The greatest discovery we can make in life is finding our authentic self and defining who we are, regardless of what the world thinks or says. It takes courage, because you can no longer hide behind a mask just to fit in. And just like Jaguar proved recently, you have to confidently wear your spots.
“The Originals” and “Copy Nothing” are powerful ideas, but they are brand language. This story is about what happens when you translate them into people. Because what Jaguar has done in recent years goes far beyond a massive redesign of their cars, they have essentially redefined who the modern-day Jaguar culture and community is intended for, while implementing the most dramatic rebrand of the century.
Since seeing the Type 00 in person a year ago, I was trying to figure out who Jaguar’s new generation is really for, and a pop-culture shorthand popped into my head. Growing up in a Jaguar-owning family, I had always filed the brand under Charlotte from Sex and the City: old money, understated elegance, tweed blazers, the British countryside. Then the Type 00 arrived, and the woman I pictured behind the wheel changed completely. She became Samantha: bold, larger than life, sophisticated in a modern way, a trailblazer who dresses for the room she intends to own.
I said it out loud to Brandon Baldassari, Jaguar’s North American brand director, during our recent Monterey Car Week interview, and he agreed on the spot. When I repeated it to members of Jaguar’s marketing and design teams in New York City last week, it landed again. For people who turn a philosophy into sheet metal and campaigns, a cultural reference can do what a brief sometimes cannot: put everyone in front of the same picture. In effect, it gave them a blueprint for their customer avatar.
A Psychographic, Not a Demographic
When I asked Jaguar’s designers whether they had pictured a specific driver while shaping the Type 01, I expected a persona: a name, an age, maybe even a celebrity. They gave me something more useful. Exterior design lead Alexey Andreev said the team deliberately did not design for an individual. They focused instead on capturing the spirit of the original, true Jaguars. “We knew that if we get the spirit right, then that should resonate with all kinds of different people,” he said.
Chief Materiality Designer Mary Crisp said there was no client profile at the outset either. “It really was like we’re looking at people thinking a different way,” she told me, and “Originals” was a word the team kept coming back to.
Carlee Hardaker, Jaguar’s communications and marketing director, put the same idea in business terms. Many companies, she said, define their target customer by demographics. Jaguar’s is different: “It’s a target customer that’s defined by an attitude and a mindset. Being fiercely independent and individually minded. When you have that shared mindset that brings you together, that’s when you really connect with a brand.”
Translate that mindset into people, and you get a cast of one-of-ones. In my head, the list includes Harry Styles, Cher, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Prince, Rod Stewart, Donatella Versace, Lewis Hamilton, and Paris Hilton: iconic, distinctive, authentically themselves, and no two alike. That’s the point. Being an Original has nothing to do with imitating a type. It is about being so definitively yourself that you write your own definition.
Being raised by parents who owned 5 Jaguars, were devout brand loyalists, and even dressed me in head-turning Jaguar apparel when I was a child, I can personally attest to this concept. Growing up in the conservative, understated world of Pebble Beach, California, I always felt like my family stood out. My father was from New York, and my mother grew up in Beverly Hills; they relocated from L.A. to the Monterey Peninsula before I was born. So it stands to reason why we were more flamboyant and glamorous than most Pebble Beach residents.
Decades later, I now understand why we truly embodied Jaguar’s perception of “The Originals”. Like many of Jaguar’s most famous customers (Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Princess Diana, and more), we were courageous enough to do things our way, even if that meant being different from the rest of the pack.
From my perspective, “The Originals” are the types of people who make a statement when they enter a room and who leave a lasting impression. They’re authentically themselves, truly unique, have larger-than-life personalities, and exude a fiercely independent streak. They don’t follow trends; if anything, they create them.
While the rest of the world tends to look for external cues and validation, “The Originals” trust their own instincts and do things their way, even if everyone else questions or criticizes it. And just like their target customer, Jaguar, as a brand and as a company, has done just that – fearlessly follow their own path, despite receiving strong reactions.
