Jaguar’s new car’s interior has been revealed – welcome to the inside of the Type 01
Anybody paying even the vaguest bit of attention will have noticed that Jaguar’s Type 00 concept car created a huge amount of fuss in both the car world and the culture wars space starting from December 2024. Electric, boldly pink (or baby blue), huge, and different. Some designers decided they didn’t like the heaviness and weight of the side surfacing, others shouted about the typography. In reality, the concept car did what so many fail to do – it got attention for Jaguar’s new direction.
The attention stayed – haters and lovers alike can be seen filling the comments in on everything Jaguar has done since, feeding the engagement loop.
And this is important. Jaguar car sales have been declining for some time. Attempts to play off classic British values failed. They needed something new, and they needed you to notice.
It’s the Design Week opinion that the shock reaction was by design. A carefully worked out and thought up way of making sure that when they launch the first new car of the next era of Jaguars, everybody would be watching. And reporting on it. Ragebait at a corporate level, perhaps?
Since this summer they’ve been teasing the production car derived from Type 00 ideas – the Type 01. A run up Goodwood of a fully disguised Type 01 revealed it to be a very powerful, large, but softly sprung car with a sense of occasion. So that was the performance tease.
Today is the turn of the interior.
Thomas Holden, Chief Interior Designer, Jaguar, said: “Our holistic design philosophy translates the vehicle’s exterior presence into a distinctive interior architecture. In contrast to the horizontal interior design norm, we emphasise its dramatic longitudinal nature through the central spine – an architectural statement that creates four individual spaces. With authentic materials, technology on demand and reductive flowing surfaces, Type 01 presents unmistakable drama and theatre that will define the modern luxury automotive interior of the future.”
Well, let’s see about that..
The Type 01 central spine
It’s certainly a dramatic statement for a cabin. Each passenger and the driver has their own space. This is an individualists car – far removed from one another they can luxuriate in their own thoughts, although I daresay the car will be quiet enough to allow anyone to be heard from anywhere in the cabin. My personal feeling is that I like open, airy cabins, and Cake kind of nailed it with their 1996 song Stickshifts and Safetybelts:
“Stickshifts and safetybelts
Bucket seats have all got to go
When we’re driving in the car
It makes my baby seem so far” – Cake
Of course, my personal opinions don’t matter. I’m not in the target market for this car. I’m too poor for starters. I bet they’ll sell a fair few to techbro billionaires and we all know they’re socially awkward, so the distance between passengers will likely be seen as positive.
A key thing here, however, is that is different. It’s not another “me too” car, and that’s what Jaguar really needed. Their recent models were basically like slightly worse BMWs with better styling. It worked for the right buyer but there wasn’t the volume to help improve margins and R&D costs were getting silly. So they’ve broken away from that.
One thing worth noting is the difference in CMF treatment on the interior from the Type 00 which used travertine stone along the central spine – it would have been cool, but it might have to be saved as an expensive option for people who like to play with the spec list, as it is with Bentley. And yes, very thin stone finishes are the new luxury flex in car interiors. You heard it here first. In general however the surfaces look softer, more rounded, more comfortable than the concept car – and that’s a good thing. But the ideas have carried through.
Lines and more lines
Lines featured strongly on the Type 00 and this continues onto the Type 01 production car. And honestly, this was one of the highlights to me. The louvres along the top of the bonnet tie into a similar texture along the top of the dashboard on the inside. You also have the “Leaper” – a Jaguar silhouette against a rectangle rendered in closely tied lines on the top of the door cards. They’re not strictly necessary. But please remember, however, that this is a luxury car. Nothing about it is strictly necessary and the key question is going to largely be “does this make the owner/passenger/driver feel good?”
It will, because it’s special, and rich people like to be reminded that they’re special and not just a loose collection of sentient meat bones like the rest of humanity.
This interior achieves that.
Meanwhile, Jaguar is also teasing a little more of the exterior with a new camo-wrap that gives more clues as to how it will look in its final form. Obviously a lot is still hidden, ready for the big ta-da when everything is finally revealed on the 6th of October. If the interior is anything to go by it’ll be a more carefully detailed version of the Type 00 we saw last year. Bring it on. I can’t afford it, but I look forward to seeing one whispering along the road. It’ll feel like an event. A show for the rest of us. And surely that’s what expensive car design should be about?
