The week of November 18, 2024: Jaguar’s “Drunken Dream,” the debt, antitrust, labor, and more.
The week of November 18, 2024: Jaguar’s “Drunken Dream,” the debt, antitrust, labor, and more.
Some rebrandings of Jaguar, the storied British automaker, have been less controversial than others. The company’s origins can be traced back to the Swallow Sidecar Company, which diversified into autos, eventually becoming SS cars in 1934. Before production resumed after its wartime interruption, the company was renamed Jaguar Cars. “Unlike S.S.,” explained the chairman, “the name Jaguar [was] distinctive and [could] not be connected or confused with any similar foreign name.”
This was not controversial. The same could not be said of a teaser on X promoting Jaguar’s latest rebranding, which I discussed here and here. It has now been viewed 163 million times and attracted 126,000 comments.
That could be a good sign. Not this time.
Bud Light was just a watery beer, but Jaguar, well. In its heyday, and, as I observed, for a long time afterward it was:
[A] car for the rich, the cool, and the possibly criminal. Legendary British entrepreneur Arthur Daley drove a Jag, and so did the great Inspector Morse, George Harrison, and two James Bonds. Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) in The Long Good Friday drove Jaguars (and was driven in one, not always happily). A friend of mine has a magnificent vintage racing-green Jag, enriching the mechanics of New York State. An E-type was the car that small British boys of my generation thought was about as cool as it got. An E-type was Austin Powers’s Shaguar.
Steve McQueen owned one of the very few Jaguar XKSS’s, “the Green Rat,” a car with a chassis once destined for motor racing. He liked to drive the Rat at high speeds late at night in the Santa Monica Hills. According to legend, the Los Angeles Police Department’s police chief offered a steak dinner to any cop who could catch and ticket McQueen. Naturally (legends have rules), he was never caught.
Jaguar was that sort of car.
It was the marque that made up half the phrase “gin and Jag,” British slang (not necessarily complimentary) for the lifestyle of a slice of the upper middle class. In its less sporty variety, it was the CEO’s car, the cabinet minister’s car, and the Queen’s car. She even ensured that her hearse was a customized Jag.
Jaguar has had several owners over the years (it is now owned by India’s Tata Motors), even surviving a stint at British Leyland, the Bates Motel of car manufacturing. Sadly, the cars have lost much of their distinctiveness over the years. The hood’s leaping jaguar was culled by safety regulations, but, helped by elegant and well-crafted advertising, some of the old mystique survived, as did the “growler” badge. But sales declined as Jaguar battled in the highly competitive premium space, rather than safer, higher-priced altitudes.
In October 2024, Car and Driver reported that Jaguar was (temporarily) shutting down production, after running things down for a while:
It dropped its flagship XJ sedan at the end of the 2019 model year. In 2021, Jaguar torched a nine-figure investment when it scuttled an all-electric replacement that was meant to launch around 2022 and share Range Rover’s MLA platform.
The exciting electric vehicle (EV) economy strikes again.
Earlier this year, the CEO of JLR (the company that manufactures both Jaguar and Land Rover) confirmed that:
XE and XF sedans, E-Pace and electric I-Pace crossovers, and the F-type sports car have ended production or would do so by year’s end… “None of those are vehicles on which we made any money.”
That leaves only the F-Pace SUV, the brand’s bestseller. But production of that model will wind down at year’s end too. Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover recently told Britain’s Autocar that Jaguar “will no longer be on sale for new vehicles” in European markets by the end of 2024, with the U.K. to follow early next year. Leftovers from 2024—and, gulp, before—will be the sole fare at U.S. dealers for 2025.
Jaguar’s management now wants to make a virtue out of the necessity created by its small size, pushing its cars a long way upmarket into an extremely expensive niche. The new line-up is going to be an all-electric trio, a SUV, a limo-sized sedan, and a GT. The GT will be the first across the starting line, but it won’t be on sale until 2026. The new cars may cost twice as much as their predecessors.
The company is convinced that an-all electric bet makes sense. The EV market will, it believes, have improved by 2026. The future is electric!
Ian Leslie, writing in the Ruffian:
For at least a year, Jaguar will exist as pure brand, a concept rather than a car company. There will be prototypes, and there will be ads, but no cars. They’re doing a launch campaign without anything to launch. There must be some reason for this that makes sense internally but from here it seems…odd…
Not least because demand for high-end EV cars has so far been weak. Luxury carmakers like Porsche and Audi are extending the lifespan of petrol-powered models or ramping up hybrid production. But Jaguar believes that its EVs, once they emerge, are so good that they will overcome doubts among consumers about this whole category. The new models will have long ranges and short charging times.
