Harrys Garage: Is Jaguar’s rebrand clever or a disaster & when was peak car? I drop by The Farmer's Dog to discuss

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Rage_Your_Dream@reddit

Reading this thread made me realise that reddit is so goddamn woke that not even the users of r/cars like cars

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Haven't watched this yet, but the opinions of the rebrand I'm most immediately skeptical of are those of 60+ year-old British auto journalists who have owned previous Jaguars. They're precisely the demographic JLR wants to move away from, so naturally they'll be against the rebrand. Also, while nobody can question their credentials and importance to the auto industry, I find Clarkson and Metcalfe to be utter dinosaurs when it comes to their opinions of modern cars. There's almost nothing they say that's personally relevant to what I'm interested in or the factors that affect what cars I want to buy.

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Rage_Your_Dream@reddit

You didnt watch and yet have an opinion. Brilliant display of zoomer brain. Also its true. Your taste in cars is dubious doesnt mean their input is invalid

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

> but the opinions of the rebrand I'm most immediately skeptical of are those of 60+ year-old British auto journalists who have owned previous Jaguars. They're precisely the demographic JLR wants to move away from, Right to be skeptical, but they understand the need rebrand well, they understand nobody was buying them previously, its not a black and white take, its a good watch!

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strongmanass@reddit

Fair enough. I'll give it a watch today.

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

And for what its worth I disagree regarding Metcalfe being a dinosaur, I look for his reviews before anything else, in large part just because he feels honest, I don't agree with every one of his takes but I feel I can trust his takes and to be honest I do generally find myself agreeing with them and Metcalfe's takes on EVs have aged quite well, with the European automakers lobbying to drop the '35 strategy, macan ev not being a complete success and them bringing back the ICE, he was arguing for the benefits of PHEV before anyone else and consumers rejecting some products, credit there And you see that here as well, could have absolutely put Jeremy's name in the title, didn't, could have done numerous collaborations chasing views till the format was done dirty, also didn't, I do appreciate that.

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natesully33@reddit

Last I watched one of his videos he was acting like synthetic fuels would save ICE, which... seems unlikely outside of ultra niche use cases looking at the economics of it. He seems very, very EV averse on a personal level IMHO which is a bias I can't ignore - after all, I was the same way in my younger years. Strangely I seem to be going the opposite way most people go as they age, haha. I'll be surprised if that EU bans sticks to 2035, but if anything I expect it to move back, not go away. I just don't see the worldwide technological inertia changing course at this point. I do agree Porsche, and maybe now Jag are jumping on electrification too quickly for their buyers. So I guess I see Metcalfe as kinda half right? Granted, I have my own bias in all this since I've been driving primarily electric for years now and don't see what's so bad about any of it. I also live in an area of the US that suffers a bit from all the stuff we keep burning for power, so I see (and breath) the damage first hand and kinda care a bit about clean tech to say the least.

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pdp10@reddit

["E-fuels"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel) from nothing but air and electricity are difficult economically, but [biofuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel#Properties_of_common_fuels) are basically the [*status quo* today](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures).

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

> seems unlikely outside of ultra niche use cases looking at the economics of it. He seems very, very EV averse I don't agree with a good number of his takes either, I don't think alternative fuels will really take of outside of the ultra-rich & hypercard industry + motorsports, but I do like that whenever he does a report on the state of the industry he does *start* from statistics on sales and acceptance (even if he doesn't always finish in the right place) > So I guess I see Metcalfe as kinda half right? In fairness that was pretty much the stance both Clarkson & Metcalfe had in this video, they understand the rebrand needs to exist, they don't like that jaguar is jumping into pure EV especially at such a high price point – and that they weren't a fan of not having a car in a commercial for a car company, but understood it worked out > I expect it to move back He mentioned in this video the lobbying would be the next video, so I'm curious to see his exact take on this, but I think that's what manufacturers are expecting here as well, you ask for more and settle for something in between > don't see what's so bad about any of it I mean the price, choice, convenience, charging at home are still issues. Less than they used to be, but evidently by take rates, still issues. Going off owning a PHEV I'd imagine you (and definitely I) are gifted in that we can charge at home, Britain is simultaneously suffering from a severe housing crisis and electricity is not all that cheap across Europe so the numbers don't look all the same Norway could simply subsidize their way out of those issues but sadly not everyone has trillion dollar oil fund to do the same

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

[removed]

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natesully33@reddit

> lobbying would be the next video, so I'm curious to see his exact take on this Yeah, same. It seems like carmakers aren't as EV averse as their customers to some degree and I know the US ones just want some policy consistency more than anything haha. I'd be curious what they expect from governments going forward, especially in the EU. I do keep forgetting that home ownership is lower in the EU. Places like Norway have adopted "right to charge" policies that don't cost the government much to help with that, but even then - the EU has this N-way conflict between the ICE ban, high electricity prices, difficult home charging, carmaker economics, Chinese competition... Whatever happens though, I really don't think the push to quit burning stuff for power is going away. It's gaining momentum pretty much everywhere. Well maybe not some parts of the US but you know what I mean, I'd be very, very surprised if the EU went in a more pro-ICE direction.