The Animal Behind the Machine
Over the past few weeks, I reflected on the symbolism of the jaguar, the animal, because it got me thinking about the entire transformation that the brand underwent in recent years – from polarizing responses to the Type 00 to the renewed enthusiasm that surged once the Type 01 finally made its global debut. As I discovered, long before it was a nameplate, the jaguar was a symbol of sovereign power, reinvention, and fearlessness.
The ancient Maya believed the sun became the Jaguar God of the Underworld each night, crossed the darkness, and rose again at dawn, and their kings were said to share in that rebirth. Only kings could wear the spotted pelt, as the animal was associated with high status. In Mesoamerican myth, a jaguar thrown into sacred fire came back to life spotted and singed, transformed rather than destroyed. The Aztecs called the animal ocelotl, the bravest of beasts, and named an elite warrior society after it. Across all these cultures, the animal (much like the company) has symbolized a type of power that few animals possess: the ability to transform, reinvent itself, and emerge from the fire stronger and fiercer than ever. And in many ways, I think we just witnessed Jaguar do just that.
Jaguar didn’t name its cars for that mythology, but I can’t help but see the similarities. The company’s advertising agency suggested the name in the 1930s, and founder Sir William Lyons was initially skeptical. But when we read through that history, the Type 01 starts to look like a set of parallels, and Jaguar’s own numbers make them hard to ignore.
- Every jaguar’s spot pattern is unique, as distinctive as a human fingerprint, and researchers identify individual cats by it. Jaguar’s Chromatic Moments collection, with two exclusive paints, is limited to 60 cars worldwide, and a fifth “Curated” drive mode lets each driver tune the car’s character.
- Pound for pound, the jaguar has the strongest bite of any big cat. The Type 01’s tri-motor system makes up to 1,015 hp and 1,007 lb-ft of torque, and Jaguar says it reaches 60 mph in about 3.1 seconds. More telling is the restraint: Jaguar says the car uses only about two percent of its power at a steady 60 mph.
- The animal is famous for its ambush. The Type 01 hides its sophistication until needed: rear lights that disappear when off, a spoiler that deploys only when required, active front vanes, and concealed cupholders.
- A reflection of light and shadow. Mary Crisp said the car’s signature Visionary Silver Satin was inspired by chiaroscuro, the painting technique whose name translates from Italian as light and shadow. On the car’s sharpest surfaces, she said, the paint “moves from a cool silver to a warm silver.”
- Unlike most cats, jaguars are strong swimmers. Jaguar says the Type 01’s battery pack was immersed 20 times in ice-cold water at about three feet deep.
The proportions do the talking too. The Type 01 is 208 inches long and just 55 inches tall, on 23-inch wheels, with a solid, glassless tailgate. Alexey Andreev said the bonnet is “deliberately quite flat” to emphasize its length. Range is up to 400 miles, and the 850-volt system adds about 200 miles in as little as 13 minutes. Jaguar says pricing is expected to start at $130,500, with orders opening in early 2027.
The Global Debut Night in New York City
Jaguar chose New York City for the Type 01’s global unveiling, and the city was part of the show. Digital takeovers lit up Times Square, DUMBO, and the Lower East Side, and then the car itself arrived at STORIED, a creative venue in West Chelsea (and former home and studio to famed photographer Annie Leibovitz), for a private, invite-only party. Guests flew in from around the world, including legendary sports champions, fashion-forward celebrities, entertainers, artists, top executives, and more.
Carlee Hardaker said the team never wanted a conventional launch. “We didn’t want to do a corporate presentation and pull a silk off the car,” she told the room, describing New York as a city of high culture, artistry, and creativity.
The evening’s headline moment was Florence Pugh’s introduction as the brand’s first ambassador of its new era, and she spoke fondly about her early experiences in her grandfather’s Jaguar. British singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro, who had won Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards just over a week earlier, performed an intimate set that captivated the guests. Hardaker said the choice reflected Jaguar’s aim of “championing originality” and giving emerging British talent a stage. Chef Roze Traoré designed the menu and entertained guests with his flavorful creations that were as beautiful as they were tasty.
Instead of a spec-sheet walkthrough, Jaguar staged three objects that told the car’s story: the designers’ original opening line, cast in aluminum and hung overhead; the “Impossible Panel,” the sharply creased rear body panel engineers spent more than 1,500 hours learning to press; and tire marks cut from a test track.
