Type approval: the new Jaguar has a name

The Ti consensus is that the name is… fine. Perhaps a bit underwhelming, says Gez Medinger. Dan Prosser agrees, ‘but Jag has never done romantic names, so maybe it’s on brand’. Arguably, it’s more fitting than the other mooted option, XJ. Pick that and you bet there’d have been mutiny from those who care little for Jaguar’s brave new era.

There’s also a bit more logic going into the name than the first Jaguar road car ‘type’, the C-Type. Officially, that was the XK120-C, where ‘C’ stood for ‘competition’. It was the press and public who christened it C-Type (A-Type and B-Type were cylinder heads, not cars). Aided by a Le Mans win, the name stuck, and Jaguar followed it up with D-Type, E-Type, S-Type and, much later, the F-Type (dare we mention the X-Type? Well, Jaguar’s hardly going to).

What else have we learnt from Jaguar’s latest update? That prototypes will appear at the Monaco E-Prix this weekend, taking to the track in a ‘distinctive camouflage livery’. And that the car will be fully revealed ‘later in 2026’. That’s why we’re only getting a teaser of the logo – which is going to appear on the so-called ‘strikethrough motif’ where the bonnet meets the windscreen.

Pretty discreet, in other words – again, a bit like the stickers you get on the front doors of a Polestar. That controversial new Jaguar script will do the heavy lifting front and rear. Not that you’re likely to mistake this dramatically-proportioned car for anything else on the road.

‘We have reimagined Jaguar for a new era, with inspiration from what has gone before,’ said Glover. ‘The Type 01 name is part of that story – for me, the zero also signifies a complete brand reset, and the ‘1’, our first car for a new chapter, a ‘“one of a kind”.’

At least until Jaguar Type 02 arrives; but there’s a lot riding on this one being a success before we get that far.