These two cars are similar in size, ethos, power, purpose and marketing. Why?
It feels to me like the new electric Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé will be the best indication yet of how we should expect Jaguar’s upcoming Type 01 GT to perform when it eventually goes on sale.
There have been big, expensive and fast electric cars on the market before, of course. They’re still there. But the most powerful variant of the Porsche Taycan, the Turbo GT, and the Tesla Model S Plaid are variants within rather larger model ranges. And the big Lotus electric saloon is, after all, just a Lotus – which I don’t mean to be a slight on the Emeya, but it and the Eletre SUV are such departures from the traditional Lotus line-up that one could almost consider it to be a new marque in its own right.
Meanwhile, the new GT 4-Door Coupé comes from AMG, a consistent brand (albeit a subsidiary of a larger one) that sells a limited number of expensive luxurious and fast cars – not unlike Jaguar in some respects. (Also it has a history of using a nice rorty V8, like the one it’s going to reintroduce in the upcoming Mythos variant of the CLE 63 coupé, which has until now been available only with a straight six.)
The electric GT 4-Door Coupé, then, is a car of serious significance but not a radical departure in its aims from the cars the company typically makes. It’s only a radical departure in terms of how it’s powered.
One could view the new Jaguar similarly: it is, after all, a big car on the outside, a compact one inside, with a long bonnet and plenty of performance. Jaguar has made loads of cars like that over the years, to the extent that it’s now showing the XJ-S in its advertising for the Type 01.
While there are parallels to both projects, they also both contain – let’s put this diplomatically – rather different takes on the more recent design language of the two companies.
When the GT 4-Door Coupé was previewed by the GT XX concept car, it didn’t create quite such a stir as Jaguar’s Type 00 concept, and I don’t suppose it was really meant to: the company doesn’t need the same kind of reinvention.
But the AMG production car has arrived with some fairly polarising looks. I tend not to comment too much about aesthetics unless a car is widely considered glaringly beautiful or a massive gomper, because you’ve got eyes, but I don’t think it’s overly controversial to say that the new GT 4-Door Coupé is an unusual-looking car. More so than the concept that it vaguely resembles. AMGs don’t usually take such a departure from the models around them.
The Type 01, we’re told, will much more closely resemble the Type 00 – and that, you will remember, was a very polarising concept.
That was caused as much by the messaging that came along with it, amplifying the attention the design received. Jaguar had courted that but was eventually entirely overwhelmed by it and has since somewhat rowed back from it.
Buying the new Jaguar might be a statement purchase in a way that buying the new AMG may not be. But if you can separate the attention from the cars, I think what we’re looking at are two reasonably similar cars in size, ethos, power and, ultimately, purpose.
The GT 4-Door Coupé has arrived first, so it will be intriguing to see how well it sells, as an indicator of how well the Type 01 might perform.
It’s true that the AMG is but one model in a larger line-up, which is again only one part of a much larger Mercedes range. For Jaguar it’s rather different: so much of the brand’s future, and indeed the wider company’s future, will follow from the success or otherwise of a very fast, expensive, electric coupé – a type that hasn’t recently demonstrated it sells in vast numbers.
JLR recently denied reports that it was working on a combustion-engined range-extender version of the Type 01, and such was the vehemence of that denial that you have to take it at face value. But I suspect JLR will be keeping a very close eye on the kind of production numbers AMG can achieve in the run-up to the Type 01’s release.