Seeing the car in person was a different experience from seeing it in photos, and Hardaker knows it. “This car has been so incredibly hard to photograph and film and make it look real,” she said. “It looks a little bit out of this world, very much like the E-Type did at the Geneva Motor Show. It looks like something from another planet.”
The guest list spanned sports, racing, fashion, entertainment, and business. Major League Baseball legend Roger Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young winner, was there, as were Knicks star basketball player Karl-Anthony Towns, a newly crowned NBA champion, and his wife, model-entrepreneur Jordyn Woods.
Actor and model Kevin Lutolf, a Switzerland-based luxury-lifestyle and menswear influencer with a global following of over 2M fans, told me he found the car very stylish.
The racing world was represented by Jaguar TCS Racing team principal Ian James and driver António Félix da Costa, the 2019/20 Formula E champion, whose team clinched the 2025/26 Teams’ World Championship in London in August.
Beyond the celebrities and sports legends, the crowd attracted entrepreneurs and top executives, including David Nosal of NGS Global, Visteon CEO Sachin Lawande, and Chase Auto CEO Leslie Wims Morris. In my conversations with several guests that evening, some of the strongest reactions came from people outside the traditional car crowd.
Two Guests, Two Reactions
Two guests I spoke with at the debut, a celebrated sports figure and a Bay Area-based executive, were enthusiastic about the evening and responded favorably to the car. They represent two different kinds of people the debut drew.
The Executive: David Nosal
David Nosal is chairman of NGS Global and managing partner of its Americas arm. NGS Global is a leadership advisory and executive search firm that reports to have dozens of offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. Nosal leads searches for boards and CEOs, work that keeps him in regular contact with Silicon Valley and Bay Area founders and tech titans. He arrived at the party in a peach blazer, reflecting the very aesthetic that you’d expect from “The Originals”.
Nosal was enthusiastic about the Type 01 and said he likes the idea of arriving at client meetings in one, because first impressions last. His own first impression of the car: “Sleek, bold, independent and fun!”
The Sports Champion: Roger Clemens
Roger “Rocket” Clemens, who proudly refers to himself as a Leo Sun, wore a black plaid silk suit and attracted avid baseball fans throughout the night. As I came to learn, he’s one of the most accomplished pitchers in all of history. Over the course of his 24-year career with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros, he won 354 games, seven Cy Young Awards, the 1986 American League MVP, and two World Series titles with the Yankees. When I asked what his most fulfilling accomplishment has been to date, he said his foundation, established in 1992, which supports at-risk and underprivileged children.
At the event, Clemens told me that if the Type 01 came in matte black, he would roll out of there in it right then and head to Ray’s Pizza. After the reveal, he exclaimed: “Had a fantastic time in NYC at the reveal of the Jaguar Type 01! Thanks to Sonic Automotive and my guys at EchoPark for the invite. This may be a ‘Game Changer’ for Jaguar!”
While both gentlemen come from distinctly different careers, in many ways each of them reflects the type of modern-day Jaguar customer avatar that I mentally associate with “The Originals” – brave, bold leaders who courageously stand out from the crowd.
Inside the Studio: A Conversation With the Designers
Earlier on debut day, I sat down privately with Chief Materiality Designer Mary Crisp and Exterior Design Lead Alexey Andreev. Seeing the Type 01 in person, I was struck by its two-dimensional, almost comic-book quality, amplified by the satin paint and the way light moves across the sculpted surfaces. It reminded me of the 1980s Take On Me video. I wanted to know how a team handles that much reinvention, personally and professionally.
CLP: This project is a transformation for the company, but it’s a personal one too. How has it challenged you, and how have you grown as designers? What were the stress points, and how did you push through?
