The Type 01 has three motors that produce 1,016 horsepower and 1,007 lb-ft of torque.Mark Fagelson/Courtesy of manufacturer
There was a moment in Monaco this past May when Jaguar’s reinvention stopped being a marketing campaign and became something considerably more convincing: a car. I was strapped into a heavily camouflaged prototype of what we can now call the Jaguar Type 01 with a JLR engineer riding shotgun, his hand hovering close to a real red kill switch.
Ahead was the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, temporarily repurposed during the Formula E weekend, and the chance to drive the heavily anticipated electric vehicle on the most famous closed circuit.
A handful of laps were nowhere near enough to render a verdict on a car still deep in development, but they were enough to establish something important. Beneath the camouflage, the Type 01 felt substantial, composed and extremely fast, its immense power delivered with more sophistication than violence. The brakes inspired confidence and, even on a circuit bordered by unforgiving barriers, the car never felt overwhelmed by its size or performance.
Five months later, Jaguar finally pulled off the covers of the production version of the Type 01.
The Type 01 is 5.2 metres long with the traditional luxury “dash-to-axle” proportion measuring 898 millimetres.Courtesy of manufacturer
The Type 01 has a low roofline, no rear window and rides on 23-inch wheels.Mark Fagelson/Courtesy of manufacturer
It’s a 5.2-metre-long, four-door electric grand tourer built on the new Jaguar Electric Architecture. Its three-motor powertrain produces as much as 1,016 horsepower and 1,007 lb-ft of torque, enough to shoot from zero to 100 kilometres an hour in 3.2 seconds. A 118-kilowatt-hour usable battery and 850-volt electrical architecture deliver an anticipated EPA-rated range of up to 644 kilometres, while 350-kilowatt DC fast charging can add as much as 321 kilometres of range in 13 minutes.
But the numbers aren’t the most interesting thing about the car – the proportions are.
There is something almost gangster about the Type 01: enormously long, impossibly low and imposing, with a massive hood, tiny glasshouse, low roofline and bodywork that seems to go on forever, all of it riding on 23-inch wheels. As it turns out, there is some history behind that attitude.
During the presentation, Jaguar showed an image of founder William Lyons’s original vision for the SS1 from 1931. It was startlingly low and dramatic, an early expression of Lyons’s instinct for low-slung proportions. A medical emergency took Lyons away from the project. In his absence, business partner William Walmsley raised the roofline to improve access and visibility. The eventual production car was more practical, for sure, but it lost out in terms of sheer visual impact.
Nearly a century later, the Type 01 feels like a return to that original instinct: drama first. The distance between the front axle and front door, the traditional luxury “dash-to-axle” proportion, measures 898 millimetres, representing 17 per cent of the car’s overall length. The result is less conventional EV and more extravagant prewar grand tourer reimagined for the electric age.
There is a 24-inch OLED display ahead of the driver and a smaller seven-inch central touchscreen.Courtesy of manufacturer
Jaguar has also resisted the temptation to turn the entire dashboard into a screen.Courtesy of manufacturer
The packaging problem is easy to understand: Place a big battery under the floor and everything above it has to move upward, including passengers and the roofline. Jaguar went a different direction. The Type 01 battery extends ahead of the passenger compartment and is split beneath the rear cabin to make room for passengers’ legs.
The front suspension tells much the same story. Jaguar uses a double-wishbone layout with enough upward travel to pass into the body structure, preserving both wheel movement and that low hood. This is clever engineering mainly because you don’t see it; its purpose is to let the car keep the proportions the designers wanted.
More obvious to a driver is the aerodynamic work. Despite its upright nose, huge wheels and almost vertical tail, the Type 01 posts a claimed drag coefficient of 0.23, helped by hidden active vanes and a three-stage deployable rear spoiler.
Other details reward a closer look. The headlights are just 84 millimetres tall yet contain 17,000 pixels each. The frameless doors close against the body without the usual visible trim and seals, while the rear lamps disappear into Jaguar’s horizontal “strikethrough” graphic. Most striking of all, there is no rear window.
The Type 01 has a a three-stage deployable rear spoiler.Courtesy of manufacturer
The headlights are just 84 millimetres tall yet contain 17,000 pixels each.Mark Fagelson/Courtesy of manufacturer
A camera handles the view behind, feeding a digital rearview display and freeing the designers to carry the bodywork uninterrupted across the back of the car. That sums up much of the Type 01: The design team set up the challenge; the engineering team was expected to make it work.
That uncompromising approach has consequences. Getting into the rear seats is awkward. The sill is exceptionally wide, requiring passengers to step well over it and essentially drop down into the low-mounted seat. Those taller than six-foot won’t find much comfort. For all others, though, once you’re ensconced in the seats, the impression changes dramatically.
The cabin’s longitudinal spine creates four distinct spaces, while rich textiles, leather and other high-touch materials give the interior an architectural quality. Jaguar has also resisted the temptation to turn the entire dashboard into a screen, using a 24-inch OLED display ahead of the driver and a smaller seven-inch central touchscreen. Sitting in the back, surrounded by those materials and details, the Type 01 feels convincingly expensive.
For now, the larger question is whether all this also translates into a great road car. My brief Monaco drive can’t answer that question. It revealed nothing definitive about production ride quality, long-distance comfort, real-world range or how a finished Type 01 will behave on an imperfect Canadian road in February. But it did establish that this is more than an extravagant design exercise.
Jaguar has bet virtually everything on becoming something different from the company it was. Yet, in reaching so aggressively for its future, the Type 01 may also have rediscovered something fundamental from its past: William Lyons’s conviction that a Jaguar should possess proportions and presence dramatic enough to stop people in their tracks.
Whether buyers will follow is still unknown. At least now, Jaguar has given them something worth arguing about.
Courtesy of manufacturer
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.
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