Jaguar has to change, otherwise it will follow MG Rover on a route to a slow and painful demise

It was never going to be a smooth ride relaunching a brand as well loved in the UK as Jaguar. But for the responses online to be quite so immediately negative must have taken some at the company by surprise. They say that all publicity is good publicity, but this may be stretching the point in the same way the outcry at Ford’s resurrection of the Capri as an electric SUV did earlier this year.

Us Brits seem to excel in having marques we’re passionate about, but not enough to actually go out and buy their cars. The demise of the MG Rover Group is a prime example, so something had to change for a Jaguar brand that sold only 14,000-or-so cars in the UK last year, 29th in the league table, below Porsche and Lexus, and outsold four-to-one by stablemate Land Rover. It’s not a good look.

Although the potential new customers for a reinvented Jaguar aren’t likely to be among the traditional buyers anyway, the level of animosity when it drip-fed its new logo and brand identity, complete with a video sequence designed to move its image forward several decades, was fascinating. It showed how interested people are in Jaguar as a brand, if not in actually buying any of its products. 

The double-edged sword of social media and online forums is that everyone can have a say – and plenty did – but I’m curious about what the more vociferous commentators would do with an ailing brand. Too many people seem to be wedded to a dream of a Jaguar that goes head to head with the best premium car makers in the world, but BMW sold almost eight cars in the UK for every Jag last year. In Germany the ratio was 73-to-1.

That’s not to say I think £130,000 four-door electric GTs are definitely the way to save Jaguar, but I’ll be sitting back with the popcorn when the concept car is revealed in the early hours of Tuesday 3 December, and we get a clearer look at the brand’s future direction.

I predict it’ll be worth setting the alarm for.