MC: It’s been a long journey. It started at the end of 2020. The concept phase was fairly quick: within three or four months we had the vision, so we knew where we were heading, exterior and interior. Since then we’ve worked with engineering teams inside JLR and externally for years, but the vision has always remained the same. The vision we came up with in 2021 is something the whole company got behind. It’s been quite unique that the engineers wanted this as much as the design team did. Everyone knew it was time for the reinvention of Jaguar, and that we were doing it together. Five years is a long time, so of course there have been ups and downs, but we’re all really proud to stand behind it. Type 00, the concept car we showed two years ago to introduce the new design language, is incredibly close to what we’ve built. It’s been career-defining. You don’t get a project like this every day.
AA: For me, it taught me the importance of big-picture thinking. It’s easy, especially today, to get caught up in details. This project taught me to step back, look at the whole car, and ask what we’re trying to achieve. In this case, the big-picture goal is proportion. That’s a very Jaguar thing. Everything stems from it: the wheels, the bonnet, the emphasis on width at the front. At the rear, there’s no glass, because we want your eye to glide across the whole body color with nothing to interrupt it, so you can appreciate how much lower the cabin is than the body and how wide the shoulders are. Those are single decisions you make as you design, and they all link back to the big picture.
CLP: Brandon Baldassari told me the Range Rover studio won the internal bake-off, and that the brief said not to be constrained by Jaguar’s past. What did that freedom feel like, and where did you quietly honor the heritage anyway?
AA: It’s quite scary at first when you start with that blank sheet of paper. You don’t know what the car will look like at the end, which is really interesting. So we wrote down some words. One was “presence.” It had to have a strong proportion. It had to be unique. And it had to be modern, and a modern object should give you a sense that maybe you’ve never seen something like it before. A blank sheet is a good place to start because you’re not thinking about the designs we were doing ten years ago. You can start fresh and think about fundamentals.
CLP: Did it start with the single continuous line?
AA: Ultimately, it started with the vision model. At the end of that three- to four-month competition, we presented 18 models, and one of them was the vision model you pretty much see today, apart from mirrors, a license plate, and tiny adjustments. That became our original silhouette, and we said we wouldn’t compromise on it. That’s been powerful, because we had a clear goal, in the form of a model, of where we needed to end up. Whenever we were developing something, we could look back and ask, “Does this fulfill our uncompromised goal?”
CLP: The interior has unexpected moments of color and artisanal textiles that look nothing like previous Jaguars. How did material selection challenge you?
MC: We started with color, really, before we got into which materials go where. As the exterior and interior form language emerged, we knew we needed a balance: statement colors and materials, and others that bring tonality and depth. A phrase the team always uses is that luxury doesn’t always mean [more] materials. We wanted every material to play a role, to be there for a reason, and we didn’t want decoration for decoration’s sake. So we have really clean door panels and a really clean central spine, and we looked for materials that could create these sculptural, simple surfaces. The Ultrafabrics material lets us wrap large areas in one piece without splitting them with seams. With the textile, we wanted warmth. The seat design was inspired by famous pieces of furniture, and the materials reflect people’s homes.
CLP: That’s exactly what I saw. My first thought was that it looks like a living room. Most modern cars feel cold, austere, and too minimalist. How did you make it feel cozy?
MC: It comes down to the textures and the mix of materials. You don’t need to add more and more. You just need to be really selective. Car interiors tend to use leather – only leather, wrapped around every surface – and then you don’t get depth. Leather is a beautiful material, but in my view you need to combine it with other things. It has to be curated.
CLP: What has been the most rewarding part of this project for each of you?
MC: It’s really been a career highlight. I’ve worked in automotive for a long time and never on a project like this. We’ve reached the end; we’re launching the production car, and the materials we envisaged right from the start are in it. The engineers came along with us, and we had challenges and conversations along the way, but the material mix looks beautiful.
AA: Today is the biggest highlight. I’m waiting for the moment the embargo lifts, so I can go up to the car, take a photo, and send it to my fiancé. I haven’t been able to show it. Over those years, you stay late, your loved ones support you, but when they ask what you’re working on, you can only say “the new Jaguar” so many times.