Car and Driver:
JLR North America president and CEO Joe Eberhardt said, “We realized that while the current portfolio is beautiful—they’re absolutely wonderful, very competitive cars—they lost a little bit of the special DNA that made Jaguar different from anything else that was out there. If you look back at the glory days, those were really unique vehicles. We need to get back to that DNA to find that mojo and build cars that are not necessarily for everyone but that are distinct, unique, and a copy of nothing. And that’s what the new portfolio will do.”
The reference to “copy of nothing” foreshadows one of theme of the ill-fated teaser that I first discussed here. But rather than getting back to that original Jaguar DNA, the designers of relaunched Jaguar have cut one of the most visible links to the past — the “growler” badge is going, replaced by a dreary monogram.
‘Hey guys, what if we take our rich and distinctive iconography and drain it of history, character, and cultural power? Would that work?’
An image of the old “leaper” big cat will remain, but is banished from the logo, which has been updated, and now features only the company name in a font that Leslie describes as, high bar, “the worst offense”:
The original typography is dated now but it was stylish, and the leaping jaguar is, well, Jaguar. The new device is a mixed case mish-mash, a stab at generic tech branding with no sense of identity.”
To the Daily Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey, this was a symptom of a wider phenomenon:
The Jaguar rebrand isn’t just a case of go woke, go broke. In echoes of the removal of the Union flag from the back of British Airways jets, it feels like yet another back-door attempt to erase our history.
Railing against this sort of virtue signalling revisionism does not make you a Luddite. As Gustav Mahler once said: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”.
And with a “heritage” brand like Jaguar, it may be bad business. Tominey cites the example of Burberry, which has issued two profit warnings this year. The company’s new boss has blamed straying too far from its roots of “timeless core collections.”
But could some Jaguar’s crasser breaches with the past reflect ideology as well as the hunt for a new client base? Also writing in the Daily Telegraph, Melissa Lawford quotes from an interview given by Mr. Glover:
“The average age of the Jaguar client is quite old and getting older. We’ve got to access a completely different audience. That audience isn’t centred around people of the demographic of Mr Farage.”
But look at more closely, and this is not about Nigel Farage, who bears at least a passing resemblance to a gin and jag man (although, as I recall it — albeit from a decade ago — he drove a Volvo) despite Farage’s attack on the relaunch. It’s simply that the company is walking away from an old (in both senses of the word) client base, that was not buying its cars in the quantities it needed. That said, I don’t think Jaguar’s new management is too fond of the type of people who used to buy its cars.
And so Jaguar boasted about the modernity of what was coming, but to our Jim Geraghty it was old hat, a spectacular artifact of 2016-2022 “woke culture.” “Spectacular,” that is, in a Hindenburg-in-flames, Herb-Tarlek-in-a-jacket sort of way. To me, even teasing the advent of a new ultra-high-end car should, with rare exceptions, be a celebration of metal, speed, and class. Jaguar made that difficult for themselves by not featuring any cars in the clip (“do you sell cars?” tweeted Elon Musk) but the images the company did show, an “edgy” kitsch, kindergarten-colored clown show set (possibly) on a scruffy, down-at-heel planet that no one would bother to visit, looked tacky, unimaginative, and, worst, cheap, one thing it almost certainly was not. Reportedly, 800 people have been working on this rebrand. In space, no one hears a shareholder scream.
In a second post on the rebranding, I commented that it looked as if it were the handiwork of a managerial “caste” (to borrow a term used by Argentina’s Javier Milei) that had lost touch with what they were meant to be doing — selling cars to enrich shareholders — in order to promote their compliance with contemporary orthodoxy to their peers.
I added:
In a recent speech, Santino Pietrosanti, a director of Jaguar UK (where he is “responsible for delivering and optimising the Jaguar product vision and portfolio, strategy and brand roadmap for the UK”), said that Jaguar was “committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and unified culture that is representative not only of the people who use our products but of the society in which we all live.”…
These are not words to make a shareholder rejoice.
Jaguar’s managing director then revealed himself to be a member of the new managerial caste by attacking the critics of the teaser as insufficiently enlightened.
