Tri-Apex Nodes. Impossible panels. Prismatic battery cells. The luxury Gap. Travertine stone and brass decor. If you think there’s a lot to relish in the way the Jaguar Type 01 looks, the feast of discovery only continues when you delve beneath its dramatic skin. This is a car that serves revolution not only of look and feel, but of engineering too. There are 565 patent applications contained within this car’s more than five metre length, a rich buffet of intriguing features and just for extra jeopardy, the very future of the Jaguar marque rests on its huge bonnet.
So, this is it. The most intriguing new car of 2026, from a manufacturer that almost uniquely in automobile history, has gone off sale for almost two years pending a total marque relaunch. This, too, is the physical realisation of a brand reorientation that famously caused a social media ruckus worthy of a royal scandal. It seemed mighty damaging at the time. But, Jaguar hasn’t garnered this much air time since it launched the E-Type in 1961. Whatever your view of a pink concept car and those androgynous creatures drifting through Jaguar’s promo film, you will certainly be aware that this company is undergoing a metamorphosis.
The car itself, then. So different is it, that first sightings on the road may prompt near-misses. Or at the very least, hundreds of double-take head swivellings. Jaguar’s publicists promised us a copy of nothing with this car, and the freshly revealed, production-ready Type 01 is certainly that. It looks like no other car apart from the concept upon which it is based, whose form and detail it mirrors to a remarkable degree. The emergence of an extra pair of doors is really the only significant difference between the two, from the outside at least.
