The New Type 01 Doesn’t Look Like A Jaguar But It Could Make A Great Lincoln Mark V Revival

I’m extremely excited about this new Jaguar Type 01. No, I’m not particularly enamored with the styling by any means, but if this thing is pointing a new direction for the design of aspirational cars as massive-looking “statement piece” road locomotives with “presence,” then it means the revival of real American land yachts is not far behind! Yeah, I could be wrong, but let’s take a look at a future where I’m spot on.

Block Rockin’ Meat

Well, after seemingly forever, the production version of the controversial new Jaguar has broken cover, and we’re now able to determine some basic facts about it.

First of all, it really is going to Look Like That, despite some people thinking the pink show car was some kind of prank and that, in the end, we’d get something akin to an updated XJ instead. As we’ve pointed out, that might have pleased the media and general public, but they weren’t buying the XJ, and neither was anyone else.

Commentators (including our own) have declared that Jaguar wanted to make a statement; reinventing themselves and reviving their dying brand to appeal to the new one-percenters. Go big or go home is their plan; it will either succeed or the Jaguar nameplate will go to live in the afterworld with dead British marques like Riley, Wolseley and Alvis.

Apparently, Jaguar assumes that what the wealthy tech firm partners want to buy now are pompous, massive and monolithic machines to express their station in life. As evidence, they might point out things like the Rolls-Royce Phantom:

There’s also this equally heavy-looking Bentley concept that was doing the rounds:

Hell, even the Cybertruck fits that “brutalist” description (though in reality “brutalism” speaks to an aesthetic purity driven by function, not ostentation):

If that’s indeed what this class of buyer is really looking for, then Jaguar has certainly succeeded.

However, the general consensus is that this is an unappealing look; certainly, nobody that remembers the heyday of the brand thinks it has any business being a Jaguar. If this monstrosity is what it takes to make the marque survive, then let it die peacefully, they say. You want a city-block-long crisp-edged slab of a car? Go buy an old Lincoln instead. This big blocky “Jag” has more in common with a seventies Lincoln Mark V than any XJ6. Hey, wait a minute? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Lincoln: What A Luxury Car Used To Be

If there’s any brand that’s been lost at sea as long as Jaguar, it might be Lincoln. This once-illustrious nameplate really established itself as a sort of anti-Cadillac with impressive-looking but still somewhat subdued American luxury cars. If you were a gangster around 1940, you could see what someone like the fictional Sonny Corleone would choose such a gorgeous and rather low-key coupe.

Lincoln really hit their stride about sixty years ago with the beautiful Kennedy-era 1961 Continentals that included a four-door convertible.

It might have just been a rebodied Thunderbird, but the 1969 Mark III has to be the most sinister-looking mainstream luxury car ever made. The legend was bolstered by an appearance in The French Connection as the car of choice for a very cultured international villain.

The high-water mark (excuse the pun) of massive Lincolns was likely 1979, the final year for what were some of the largest automobiles ever made in America, like this Continental sedan and Continental Mark V coupe.

Not remotely as clean as the sixties cars, they nonetheless had an iconic appearance (as driven by Gene Levy in Schitt’s Creek).

You want “presence”? I got your presence right here:

Now, Lincoln makes nothing but SUVs and crossovers for America. There’s nothing wrong with that since brands like Porsche and Bentley do the same thing. However, those companies have “halo” products like the 911 or Continental to lend cachet to the lower-level, higher-volume products. Lincoln has no such cars. It’s like a big royal court with no king or queen.

Lincoln’s sedans and coupes have faded into history over the years; they attempted to stage some revivals with things like the suicide-door 2019 Continental:

Sadly, it just didn’t have nearly the impact of the earlier cars. Let’s face it; those Continentals and Marks needed to be impossibly big, flat-sided behemoths to really work; nobody has really wanted cars like that for some time.

That is, apparently, until now.

Coventry Goes Detroit

First of all, I don’t necessarily hate the new Jaguar. I would have changed a number of things myself to make it more appealing in a traditional sense, but I get what the design team was trying to do. Having said that, I think it would make a far better Lincoln than a Jaguar.

