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By Jonathan Crouch

Jaguar's Type 01 redefines its brand. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 49

With this Type 01, Jaguar brings us an exclusive luxury saloon like no other. No other three-figure GT full-electric sedan looks like it, drives like it or feels like it to sit in. Polarising and extreme, this is probably what Jaguar needs right now. But it's a bold move.

Backgroundword count: 171

Jaguar has reinvented itself: it had to. And the new era starts with this car, the Type 01. This once-great British marque hasn't sold a car since the end of 2024, the point when it finally accepted that its 15 year plan to reinvent itself as a premium maker wasn't working. Indian owner TATA had financed a whole stream of models which simply hadn't sold well enough. Jaguar couldn't match the production development might of its key German rivals - and was never going to. Closing the marque was considered. Lightly evolving it wasn't an option. The other choice the company could make was radical, but needed to be. Push up-market, beyond its previous premium brand rivals into what company executives call 'an untapped white space' in the luxury sector, a segment just below Rolls-Royce and Bentley. And create to fill it something unique, in Jaguar's words 'a copy of nothing'. The resulting 'Project Pantera' has been six years in the making and has bought us this car, Jaguar's Type 01.

Driving Experienceword count: 380

No half measures here. Every Type 01 will get a drivetrain befitting its 'Ultimate Grand Tourer' status. The unique JEA ('Jaguar Electric Architecture') chassis has been designed for two things: an enormous 118kWh battery. And an extremely powerful tri-motor layout developing an enormous 1,030PS, with 1,365Nm of torque. Power is split 30% to the 349bhp motor at the front, with the rest to the two 416bhp motors at the rear. The front one works alone at cruising speeds, the rear axle units chipping in during sporty driving, each motor working independently to allow torque vectoring. As you can imagine from that description, this Jaguar is consequently very fast indeed, 0-62mph dispatched in just 3.2s, though the engineers reckon a better gauge of the sustained power on offer is delivered by the 62-112mph sprint time of just 4.0s. Top speed is 150mph. Range is rated at 435 miles - not class-leading but better than a Bentley Torcan or Rolls-Royce Spectre. Handling was developed by a team led by renowned top ex-Lotus and Aston Martin engineer Matt Becker, who rates the Type 01 as one of his career highlights. He's gone for very much a rear-driven-style feel, with torque vectoring controlling the load at each wheel, an inverter switching power on and off instantly as needed at speed through the corners. Becker talks about the engaging way the car 'rotates around your hips' when cornering. His team certainly had a lot of technology to work with, including adaptive damping of course - and twin-chamber air suspension able to adapt its rates to road and driving conditions. There's also four-wheel steering to improve cornering stability at high speeds, a system that at low speeds gives this 5.2-metre Jaguar a turning circle similar to that of a Volkswagen Golf. This set-up gives 6-degrees of wheel angle at the back axle, whilst allowing the fronts to turn by up to 43-degrees. Expect three-figure autobahn cruising to be astonishingly quiet and there's a bespoke setting for that with the three-position rear spoiler, which can provide up to 75kg of downforce at speed. There are front vanes that open or close based on sensor data to cool either the battery or brakes - as needed. The conventional drive modes are 'Eco', 'Jaguar', 'Sport' and a 'Snow' setting.

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