“We wanted to move away from traditional automotive stereotypes.”
Glover said that while the overall buzz of the new campaign had been “very positive”, he was disappointed by “the level of vile hatred and intolerance” in the comments regarding the individuals that appeared in the video.
Quite how Glover was able to conclude that the “overall buzz” was positive escapes me. Perhaps there was a ripple of applause in the company canteen.
Glover used various words designed to silence complaint: “vile,” “hatred,” and “intolerance.” They didn’t do the trick.
The Financial Times:
Advertising executives said Jaguar’s new branding already felt outdated, noting recent industry efforts to focus more on driving sales using established brand principles and a move away from campaigns seen as woke or worthy.
Marina Hyde, writing in the Guardian:
Not that there aren’t various people saying obdurately that they completely love it, even though it’s obviously tired and boring and about as “brave” as “using your platform” at the Oscars. But the one thing we can be absolutely sure of is: not a single one of those defenders will be buying a single one of these cars. And – regrettable newsflash – selling cars does remain the core mission of a car company. In fact, hilariously, there aren’t even any cars to buy for a while, because Jaguar will now halt output entirely for at least a year, with three new EVs not due for sale till 2026. Those will cost almost double what a current Jag does, with the firm claiming this ad announces its intentions to reach younger, richer people that it idealises as “cash-rich, time-poor”. Hence this “breaking away from the category tropes”, which for some reason reminds me of those political activists who tell you that they don’t need those old voters – they can get new, better ones.
In Adweek, the chief strategy officer of Interbrand was one of those going all counterintuitive, praising Jaguar for “showing up like a creative business rather than a car manufacturer”. Hmm. This feels like praising a bottom-of-the-table team for showing up like a creative business rather than a football [soccer] side.
The Telegraph’s Lawford notes the results of a poll by Focaldata:
More than four fifths said that they preferred an old Jaguar advert from a decade ago. Among those aged over 45 – people who are far more likely to be drivers – the share was around 90pc.
According to James Kanagasooriam, chief research officer at Focaldata, most respondents to the company’s polling thought that the teaser was “for a fashion brand or a paint advert.”
James Baggott of Car Dealer Magazine attended an early showing of the teaser, and an unveiling of the first of the new models. He is still not allowed to comment on the car, but as for the teaser:
[T]he event felt like a hallucinogenic sci-fi movie where the presenters were only allowed to speak in marketing babble. Calling it a ‘complete reset’, Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been sniffing the white stuff – this is real’.
Far be it from me to advocate illegal drug use, but from Baggott’s description of this event, some of the “white stuff” might, if Sherlock Holmes was right, have helped:
I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.
Baggott:
Unveiling a new concept car – the details of which are still under embargo until December 3 – Jaguar’s passionate team spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…
In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved brand over the next few years…
McGovern believes that up until now Jaguar has ‘not been allowed to be unique’ and that the Jaguar of the future will ‘stir the emotions once again’ and ‘make you feel uncomfortable’.
I suspect that feeling “uncomfortable” will not be what someone spending well into six figures on a new car is looking for, but perhaps that’s just me.
[Jaguar Managing Director Glover] described the new look Jaguar brand – which we were told (a thousand times) would be a ‘copy of nothing’ – will be ‘exuberant’, ‘modernist’ and ‘compelling’. Plus, it would have a ‘fearless creativity’ to its personality.
These are all words I have written down in my notebook, but don’t ask me what any of it means. I am not entirely sure Jaguar knows.
I have always regarded “late capitalism” (a concept which has been around for a century or so) as a nonsense phrase, but I think that Baggott may have gotten a glimpse of it.
The Capital Record
We released the latest of our series of podcasts, the Capital Record. Follow the link to see how to subscribe (it’s free!). The Capital Record, which appears weekly, makes use of another medium to deliver Capital Matters’ defense of free markets. Financier and National Review Institute trustee, David L. Bahnsen hosts discussions on economics and finance in this National Review Capital Matters podcast, sponsored by the National Review Institute. Episodes feature interviews with the nation’s top business leaders, entrepreneurs, investment professionals, and financial commentators.
In the 197th episode, David is joined by Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute for a far-ranging and quite depressing talk about the state of the federal budget, the reality of entitlements, the real issue around our debt, and the solutions no one wants to talk about. It is worth the listen for a sobering assessment of where we stand and where we’re going.