The Marketing Playbook: Platform First, Then Product
Carlee Hardaker, Jaguar’s communications and marketing director, spoke with me and a small group of journalists on debut day. Her view of the last two years is refreshingly candid. “We ultimately needed a stage,” she said. “No one was talking about Jaguar for 2024, and we could have launched any car, and people probably wouldn’t have even noticed us. So we absolutely had to do something different and give ourselves a platform.” Now, she said, “we have the platform, and now we have the product.” The difference between Miami and New York, as she put it: “What we did in Miami was very Miami. We had a concept car in a concept world. We’ve now got a real car in a real world.”
Personally, she said, the moment is rare. “You don’t often get this opportunity in your career to be at such a pivotal point in a brand.” She also said Jaguar is deliberately closing the gap between its creators and its customers. “We’re sort of removing that bridge and gap between the creators and the customer,” she said, noting that designers and executives were circulating among guests that evening.
On why art, fashion, and innovation are Jaguar’s cultural territory, Hardaker pointed to a modern scarcity. “Originality is getting harder and harder to find with algorithms, with AI,” she said. “You watch something on Netflix, you watch a true crime documentary, and all you’re served up is the same.” The brand’s answer is to support people who champion originality in those worlds.
Jaguar also tested the car before launch. “We’ve put this car through clinics. We’ve spoken to over 2,000 people across five different markets,” Hardaker said. Where most clinics produce a cluster of middling scores, she said, this car earned “more 10s than we’ve ever had before. We also got more ones, and for us that was a real positive.”
The logic: “We’re not making a car that’s okay, that suits everybody but really doesn’t suit anybody.” She compared the reaction to Lamborghini’s, a car some people would give up a limb for, and others wouldn’t take as a gift: “That irrational desire.” She also pointed to the 1961 Geneva debut of the E-type, a car she said “looked like something from another planet,” and which drew both scorn and Enzo Ferrari’s praise.
Scarcity is part of the design. “The volume of this is relatively low to start with, and it’s very unlikely that you’re going to stop at a stoplight, and there’s going to be another Type 01 opposite you,” she said. She doesn’t see the car replacing others in a garage. Instead, she described it as an alter ego, like a Harley-Davidson owned by someone who wears a suit all week: “It’s a reflection of a personality, but it’s not always your personality the whole time.”
The practical details: buyers will configure their cars online, an order bank will set delivery priority, and first deliveries begin around the middle of next year. Chromatic Moments, with its 60 cars in two exclusive paints, is Jaguar’s first step into bespoke options, with more to come. “The car’s quite highly spec’d up as standard,” Hardaker said, “and then starting to add that bespoke, which we know is very important for our customers.”
Culture Beyond the Showroom
Jaguar’s cultural push doesn’t end at the launch party. Days after the New York debut, I learned that the brand opened a two-floor flagship in London’s Knightsbridge that it calls “the new home of modern luxury in London.” For a showroom, it has surprisingly few cars. Instead, a Design Vault turns commissioning a Jaguar into a cinematic, digitally personalized experience; an immersive installation traces the evolution of the Leaper emblem, and Café Eighty-One, a permanent café with a menu by Michelin-starred chef Michael O’Hare, is open to the public whether or not you’re shopping for a car. Exhibitions, artist residencies, talks, and workshops are planned alongside private tastings. The message to enthusiasts and future owners alike is that Jaguar wants you in its world even before you’re ready to buy.
Calling the Originals Home
Heritage doesn’t require repetition or staying stuck in the past. You can honor your history and remember where you came from without continuing to live there. The strongest Originals carry their history with them, while retaining the courage to evolve beyond it.
During our interview at Monterey Car Week, Brand Director Brandon Baldassari surprised me by describing the Jaguar Type 01’s front end as “a little bit gangster,” and I couldn’t agree more.
In that light, it only seems fitting to close with the Original Gangsta himself. Snoop Dogg, speaking at a commencement, put it this way:
“Never forget where you came from… Stay hungry, keep that fire in your soul, and stay true. Always be real with yourself and the world, because the world don’t need no more copies; it need originals.”
Maybe Jaguar isn’t searching for a new customer after all. Maybe it’s finally calling its Originals home.
[Travel, accommodations, and media access c/o Jaguar. Image credits: Christina-Lauren Pollack for Inspirations & Celebrations, Getty Images and Jaguar. All opinions are my own.]