June 2026 | Issue 791 | Page(s) 6 | Gaynor Cauter
By now, most of you will have heard the news that the long-awaited new Jaguar will be called… Type 01. We will overlook the Facebook community jokes about naming a car after the worst sort of diabetes and concentrate on the message Jaguar is hoping to get across to its brand faithfuls and that is one of ‘innovation, technology and performance’.
To quote Jaguar MD Rawdon Glover, who was keen to stress when I interviewed him last year, that Jaguar was ‘a brand with heritage, not a heritage brand’: “We have reimagined Jaguar for a new era, with inspiration from what has gone before.
“Our engineers have achieved this with a vehicle that looks and drives like no other electric car, yet reflects its unique provenance. The Type 01 name is part of 6 Jaguar Driver June 2026 that story – for me, the zero signifies a complete brand reset, and the ‘1’, our car for a new chapter… a ‘one of a kind’.”
According to Jaguar, the thinking behind the new name – and the ‘0’ in particular – is electric propulsion and zero tailpipe emissions, while the use of the word ‘Type’ is a hark back to the days when C-Types were winning at Le Mans. They also cite the E-Type and, more recently, the F-Type – a G-Type obviously didn’t fit the bill.
Alongside the release of the new name comes the big reveal in Monaco, to coincide with the latest round of Formula E – a double-header on the streets of Monte Carlo (see next month’s Trackside). I say ‘reveal’, although the car has not been completely undressed because it still wears some camouflage – pinky-red this time – but it’s definitely skimpier and gives us another teaser as to what the finished item will look like.
Speaking to Santino Pietrosanti at the JDC’s AGM in April, the Jaguar Director told me that the public unveiling will definitely be before Christmas and December is the current target. Hopefully, Jaguar will stick to that – delays in launches have become a JLR speciality and not just for its luxury saloons, as Range Rover’s PR people know only too well.
Gaynor Cauter
1 It’s official – the name of Jaguar’s new EV GT will be… Type 01
2 The new car, in its skimpy pinky-red clothing, patrolling the hills above Monaco
3 Look past the jazzy wallpaper design and you get a better idea of what’s underneath…
4 It still looks remarkably like the Type 00 concept from some angles
PHOTO: JLR
