroes not the villains, but they\u2019d be heroes with no domestic life who knew how to handle themselves. They wouldn\u2019t be The Incredibles.<\/p>\n Traditionally, the Jaguar was driven by a guy in his 50s, wanting to signal to the world that he could afford a car that cost roughly half his salary. That\u2019s what the company is now trying to steer away from, preferring buyers who are \u201crich, urban, very design literate, very technology literate\u201d, according to Rawdon Glover, Jaguar\u2019s MD.<\/p>\n
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