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lee1026@reddit

The point of using an existing brand is that you have people who are loyal to it. If you are JLR and you don't actually want any existing Jaguar fans to come along, just start a new brand without the baggage.

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strongmanass@reddit

In JLR's case the point is to use the history but not the clientele. They've tried to tiptoe around saying it, but what they consistently imply is that the brand name and history has value they think they can leverage, but the same doesn't apply to the legacy buyers. People are loyal to the idea of Jaguar, but not to buying it. So they want to keep the loyalty to the idea but find people whose loyalty they can turn into sales, and they've decided traditional petrolheads are not those people.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

I think this concept is almost a go back to the 60s e type stuff, I mean the e type was hardly a mass market aimed vehicle and it was only from the 70s onwards that they progressively dropped down market to the low water mark of being owned by Ford and the X type being down into mass market affordability price range

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strongmanass@reddit

[Jalopnik](https://www.jalopnik.com/the-haters-wont-admit-jaguars-new-type-00-concept-looks-1851711674/) had an interesting comparison of the E-Type vs Type 00. There's more than just a coincidental resemblance especially from the [top](https://www.jalopnik.com/jalopnik/images/708a1276af3c78d707b316288e4dfc6a.jpg) and [side](https://www.jalopnik.com/jalopnik/images/1c86f96d76b9e1b1561a7145b982c8c5.jpg) views.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Kinda makes me think someone also wanted to imbue it with a noir flavour, with more than a few hints of Batman the animated series (which is no terrible thing) People jump on the hate bandwagon and then bemoan that everything looks the same

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Nyxlo@reddit

You say that, but the Mustang Mach-E was quite successful, and I'm pretty sure Ford weighed the cost of pissing off Mustang fans in the branding decision. Same with the sports car branded SUVs, they could have used a different brand for them, but if the Lamborghini Urus was not wearing a Lamborghini badge, I'm pretty sure very few people would get one instead of an Audi SQ8. Using an existing brand name to attract new customers due to the historic associations is not rare.

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Easy-Collar8327@reddit

So funny how they seem to be completely unaware of how uncool they are. I like their videos and top gear is my favourite show of all time but everyone i see driving a Jag i just imagine theyre a whiny old man that spends all day crying about specific people.

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strongmanass@reddit

What's interesting is how poorly they've adapted to industry changes compared to someone like James May. He was always much more progressive than Jeremy in embracing modern innovation, but I find his takes far more refreshing. Hammond too - granted he's younger, but still that generation of petrolhead and professional.

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altacan@reddit

Of the three, James always seemed the most progressive. Do Clarkson or Hammond own any EV's themselves?

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

Clarkson no, he said he would not own one as long as he lived, and reiterated that in this video Hammond neither, but he's reviewed a good few and has been pretty open to them. I suppose when you have the funds to travel private, and often do travel private, the C02 on the cars at home don't matter all that much

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

did you watch the video?

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Frothar@reddit

They pretty much didn't talk about the rebrand at all in the end. I haven't read many of Clarkson's reviews but Harry is generally positive about new cars outside of ADAS systems and often times weight. They don't often review cars the majority buy so they will never be that relevant

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budgefrankly@reddit

> Haven't watched this yet, but the opinions of the rebrand I'm most immediately skeptical of are those of 60+ year-old British auto journalists who have owned previous Jaguars. Probably should have watched it before commenting. One of the sixty-year-olds believes it was the right thing to do, and that there's probably a decent market for it, even though it's market that doesn't include him. OP did a bit of a disservice to the video with the "commercial suicide" description, the discussion was considerably more nuanced than that.

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rxf555@reddit

“Commercial suicide” … fucking hell we’ve been over this, no one was buying Jags in the first place. Hence shutting down & revamping up as a boutique EV brand.

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DangerToManifold2001@reddit

If you actually care to watch the video, Harry says it was bad but Jeremy defends the whole thing, says it made sense and they had no other choice because nobody was buying the cars.

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

In very slight fairness, these two were one of the few folks left actually buying Jags incl. project 7, project 8, so to be expected they have the view that they do But the debate here is not in if they should change but rather how they should change Jeremy completely admits here (11:48) that nobody was buying their cars and that there was no reason going down the road that they were, that a change is justified

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dbcanuck@reddit

Clarkson literally says 'they're targeting the demographic that voted for Kamala Harris in the US, and that's 60-70m people. i would never buy it, but there's not enough people like me left'.

