Over the years I’ve made a lot of promises and signed a lot of sheets to provide car manufacturers with the necessary reassurances that I’d not spill the beans about what I was about to be shown or told before the appointed hour. Occasionally I’ve been asked to hand over my phone. But I’d never been searched before. I have now. That’s how seriously Jaguar was taking security the day a few weeks back when I went to see the Type 00.
It is not, however, the car upon which the future of the brand depends – we’ll see that around a year from now – but a ‘mere’ concept, yet one that, thanks to a certain promotional video, is being launched this week at Miami Art Fair in a storm of publicity unlike that of any car, concept or otherwise, I can recall.
Some of course will be reading these words and saying, ‘yeah, right, a shitstorm’ but I am not so sure. I am entirely certain that not in Jaguar MD Rawdon Glover’s wildest imaginings was the reaction to the video in any way anticipated but nor, I understand, are he and his team anything other than quietly delighted that the eyes of the world will be clamped upon the car you see before you in numbers and with a level of intensity undreamt of until now.
