By Douglas Kruger
I SPOTTED a Jaguar in Jersey. Exotic creature. It was an XJ, the long one. And it made me wonder how they ever make it around tight corners. My question isn’t caustic, it’s exploratory. I want one.
A while back, I was walking through the Tunnel under the Fort. This was when one side was closed to pedestrians, so I was wearing my cautionary chastity belt. It’s close quarters in there, and not any stranger will do…
…when coming the other way, like a shark gliding through the semi-dark, was my favourite shape outside of Nigella Lawson: the sleek, svelte, sensual Jaaaag. The big one. The one Clarkson raced against the sun.
It’s my favourite car, and back in South Africa, I owned one. I had the full-meat version, the 5-litre V8. And before I sold it to move to Jersey – at a loss, because it’s a Jag – the brief ownership experience was glorious.
I bought it at a dealership in Pretoria. When I drove it off the showroom floor, the sales staff honest-to-goodness formed an honour guard, hailing my departure. It was a nice touch.
Then I came to the first intersection.
It was there that I learned that a 5-litre engine is appreciably different to the 2-litre runabout I’d owned prior. Specifically, you had to work that 2-litre to make the car move.
Well, the lights changed, and without trying, I left rubber streaks across a ten-foot strip of tarmac. Frightened the daylights out of me, and caused a couple of pedestrians to hug themselves. I quickly recalibrated my right foot to a more respectful nudge.
There were small touches, unique to the brand, that I came to love.
When you took your seat in the wraparound cockpit, reminiscent of a fighter jet, the ignition button would pulse at 63 beats per minute, the exact resting heartrate of an actual Jaguar. Press the ignition, and the internal digital wizardry drew a leaping Jaguar across the black screen in a single, stylized line. Then your gauges appeared, daring you, taunting you, as the roar of the engine sent that bad cartoon angel directly to your left shoulder. The good ones don’t travel in Jags.
That darn thing had everything. Heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel, vast panoramic sunroof, ambient lighting, and an engine note that AC/DC could only aspire to.
The appeal wasn’t just mechanical either. When I’m away from Jersey, one of the topics on which I speak is branding, and how positioning contributes to success. And for me, Jaguar had absolutely nailed it. The XJ was like an S-Class, but sexy. And a uniquely “British” sexy.
Best exemplified by their iconic ad, “It’s good to be bad,” in which a series of charming and well-spoken villains in tuxedoes explained their preference for the sleek cat: “We’re more focused. More precise.”
Then Jaguar lost its way.
Their attempt at a woke-rebrand became the focus of global mockery. Folks, it was bad!
Instead of a sinister James Bond montage, all deep shadow and smouldering emotion, they sent shockwaves through the fanbase with neon colours and a psychedelic drug trip of a TV ad, featuring…um…humans. It went from understated class to Eurovision. And the brand could not have tanked any faster. It was as if they drove off the edge of a cliff powered by…well…a 5-litre V8.
They appear to have learned their lesson.
Just last week, Jaguar fired the advertising agency that took them in such an odd direction, and announced they are shopping around again. I can rescind my blood-oath never to pollute my eyes with their logo again.
A rebirth in the brand – or better still, a return to the old ways – could mean new energy.
Done right, this might herald a new dawn for the marque. I hope so. I want to like them, want to root for them, and I’d hate to see a nearly century-old British icon go the way of Bud Lite, all because they handed their legacy to a bunch of 12-year-olds with crayons.
But all this brings us back to our original question. Can you really own one in Jersey?
It was oodles of fun in Johannesburg. But we had four-lane highways. And it was an hour or more’s drive from anywhere to anywhere. And there were great oceans of parking available once you arrived, ensuring you could berth your ocean liner with ease.
But say you make the leap here, then need to make it around the Val Plaisant switchback?
Or squeeze into a parking spot at Sand Street?
What if you accidentally turned onto one of those terrifying little farm roads with shrubbery scraping at both side mirrors, and a mountainous ten-ton tractor came barreling the other way like the boulder from Indiana Jones, forcing you to hosepipe backwards in a blind panic, then attempt to mount a grassy hump with suspension lower than the snakes Indi hated just to survive?
Could it be done?
Or would you need to programme your GPS to use main roads only? Might work. Perhaps you just take the bus for anything more rural than the outskirts of St Helier…
Perhaps. Perhaps.
Maybe the best idea would be to wait and see what they do with the branding. Solve the Island logistics later. But start with what it says about you.
Because a car of that kind is more than a means of transportation. It’s a statement of identity. And it was cool when it insinuated that you, the driver, were easily and effortlessly bad to the bone. That can work when cruising along the coast at St Ouen’s. It’s less effective when it’s telling everyone you love bright pink, safe spaces and being offended.
In fact, here’s a thought. If they are going to restore the soul of the brand, they must get it right in under a decade. That’s when the iconic cat reaches its first century. I hope they make it. I wobbled in my devotion, but now I’m rooting for them.
Douglas Kruger is an author and speaker who lives in St Helier. Meet him at douglaskruger.com.