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ttsnowwhite@reddit

If you could get a Jag for $35k that would be a kind of accurate sales demographic but its actually far less than that. Lets take the cheapest jag which is basically $50k. The general rule of thumb is that the value of your vehicle shouldn't exceed 50% of your salary, which puts the minimum buyer at a starting salary of $100k. The reality is that most low 6 figure income earners dont buy up to their income level and settle for cheaper cars, but for the sake of the maths lets just pretend everyone spends right up to the 50%. According to some random googling that is the top 20% of earners. So the REAL starting number is 14m, but it gets much worse than that. When you take into account spending behaviors at different income levels, where and how these income earners live, as well as competition in the segment the realistic number is probably halved again to something closer to 6 or 7 million people who might consider buying a jaguar. This is all without even considering how many cars you would have to sell just to offset the $15b rebranding cost, and what kind of monthly sales numbers you would have to have just to keep Jag above water.

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ban-please@reddit

Yep. Commercial suicide would have been to change nothing...

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mayorLarry71@reddit

You’re right, but then, WTF is Jaguar thinking trying to make themselves into a weirdo-enhanced EV brand? Is that the hot ticket? Cmon.

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T-Baaller@reddit

Ultimately **until they're making and selling cars again it is too soon to judge.** There are a lot of rich people with what I'd call horrific taste. Jag could be making the most tactile, mechanical watch of luxury cars and it could be a hit and it could flop. They could be making the gaudiest pile of pastel-dyed sheet metal shit that barely holds itself together and sell thousands. All they've made right now is some noise.

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burnedsmores@reddit

Okay but it's still fair to look at someone making an unrealistic (or at least long-shot) proposition and to speak up before the actual assembly lines are going. Polestar said they were going to be like Porsche and everyone said that's real unlikely and what they put out were alternate Volvos that cost $25k more. Jeep was already pushing the max its fanbase could tolerate and then said they wanted to make Jeep Range Rovers and now the Wagoneer brand is QUICKLY being wound down. I actually like the new concept and I can buy the marketing manager's argument that the brand video was more about Miami art week or whatever than redefining Jaguar as neon and non-binary. But pitching $250k EV sedans is just an extremely questionable decision for anyone right now, even if they weren't torching the small amount of James Bond cachet they had left or "going woke," etc.

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strongmanass@reddit

> But pitching $250k EV sedans is just an extremely questionable decision for anyone right now The cars will cost half that amount. It's S-class/7 series pricing. And they've been very cagey about how many of that model they intend to sell, but they've said they don't expect it to move many units. I'd be surprised if they expect to sell more than 12K a year of the Type 00 production model.

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EasyE1979@reddit

The whole idea seems to have back fired spectacularly the CEO had to resign, and Jag sales took a nosedive.

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ProjectZeus4000@reddit

Wrong and wrong

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spiketeam@reddit

Unpopular opinion- Jeremy without someone who disagrees with him( mostly James) is a rough watch as time goes on.

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

I don't think this is a particularly unpopular opinion, the trio only worked as well as it did because they near perfectly balanced each other out. I like Clarkson's pieces in the paper on e.g. credit cards & love his farming show but out of the three I dislike his standalone car reviews the most post-GT. None of the three do much automotive content these days, but if I had to I'd rank May's occasional review #1 followed by the hammond drivetribe content.

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genericbeing@reddit

As a younger millennial, I'd get even more specific and say 2017-20 ish, when Android Auto/Carplay, and essential driving aids became commonplace and before HVAC knobs started going away, and gauge clusters were still largely analog.

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Bluecolt@reddit

I agree. Having a reasonable-sized infotainment screen especially with 360 cameras, AA/CP, and physical HVAC buttons all together is peak interior. I like well designed analog gauges too, but have come around on screen clusters when done right.

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genericbeing@reddit

Exactly, rented an Audi A4 recently that still had all of the above, followed by a BMW 330i, that was much more touchscreen dominant. The interior of the A4 I think bested the slightly superior drive of the 330i for me, though I will say that AA maps in the gauge cluster of the 330 was pretty nice.

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natesully33@reddit

> Though it's also worth noting their opinions particularly on peak car being '15 are greatly influenced by being in the European market I was wondering why 2015. I always figure peak car was the sometime around the late 90's/2000s for specific-kind-of-car-enthusiasts, and right now for the rest of us. 2015 is after things started to get really softwarey and auto-only but before electrification really took off and the off road craze, or at least that's my perspective as a USian. Plus they still make Miatas and Corvettes.

