A decade ago, British car company Jaguar launched an ad campaign around the idea that its customers are villains. James Bond would drive a classy Aston Martin; the bad guy would drive a Jag.
Well, not anymore.
Ahead of going all-electric in 2026, Jaguar announced a total rebrand that’s more about selling a vibe than, you know, cars.
- Gone is the pouncing cat in its logo, replaced with something that The Verge notes looks more like “JaGUar.”
- British villains have been swapped for stylish models in a pink void and the slogan, “Copy nothing.”
- But the models all seem sad, and it feels like it’s approximating “artsy” from a cold, corporate mindset.
- Oh, and there aren’t any cars in the new campaign.
Traditionalists are losing their minds over how wrong it is for the Jaguar brand, per NBC News.
But who cares?
Nobody’s buying Jaguars, anyway:
- The company sold fewer than 67k vehicles last year globally, while competitor BMW sold 362k+ in the US alone.
- Recently, Jaguar announced that it was killing off five models with “close to zero profitability.”
If people aren’t buying Jaguars under the current “serious white men in suits” identity, why should the company care if people think this redesign is silly? It’s not like Jaguar took a successful brand — with an iconic logo and terminology that had been accepted into the global lexicon — and replaced it with a single generic letter.
That said, the backlash will be justified if this JaGUar logo shows up on a crummy EV that looks stupid in 2026. The company has to put its money where its artsy mouth is — then it can come back and kill James Bond in style.
