It was the Paris Auto Show 2010. We watched the Jaguar C-X75 rise out of the turntable from under a stretched cover. Anticipation was in the air. We were excited knowing what was to appear, the crowd mystified by this form stretching the cover from below, where only a minute before there had been just a stand. The cover snapped and withdrew immediately to expose the C-X75. An audible gasp of ‘wow’ could be heard.
We had ‘pre-launched’ the car to a few select guests the evening before at the Musée Rodin in Paris, a most apt place for our work of art, I thought. But this was the real window to the world and what made it all many times more exciting was that, to that waiting world, the car would be a complete surprise. We had not created any early material to be leaked, nor indeed any indication of its existence before we brought it to the city. It was a thrilling scenario but we felt confident. Julian Thomson, the team and I knew this car was perfect in so many ways. It was ours and a true Jaguar. As I mentioned in part one, this was our manifesto moment. Follow this template for the brand, and we couldn’t go wrong!
The car immediately outshone anything else on the JLR stand. The technology we implied, using two tiny turbine Bladon jets to charge the batteries, was not missed by the audience. ‘So, this was an electric supercar? Jaguar going electric?’ This was 2010, by the way, and laid the path of confidence for I-Pace and the, sadly, unseen electric XJ.