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hi_im_bored13@reddit (OP)

Yeah in the US I think you're always going to render whatever cars you grew up with as the best generation of automotive, and then whatever is going right before what is going on currently is the second best. Because Clarkson does mention he did like the current gen M2 and is looking forward to writing his review, I'm curious if he'd like it more than the f-series if they'd removed all the nannies

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trail-g62Bim@reddit

> Yeah in the US I think you're always going to render whatever cars you grew up with as the best generation of automotive Just like the best seasons of SNL were the ones from when you were 12-15 years old.

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natesully33@reddit

Indeed, I love the cars I grew up with (90s/2000s). But I don't need current cars to be modern reinterpretations of those, because they just can't be for so many reasons. The world changes and cars change with it and that's OK. I'm also recalling that episode where Jeremy called the Veryron a "Concorde moment". At the time nobody new you'd be able to order something with 1,000hp that doesn't even burn stuff and holds 4 people in comfort online for $90k, trying to predict the future of cars seems a bit risky. I'm quite confident there will be cool things going forward though, not the things I liked in high school but new and different things I haven't even imagined yet.

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R_V_Z@reddit

I don't believe there is a single peak. To me, styling peaked in the late 60s/early 70s, "raw engagement" peaked in the 90s/2000s that you mentioned, and outright performance hasn't peaked yet (I guess you could say is currently peaking).

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AKADriver@reddit

> Though it's also worth noting their opinions particularly on peak car being '15 are greatly influenced by being in the European market, their complaints on speed limit warnings & screen being difficult to interact with being LHD, neither of those are issues in the states, they recognize this in the video as well I agree with them, though, as related issues. Screens period are difficult to interact with in a moving car, even if you're used to poking at them with your right hand in LHD, it's still non-tactile and not great. And we might not have speed limit warnings, but ADAS in general are just not my thing and I'll avoid owning cars with those systems as long as I can (and disable them after that).

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KingDamager@reddit

Hammonds car show isn’t bad. Not as good as Clarkson farming show, but probably better than May’s shed show.

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GtrplayerII@reddit

I don't think he really adds anything to the conversation. Harry on his own is all you need. Jeremy is a journalist. He is constantly framing things as a journalist would. Harry is a farmer, who happened to really love cars and from that passion he built a mass of knowledge and skill to be able to speak intelligently about them. He got into the journalism because he had a good reputation of being able to drive cars and speak about them. He then decided to build a magazine with some partners...a very successful car magazine. Made a fortune along the way and then moved on. Now he's just back to being a farmer, that has great taste in cars with great knowledge, and passion for them. He lives every car enthusiasts dream life. No doubt he still works very hard at it, but when you love it, is it really work?

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ban-please@reddit

I agree. Clarkson's Farm works is because they have characters that balance Jeremy: Charlie keeping him on track and Kaleb always taking the piss out of him. Jeremy surrounded by people who agree with allows all his worst attributes to flourish.

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KennyGaming@reddit

That’s not unpopular on Reddit

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mymomisyourfather@reddit

I agree with Jeremy that the average car is becoming an EV crossover blobfish with intrusive ADAS and touchscreens everywhere. I disagree that that is because of regulation though. Its easy to point at safety and government mandates but that hasn't stopped great cars from being made. Like the very M2 and Revuelto they themselves mention. Lots of brands (like Fiat, Renault) have a simple button that you press twice and it defaults to a user profile of ADAS systems. That it has become a faff in cars like the M5 they mention is BMWs fault and not regulation. Same with the implementation of these systems. Yes some suck, but its a calibration and tuning effort by the manufacturer that couldn't be bothered to actually make it functional beyond legal requirements. Manufacturers have all piled onto this single touchscreen fad because its stupidly cheap and shaves all the development effort and cost of the interior. Instead of endless cycles and variations of button placements, wiring loom variations, debates about which options to include etc etc they chuck in a big screen and can wait until production starts to finalise software. Not even that, they just release a buggy mess and fix it later. Nothing about this is government mandated.

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JC-Dude@reddit

Man, I love Top Gear, but this is just 47 mins of an old man yelling at clouds with another old man saying "yeah" for the same 47 mins.

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221missile@reddit

They're not yelling at the clouds. Clarkson said 2015-2016 was peak car. This sub says that all the time.

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JC-Dude@reddit

Because those are the cars this ssub can afford. Give it 10 years and 2025s will be peak car.

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Due-Dirt-8428@reddit

We don’t accept Harry metcalf slander

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JC-Dude@reddit

I usually like him when he's doing videos on his own, but this was just 47 mins of moaning at the world going forward.

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ListenRadiant4817@reddit

I prefer Top Gear before the trio became the show. I liked Clarkson better back in the 90s when he was merely a sidekick. May and Hammond have always annoyed me.

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