New Jaguar EV review... from the passenger seat: how does this 1,000bhp, tri-motor GT stack up?

Jaguar lives!

Glad you’re so excited. Yes, after the bungled brand relaunch and the extra-spicy backlash to the Type 00 concept, the Jaguar rebirth is still on track. Which means it will be launching the first car of the new EV era in 2026 – expect a full reveal around summertime. We’ll be driving the finished thing towards the end of the year.

This is that car, albeit covered in Christmas wrapping paper.

Hang on, you haven’t driven it?

Sadly not. We were treated to the most frustrating of all car journalism constructs - the prototype passenger ride. To be fair we were sitting next to Matt Becker, the chassis wizard formerly of Lotus and Aston Martin, who's now responsible for Land Rovers and making this very large electric Jaguar drive like a Jaguar… so it was more interesting than it sounds.

Any new details other than it has a passenger seat?

Firstly, it’s a four-door enormo-GT where the famously pink Type-00 concept only had two doors – this we already knew, but worth reiterating. We can also now confirm it has a tri-motor set up – two on the rear axle, one on the front – allowing torque vectoring across the back. There’s six degrees of rear-wheel steering to shrink the turning circle to something manageable and boost stability at higher speeds, dual-rate springs, air suspension, twin-valve damping (a similar damping system to the Range Rover) and… wait for it… over 1,000bhp.

OK, we live in a world of monster EVs so that last number is probably the least interesting but there you have it – the new Jag will have a ridiculous, almost bottomless amount of grunt.

No word on charging speeds yet, but the target range is 400-miles and because of its huge wheelbase and long bonnet, the driver sits slap bang in the centre point between the front and rear axles and there’s a perfect 50:50 weight distribution. This means the car should feel like it’s pivoting around you, like a mid-engined supercar, albeit one that’s over five metres long. The prototype was also rolling on 23in wheels which looked… about right.

And what about how it drives?

We went for several laps of JLR’s handling facility with surfaces ranging from pebble smooth straights, to a tight potholed stretch of tarmac our UK readers will be all too familiar with. You sit low, hunkered down into the belly of the car – this is a bit of a surprise, and genuinely impressive, given there’s a large slab of lithium-ion battery between your bum and the floor. The driver and passenger compartments are divided and a low, curved screen sits behind the steering wheel and projects out to the right-hand side. In the back I can make out some seats and a roofline dropping down dramatically towards the rear. Everything is draped in black cloth, don’t ask me for more detail than that.

In a straight line - surprise! - its massively fast, surging forward with that relentless wall of torque that characterises well-endowed EVs. We’re limited to ‘Comfort’ mode today and Matt confirms he’s not giving it the full beans, but it’s smooth and progressive as you’d expect. Wind noise, there is some - mostly that’s the camouflage wrap flapping about – but we cruise up to 150mph and continue conversing without raised voices.

The ride, given it’s on 23s, and given it’s going to be a car weighing (my best guess) around 2.5 tonnes, is impressive. It’s not Rolls-Royce smooth, but then this is a Jag, it’s supposed to have sports kit on under the suit. You hear and sense the bumps, but they don’t deflect us off course or cause any significant shudder. It appears to walk that line that Jags should: between luxury and agility, sportier than a rolls Royce, plusher than a BMW, but that’s in the context of a large luxury EV. A sports car this is not, it’s a smooth, rapid, indulgent conveyance that should have some driving satisfaction built in.

Fake shifts? Fake noise?

Definitely no simulated gearbox shenanigans here, although Becker speaks highly of what Hyundai has achieved in the Ioniq 5 N with its software defined flappy paddle gearbox. And no artificial noises, yet - that will come but is still being finalised. “It won’t sound like a spaceship,” says Becker. “And it will always be selectable. How loud do you want it? Do you want it off? On? Do you want it calm or do you want it dynamic? It will be subtle.”

Will it drift?

Not while we were sitting in it, but throwing shapes is something close to Becker’s heart: “Can you drift this car? When you go to put it in Dynamic mode, with up to 900bhp available at the rear, and with my history, of course it’s a car you can drift. Is it what the car's about? No. But when you switch all the systems off and we go to that mode, will it be able to do it? A hundred per cent.”

Any design notes?

As I said, we’ll have to wait until the summer to see how closely the final design adheres to the Type 00 concept’s monolithic surfacing, but proportion-wise it’s brilliantly cartoonish. If this isn’t the longest wheelbase of any production car I’ll eat my laptop, while the long bonnet definitely gives Lady Penelope Fab 1 vibes.

What does Jag handling mean to Becker?

Let’s ask Matt: “When I went to Aston after 26 years at Lotus, it took me about two years to dial into the DNA and where the products needed to be. Coming to JLR it was the same process – I didn’t know enough about Jaguars. So we went to JLR Classic in Coventry and pulled out all the E-Types, modern XJ, old XJ. The one we really liked for its ride composure and comfort was the XJC V12. There's something about the way it rides down the road and breathes down the road that we all really liked.

"I don't like cars that are too tied down and too stiff, I want to be in something that I enjoy driving - and that sort of started the journey on what we're going to do with this car. And you'll find when you get to drive it the car it has this really nice plush, solid, refined feel.”

What’s happened with Gerry McGovern?

Ah yes, JLR’s chief creative officer, and one of the main architects behind the Jag brand reinvention, was reportedly fired a few weeks back. Since then, silence, other than this official line: “It is untrue that we have terminated Gerry McGovern’s employment and we do not intend to further comment on speculative stories.” Well that clears that up then. Truth be told we’re all in the dark as to what happened, all I can tell you is he wasn’t in the room when Jag was presenting and walking us around the prototype.

Price and positioning?

Rawdon Glover, MD of Jaguar, aka the man whose skin must have grown an inch thicker in recent months, was there. And had this to say about the price and positioning of the car: “Our average transaction price used to be about £55,000. This will be more than double that. So the centre of gravity in the UK would be about £120,000. Think of it in those price terms.

"If we think about the market where we want to play, the premium players do go higher than £130,000, but they tend to top out around £120,000 to £130,000. Then you’ve got to go all the way up to the ultra-luxury brands — Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls-Royce — and they don’t really do anything under £300,000. So there’s quite a big chunk of space.”

Final thoughts?

Jaguar was a company trying to compete with the volume German premium brands, and frankly failing. The numbers didn’t add up. So it’s entirely understandable why a wholesale reinvention was required, and a family of electric luxury Jaguars based around a new body architecture was the logical direction to go. What rubbed people up the wrong way was how Jag seemed to be walking away from its heritage.

Now though, it’s backtracking and reembracing the past to inform this radical new GT. I say radical, it’s actually a luxury four-door electric GT priced well above £100k – it’s not the first and it won’t be the last. It’s fast, rides well and if it sticks to the concept’s design language should have road presence to spare.

So, on this brief first exposure the product is looking good, but the question remains – as with any company building large, expensive EVs – are there enough people out there that want one?