The new boss at Jaguar has apparently gone mad. It is hard to tell which of his moves is worse? And he’s making a lot of moves. Just this week alone he has killed off most of Jaguar’s future products, decided that Jaguar will move upmarket to compete with Bentley and Rolls, and decided Jaguar will no longer build SUVs but stay strictly passenger car-based. In other words, he’s completely tipped Jaguar upside down. 

If we were a Jaguar dealer, we’d be looking for another company to add

If we were a Jaguar dealer, we’d be looking for another car company to add. Maybe one of the new electric startups or take on a Chinese car or truck line? Anything to help your bottom line because we’re not sure that Jaguar will be around in the next two years.

They say when in a crisis bold moves are necessary. That could be part of what’s going on. Jaguar’s Achilles heel for, oh, like 30 years or longer has been quality. Or rather, lack of it. Even back in the days that Ford owned the brand, it was a big problem.

Ford tried but was never able to turn around Jaguar’s bad quality

Ford tried but was never able to turn around the bad quality gremlins. Now Tata Motors owns Jaguar and Land Rover. Both are perennial last-place finishers in quality surveys. Placing bets that Jaguar and Land Rover will be the lowest-scoring brands in any of those Consumer Reports or JD Power quality lists is a sure bet. 

Jaguar CEO Thierry Bollore knows what is at stake for his company. This week he said that Jaguar loses 100,000 sales a year due to its perception of quality. Or lack thereof. “The dissatisfaction of our customers was really detrimental to our natural volume. The missed opportunities today are massive,” he said.  

Jaguar’s XE, XEL, and E-Pace, along with Land Rover’s Evoque, and Discovery, are notorious for their build issues. Automotive News points out that in 2017 alone Jaguar issued 13 recalls of 106,000 vehicles. In all, Jaguar Land Rover lost 24% of sales last year from 2019. For Jaguar it lost 37% of sales last year. 

If anything is keeping Jaguar’s head above water it’s SUVs

Right now if anything is keeping Jag’s head above water it is SUVs. And for the foreseeable future, it looks like SUVs are what customers in every market want. So killing off the brand’s most popular vehicles seems like a death wish. At least keep your SUVs to help finance your other plans. 

With Bollore deciding not to go ahead with plans to sell the upcoming J-Pace it has thrown away billions of dollars in development. The same holds true for its Modular Longitudinal Architecture or MLA EV platform. The MLA was going to be the basis for future Jaguar EVs, which the company says will be all that will be manufactured by 2025. 

Now Jaguar is on a crash course to come up with a new EV platform

So now Jag is on a crash course to come up with an entirely new EV platform while killing off one of the main products that would support the company going forward. You just can’t make this up. Or maybe that is what Bollare is doing; making it up as he goes along?

So that’s where Jaguar is at as of this week. Next week it might choose yet a different path. We can’t imagine that another new vision for Jaguar would be any worse than the one sprung from the mind of Bollare this week. We wish Jaguar the best for whatever time it has left before implosion. The quality surveys will be a lot more of a mystery once Jaguar and Land Rover no longer exist.