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Jaguar will prove the naysayers wrong by building a monolith of design and taste

Jordan Katsianis thinks the criticism of Jaguar’s bold new approach is misplaced. If anything, it isn’t bold enough.

Jaguar design - opinion, header image

Can you believe it? £135,000 is how much the new Jaguar GT will cost when it finally arrives in 2026 (or the year after). Ridiculous, I say, that’s far too little! 

Bump the price up to £250,000, ditch whatever cost-related compromises have been made in terms of design or materials and build the British monolith we know Jaguar can. Cadillac did it with the Celestiq and Jaguar can do it with its new GT – we need our minds to be blown. 

This is Jaguar’s ‘The Shard’ moment; coming out of the chaos and red tape that is JLR in 2025, the new GT needs to go so big that it changes the British automotive industry, just as The Shard did to London’s city skyline. Because think about it: the people out there able and willing to drop £135,000 on an EV will probably be the same people capable of doubling that figure. They won’t be worried about the bill, but they will care if they see flimsy indicator stalks, scratchy plastic or obvious part sharing. 

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And to the critics. There has been a lot of chatter about whether Jaguar’s gone ‘woke’ with its new EV (what is ‘woke’ anyway, someone explain it to me…), or whether anyone will actually buy a £135,000 EV from a brand that hasn’t revealed a new car in nearly a decade. But these people are wrong, because for the vast majority of them a new Jaguar isn’t on their shopping list, and never was on their shopping list. 

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This ridiculous politicization of Jaguar’s design direction is poor form, and unless you’re in a position to offer a viable alternative for the great brand, you should just sit down and be quiet. 

If Jaguar built a V8-powered Coupe, no one would buy it. Just as no one has been buying anything that shape for a decade. Going all-out on a cutting-edge, polarising new ‘type’ of car is what has to be done, otherwise we may as well have written the obituary already. 

Has the roll-out of Jag’s new era been flawless? No. Should Jaguar have actually done something with the I-Pace and the headstart it represented in e-mobility? Absolutely. But now is the time to be bold, different and progressive. Let’s stop looking back for context and start wondering what Jaguar ‘could’ build, rather than what history suggests it should. And let’s not, for one second, think that the ousting of JLR’s controversial design director foreshadows a change of direction, this is just something that should have happened a long time ago. So full steam ahead, Jaguar. It’s time to wow us!

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Senior staff writer

Senior staff writer at Auto Express, Jordan joined the team after six years at evo magazine where he specialised in news and reviews of cars at the high performance end of the car market. 

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