You have to feel sorry for Jaguar. By any standards it's been a terrible year for the British carmaker.
First came dealing with the continued fallout of the December 2024 reveal of the Type 00 concept. The brand wanted the EV's radical design to be polarizing, but it seemed unprepared for what forms such polarized views might actually take. Elon Musk, of course, couldn't resist taking a pot shot at the now infamous ad campaign that didn’t even show a car.
According to Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover, the supposed “wokeness” of the ad campaign, which featured a multiracial cast, resulted in a barrage of online “hatred and intolerance” directed at both the brand and, deplorably, Jaguar staff.
Then, in August, following this controversial rebrand (and with spectacularly poor timing), the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, Adrian Mardell, announced he was stepping down after just three years as chief executive. This was mere weeks before all hell broke loose at JLR when a cyberattack forced the company to stop all vehicle production completely. To make matters worse, amazingly, JLR was not insured against cyberattacks at the time, leaving the company to bear the significant financial losses directly. At an estimated £1.9bn (about $2.5 billion) with nearly £200 million in direct expenses to JLR, it has since been called the costliest cyberattack in UK history.
Just as this disaster was on the ebb, and only months after PB Balaji (previously chief financial officer of Tata Motors, Indian owner of JLR) was installed as the new chief executive, reports emerged that JLR had supposedly fired design boss Gerry McGovern, the very man behind the Type 00, bringing to an undignified end a 21-year career at both Land Rover and Jaguar. After initially declining to comment, it took Jaguar 10 days to deny it had fired McGovern.