Jaguar Type 00 design boss Gerry McGovern leaves JLR

Gerry McGovern – JLR’s chief creative officer and the architect of Jaguar’s divisive new look and feel – has left the company, sources in India are reporting.

The shock news has broken within a fortnight of new CEO P.B. Balaji – formerly group chief financial officer at parent company Tata Motors – taking control of the British car maker. 

McGovern, a JLR board member, has been with the company for the past 21 years. He is an award-winning designer, responsible for the past two generations of Range Rover which have elevated the model to six-figure prices and into the luxury car bracket. Other hits on his watch include the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover’s reborn Defender.

But his past year has been dominated by the controversial relaunch of the Jaguar brand, which dragged JLR into political culture wars after it was castigated by conservative media for being ‘woke’. The relaunch kicked off with an ad featuring models dressed in futuristic couture on an alien planet, flashing up the messaging ‘delete ordinary’, ‘break moulds’ and ‘copy nothing’. 

No Jaguar model was featured: it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that the Type 00 concept, a radical two-door coupe previewing the future production car design language, emerged at Miami Art Week. In a remarkable turn of events, a car company rebrand leapt into the news cycle, with right-wing British politician Nigel Farage’s hot take suggesting Jaguar would go bust by 2026. JLR sources claimed the campaign reached more than 1 billion people, as the episode went truly global.

McGovern’s surprise departure leaves a design leadership void at the top of Britain’s biggest exporter. McGovern’s second-in-command, Massimo Frascella, left JLR in January 2024 and is now head of design at Audi.

Jaguar relaunch 

JLR is taking a big risk with its relaunch strategy, unapologetically “sun-setting” its entire range of existing cars to create a “firewall” between them and the new generation, which are strictly electric powered. It’s an unprecedented strategy, with car companies usually trying to marry up the changeover of model lines in an attempt to minimise commercial disruption.

The new Jaguar generation will launch with a four-door GT, which will typically transact at around £110-130,000, way in excess of Jag’s previous £55,000 average price point. Jaguar claims the 5m-long EV will travel in excess of 430 miles and have blistering performance. 

It’s based on the standalone ‘JEA’ car platform, which stands for Jaguar Electric Architecture. JLR executives insist the lack of core commonality with Land Rover products is to create “exuberant proportions”, with the Type 00’s extraordinarily long bonnet to make the car stand out from the EV pack. 

Design critics have questioned the functional need for such a long bonnet, which looks like it could harbour a V12 rather than just electric motors. “A long bonnet is like asking ‘why have you climbed the mountain?’ This is a copy of nothing,”  Jaguar’s creative director Gerry McGoven told me at the Type 00’s media preview. “Electrification has impacted engineering – you’re going to get a short bonnet if you embrace that. But this is an object of desire, a piece of art, not an A-to-B EV.”   

Full GT production isn’t expected until 2027: JLR has been going slow on the project, with this autumn’s cyberattack crippling business activities. Sources say work on fitting the new JEA line into the Solihull plant beside Land Rover assembly was able to continue.   

But the ambitious plan is further exposed by Jaguar’s dependence on electric power: executives have ruled out the option of fitting hybrid or combustion engines. The £100,000+ EV market barely exists, with Porsche’s Taycan suffering a dip in demand and Lotus’s electric relaunch making minimal impact.

What next for JLR design?

Gerry McGovern is coming up for 70-years-old, so a succession plan should be squarely on JLR’s radar. Early on in his career he was the driving force behind the Land Rover Freelander and the MG F, and co-developed JLR’s House of Brands strategy, where Range Rover, Defender and Discovery take centre stage with the Land Rover ‘umbrella’ relegated to a trust mark in the background.  

Auto Express has approached JLR for a response, but the company has refused to comment at this stage. Stay tuned for more on this story as it breaks.

Come and join our WhatsApp channel for the latest car news and reviews...