“We don’t anticipate this car being for everyone,” Rawdon Glover, the Managing Director of Jaguar, said at the unveiling of the Jaguar Type 01. The car is immensely important for the brand, necessitating a secretive short trip to JLR’s Gaydon, UK campus for an early preview. It’s an incredibly controversial project, too. Jaguar killed off its entire lineup for this, rebooting the brand with a new logo and new look. The new design and direction were met with bashing by conservative pundits, landing Jaguar in the midst of yet another culture war.

Thankfully, the haters haven’t prevailed, because the Jaguar Type 01 is such a stunning piece of metal.

Jaguar’s tagline for both the brand and the car is “Copy Nothing,” and I have to agree—the Type 01 doesn’t look like much else on the road. The proportions are largely identical to what we’ve seen from the original hot pink and ice blue concepts shown off at the 2024 Miami Art Basel. This means the car is exceptionally cab-rearward, with extremely large wheels and tiny windows; it’s almost the antithesis of cars like the Lucid Air. The side surfacing is strangely blank, but elegant; it's remarkably clean and functional, as if the Bauhaus school of design decided to resurrect itself and make a modern electric car.

The front fascia is blank, but once again, subtly more complex than your initial impressions. Since it's an electric car, there’s no need for a huge grille to cool an engine, yet the relief surfaces in the closed-off front add drama to such a strikingly blank front end.

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