Also, unquestionably it would make a better coupe than a “sedan.” The rear seats are a bit of a joke for something so large (not unlike the old Lincoln Mark V), and the rear doors appear to be so short that getting in and out will be worse than if it was just a two-door. Let’s do as few changes as possible to the Jaguar 01 and turn it into our Lincoln Mark V revival, or “Mark E” if we want it to stay electric. I’ll shrink the wheelbase by barely a few inches, add a little more front and rear overhang, and that’s absolutely it. Here you go:

I’ve also added the notchback and some chamfering to the sides to match the old Lincoln, a move that dramatically breaks up the visual mass. The wheels might not be perfect Lincoln rolling stock, but keeping them the same as the Jag to accentuate how little changed with my modifications. You can see an animation of the transition from Jaguar to Lincoln:

The nose has the Lincoln grille and those mounted-too-high headlamps on the Jag’s blunt front end; we can cover up with retractable doors.

In the rear, we need to have the infamous Continental tire hump. That’s a silly detail from the old Marks, but let’s face it: does it really look any worse than the rear of the new Jag that appears to be taken off of Fedders window air conditioning unit? There’s no rear window on my concept, but instead an LED panel inside that simulates a backlight. No, I’m just kidding! That’s a glass backlight on this Lincoln because there’s no reason not to have a back window. You think I’m stupid? Naturally, the fake “gills” on the fender could be doors to access the charging ports (or windshield washer fluid reservoir).

Here’s an animation of the changes:

It’s rather amazing how little I’ve done to the Jag to create this prairie schooner tribute. Honestly, without the tire hump, side gills, and the porthole windows, this might be an unironically attractive car, but where would the fun be in that?

You Think You Hate The Outside? Wait Till You See Inside

While the exterior of the production version of the new Jaguar is, if anything, a slight improvement over the concept, the interior did not fare as well. It’s simply awful in so many ways.

In front of the driver sits a tacked-on Best Buy screen like on a Mustang; my guess is that there’s some kind of retractable electric mechanism that will hide the thing under the dash when the car is turned off, meaning that you have to accept that your dash is unattractive when the car is turned on. Like the silly power vent covers on a VW Phaeton, I bet this screen’s flipping action is fun to endure once or twice, but then it gets old fast. As with the pop-up gear knobs on JLR’s Range Rovers, it will certainly stop working after a few months anyway.

What’s with that stupid tacked-on screen on top of the console? Is it supposed to remind people of those hastily-installed car telephones from the eighties? Why is there a tiny black screen in the middle of the upper dash? Is that an LED clock like on an old Honda Accord?

No, no, no. We need to add more wood and a cohesive look to the space. I’ve integrated the center screen into the dash; it wraps up to the top of the dash and terminates in a jeweled Cartier analog clock since every true “luxury” car needs a timepiece with hands dead-center, dammit. The full-width screen is a rather narrow profile and seamlessly blends into the dash; it’s not like Lincoln owners need a full set of gauges anyway other than speed and range, right?

Yes, this one shown features the Givenchy interior materials, a callback to the “designer” series of Lincolns from years past.

I’m hoping that designers like Tom Ford might come on board to replace the late Bill Blass to make a version of a Lincoln Mark to launch at some fashion show. Check out how World War II veteran Blass refused to make it through a photoshoot without a cigarette; what a badass.

Remember, with the ultra-rich it’s often far less important what something looks like than what it represents.

Too Bad Ford No Longer Owns Jaguar, Right?

Let’s face it: the sixties Lincoln on Entourage was way cooler than the Rolls Phantom they briefly had and quickly returned because of the image. Dopey show, but they got that right.

Full disclosure: I do this Photoshop junk on my work computer, so when I share my screen in meetings occasionally, this crap unintentionally appears. When the images for this post came up on my screen a few days ago on a Teams call, I was shocked that the group of decidedly non-car people in attendance felt that my joke Lincoln was the dopest-looking car they’d ever seen; “I’d buy that instantly if I was flush with cash over a Rolls Royce.” Almost all were unaware of the existence of the new Coventry car; some thought that the Jaguar was the fake car, not the Lincoln; “There’s no way that ugly thing is real.” Go figure. This was a satire piece, people!

No, it’s unlikely that the traditional big domestic luxury car is ever going to return, but if these companies like Rolls Royce, Bentley and Jaguar think they’re “reinventing” anything by making a “statement” with these heavy-looking sheet-metal-for-sheet-metal’s-sake boats, they aren’t. I dare say that some Americans did it better half a century ago.