2024 Chart Book Examines Spending, Taxes, and Deficits
The Capital Matters week that was . . .
Economics
Economic science is turning into advocacy economics. This was on full display during the election and will be going forward as the economic agenda of President-elect Trump is debated. Many economists have already warned us about the dire consequences of Trump’s platform. However, their advocacy often reveals double standards and internal contradictions which may well explain how poor they have proved to be in predicting a policy’s actual outcome…
Antitrust
The state, you see, knew better than shareholders. And the state had plans for Spirit. This was the new model antitrust of the Lina Khan era, the reworking of antitrust away from a focus on consumer welfare and toward a device to reshaping the economy, inspired in part by a neo-Brandeisian fear of “bigness.” Paranoia and top-down diktats are not normally a good way to run an economy, although Khan has won the admiration of the “Khanservatives,” big government types such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley…
Card is $8, cash is $7,” said the taco-truck employee to me. I paid for my tacos by card because I rarely carry cash, and $1 isn’t a meaningful discount to me. However, when I get a scheduled massage, I pay with cash to receive the more meaningful $10 discount. This means that the slight inconvenience of remembering to bring cash is of equal or lesser value to me than the $10 expense I save. However, with Congress considering the Credit Card Competition Act and the Federal Reserve proposing changes to debit-card regulations, consumers may lose the ability to freely negotiate these payment preferences with merchants, thereby risking benefits that range from credit-card rewards to basic banking services…
AS Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term, his administration must change the direction of America’s antitrust policy.
Over the past four years, antitrust enforcement has become unmoored from its economic foundations, driven instead by ideological zeal and political opportunism. The result? A policy that leaves businesses in limbo, consumers worse off, and innovation at risk.
International
Someone’s been playing games in the Baltic again.
LRT (Lithuanian National Radio and TV) is reporting that a telecommunications cable running between Lithuania and Sweden has been cut. It runs alongside two other cables, meaning that the internet bandwidth between the two countries had been reduced by a third. More seriously, another cable carrying data between Germany and Finland was put out of action, severing all data transmission between the two. LRT adds that the 1,200-km-long cable “runs alongside other important pieces of infrastructure, including gas pipelines and electricity cables.” …
Steve H. Hanke & Caleb Hofmann:
After being embroiled in one controversy after another, the long-serving Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina was forced into exile in August. With each passing week, new complaints about her autocratic administration come to light. The most recent and most spectacular allegation is that associates closely linked to Sheikh Hasina, including business tycoon Mohammed Saiful Alam and members of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence — the country’s military intelligence agency — stand accused of orchestrating takeovers of leading banks and funneling $17 billion out of the domestic banking system during her time in office…
Woke Capital
The point of a car company is, as Musk knows well, to sell cars. The point of a car commercial is to help a car company sell cars.
It can be clever, glorious, talky, or faintly meta. It can be banned by Britain’s relentlessly prim advertising censor regulator for “glorifying speed” and thus breaching “rules on social responsibility and motoring.” And yes, it can be edgy, but this new one, given the likely market for a Jaguar, is idiotic; a small reminder, in its own way, that the corporate managerial class (see also ESG, HR, etc.) does not always have the shareholder uppermost in its mind…
Well, reactions to the teaser (if that’s the word) for a “new” Jaguar floated on X continue to pile up. It has attracted 87,000 comments (not, uh, all of them positive) at the time of writing, and been viewed 102 million times.
There’s a famous line in Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey:
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Not always…
Labour
Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R., Ore.) is rumored to be under consideration for secretary of labor in the second Trump administration, reportedly at the urging of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. Chavez-DeRemer is one of only three House Republicans who support the PRO Act, which would undermine state right-to-work laws, curtail freelance work and franchising, and make it easier for unions to intimidate and collect personal information from workers. It’s bad legislation that the vast majority of Republicans rightly reject, and supporting it should be disqualifying for being secretary of labor in a Republican administration…
Deregulation
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to implement the “most aggressive regulatory reduction” effort in the country’s history. Elon Musk, pegged to lead efforts alongside Vivek Ramaswamy at streamlining government, has referred to the accumulation of federal regulations and regulatory agencies as “strangulation by overregulation.”…
The Debt
The U.S. national debt exceeded $36 trillion for the first time on Thursday, according to the Treasury. It first exceeded $35 trillion 115 days ago…
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