Jaguar Type 00 First Look: Starting From Scratch in Every Single Way

• The Jaguar Type 00 is the brand's new super GT concept and it's fully electric.
• It represents an entirely fresh start for the brand.
• It's bound to split opinion, but at least it's unique.

Plenty of jokes, memes and criticisms were thrown Jaguar’s way when it announced its controversial rebrand a few weeks ago, and perhaps rightly so. But whatever your thoughts, it worked: This is the most anyone has talked about the dormant British brand in, well, maybe ever. Now we have a car to go with the new logos, monograms and typefaces. Meet the Jaguar Type 00.

The Type 00 concept previews an all-new fully electric GT that rides on a new platform unique to Jaguar. Design-wise it is a thoroughly modern take on the boat-tail-style cars that were popular in the 1930s. The "Type" name has been used by Jaguar plenty of times in the past — it’s a moniker crucial to the brand — but the double zero was chosen to hammer home just how serious Jaguar is about its start-from-scratch rebrand. 

What’s worth keeping in mind when looking at the Type 00 is that it’s just a concept. Whatever Jaguar ends up building, it won’t look exactly like this, but we’d be surprised if it didn’t end up being darn close. The exterior is striking (and bound to split opinion) to say the least. Minimalist design is something Jaguar has been known for — the original E-Type was a simple shape, and so is this. If anything, the lack of any real detail means the Type 00 lacks identity, but that's mostly because we have little to compare it to. Hopefully, as Jaguar builds out its new chapter, that identity will become more clear. 

In person, the Type 00 is massive, much bigger than a Bentley Continental GT. The hood runs for what seems like an age, and the long wheelbase, huge wheels and sloping roofline help make it look like it's moving while it's stationary. It's also a very upright car, with a flat front and rear fascia and a strong shoulder line that runs from the front fender to the rear haunch. There are no mirrors or visible charge ports. Instead, cameras pop out of the front flanks of the car for use when needed — we doubt these will make it to the production car — as do the charge ports. (You can poke through the photo gallery below to see the pop out camera in action.) As for numbers like horsepower and charging speeds, there are none, but Jaguar is targeting 430 miles of EPA-estimated range with the eventual production version. The Type 00 quite clearly shares nothing with the Jags that have come before it, and its debut is meant to be almost entirely about design. The hard figures and validated range number(s) will come later when a production version gets closer to reality.

The interior is equally as fresh. Once you open up the butterfly-style doors, you'll notice there's no wood; instead, the Type 00's occupants are treated to a cabin whose mood is tailored to suit which totem they select. The Brass, Travertine or Alabaster totems stow away in a hidden compartment, but when one of them is placed in the center console, the whole cabin transforms to suit the vibe of the selected material through the ambient lighting, soundscape and screen graphics. The screens themselves fold away into the dashboard, and when they're gone just a small screen that sits near where the dash meets the windshield lights up to show key driving info. That's certainly something we can't remember seeing in a concept before. 

The obvious lack of a link to anything Jaguar has done before might be what ruffles the most feathers, but Jaguar has always been the least conservative of the British marques. At this point in its history, it has the advantage of being the smallest and the most nimble as well. This concept clearly says Jaguar is leaving the history lessons to Bentley and Rolls-Royce because it has far-flung and far weirder places to explore.

Exuberant, modernist and compelling are the words Jaguar chose to describe where it's trying to take itself. Fans of the brand would rightly argue that when Ian Callum took over in the early 2000s Jag had already been doing just that. The most recent XJ, F-Type and scintillating SVR cars were plenty modern and compelling for their day. The problem came with time; as its cars started to age, so did the modern perception that Jag’s early aughts renaissance brought. 

That’s perhaps the biggest wrong the Type 00 and the "new Jaguar" has to right. Jaguar has to be new and stay that way or this big-time redux might never even get the chance to find its footing.