Are we still right to quote a price of £120,000?
“We believe the core price will be £117,000 to £120,000 but there’s a design vision that owners who choose the highest-output model and take advantage of the opportunities we’ll provide to personalise their cars could pay £150,000 or more. There’s a big gap between the top of the premium car class at about £110,000 and the uber-luxury class Bentley and Rolls at £200,000 and more. That gap is where we’re aiming.”
You seem to have rediscovered your heritage again. How will you use it in future?
“A lot has been made of how we’ve used our heritage. The past is vital after all, we’re in our 90th year but perhaps we haven’t explained well enough that Jaguar shouldn’t want to repeat itself. It’s not in our DNA. Look at the step from E-Type to XJS. One of my key learnings since we first showed the Concept 00 a year ago has been that we didn’t take enough time to explain why Jaguar had to change. When you lay that out clearly, people tend to get it.”
You’re appointing far fewer Jaguar dealers. How many?
“We’ll have roughly 20% as many as we did in the UK, chosen largely by region. We had almost 100, but with the lower volumes and high prices we aspire to, we don’t want too many dealers delivering too few cars.”
When will you reveal the car’s name?
“We’ve given some pretty good hints already. The naming of our concept car was pretty directional. The word ‘Type’ is of huge significance at Jaguar. The use of ‘zero zero’ indicates a reset. We’ll be more specific in the early part of next year.”