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“Jaguar has no desire to be loved by everybody,” said Gerry McGovern as he strode across the stage on a slightly chilly evening in Miami last week. It was a bold statement from Jaguar Land Rover’s creative director, but it summed up the aura around the relaunch of one of the UK’s most famous brands.

On 18 November, a short teaser ad was released that ignited social media. Lasting just 30 seconds, it showed models in bizarre and brightly coloured outfits but did not characteristic a single car.

The recent York Post described it as “the latest example of idiotic and woke corporate virtue signalling”. Elon Musk took a dig on X, asking Jaguar’s official account: “Do you sell cars?”

Then came the actual launch at a Miami art fair. Mr McGovern stood on stage beside two cars, resplendent in “Miami Pink” and “London Blue” shades. Both were examples of Jaguar’s recent Type 00 – a concept car that won’t ever leave on sale, but is meant to showcase the brand’s plans for the upcoming. Angular, aggressive, with a huge bonnet and more than a hint of Batmobile, the recent design also polarised opinions.

“Even Gen Z despise the recent ‘woke’ Jaguar!” declared the Daily Mail. “Mark my words, Jaguar will leave bust,” Reform event chief Nigel Farage predicted on X. But the former Top Gear presenter James May told the BBC that the truth the ad was being talked about so widely has “got to be a bit of a outcome for Jaguar, hasn’t it”?

Jaguar’s managing director Rawdon Glover also hit back, insisting the corporation needed to be “bold and disruptive” in order to get its communication across.

But some insiders debate that Jaguar’s problems run deeper than a five-minute frenzy on social media.

Even before the furore over the advert, “the brand was on a steady road to nowhere”, argues Matthias Schmidt, founder of industry intelligence firm Schmidt Automotive Research.

“The traditional Jaguar demographic was slowly being diluted through natural attrition and customers jumping ship to other brands.”

So, the publicity that the ad and the launch have drawn appear to have been welcomed within the business.

As Gerry McGovern drily quipped from the stage: “We’re delighted to have your attention.”

Controversy, he added, had always surrounded British innovation when it was at its best.

Behind all the noise, what is happening at Jaguar is pretty straightforward. It is being re-launched as an all-electric brand as part of a major restructuring at JLR, instigated by its parent corporation, the Indian conglomerate Tata.

Jaguar’s current models, including the I-Pace, the E-Pace and the F-Type, are no longer being sold in the UK. Instead, the first of a recent creation of cars will hit the road in 2026.

Alongside this shift to battery power comes a shift upmarket, with the recent models expected to expense upwards of £100,000.

The reasons for doing all this are twofold. Firstly, Jaguar has been struggling to sell enough cars or to make enough money. Secondly, JLR needs to construct more electric cars to satisfy regulators, who are working to phase out the sale of recent petrol and diesel models.

It’s a far cry from the brand’s fame days, when the E-Type placed Jaguar firmly at the heart of swinging-sixties British chilly. Steve McQueen owned one. So did Frank Sinatra. Peter Sellers gave one to his wife, Swedish superstar Britt Ekland. George Best, who knew a thing or two about quick cars and a quick lifestyle, had several.

But for decades, the stereotype of a Jaguar buyer has been a well-to-do corporation boss – almost certainly male, with expensive cufflinks and a set of golf clubs in the boot. Not so long ago he might have been seen smoking a cigar as well.

That might be a little unfair on Jaguar. It has has clearly tried to appeal to female buyers and to families, with offerings such as the F-Pace. Nicknamed the “She-Type”, this was praised by excellent Housekeeping magazine after its launch for its seats designed with women in mind.

But Jaguar continues to be perceived by many as a supplier of upmarket exec-mobiles – and this is a segment of the trade where competition is fierce.

“They’ve been chasing BMW and Audi sales for years and despite some decent cars have struggled to be profitable,” explains Rachel Burgess, magazine editor at Autocar.

“Now, they’re trying to target the likes of Bentley and Porsche, looking at high net-worth individuals, who would be spending far more on a car than the level at which Jaguars used to be priced.”

The reinvention of Jaguar has been brewing for many years. Tata bought the brand from Ford in 2008, following nearly two decades under American ownership. During that period, Ford invested significant sums and overhauled its manufacturing and standard control processes. But it failed to make the business profitable and, at the height of the global budgetary crisis, put Jaguar up for sale.

After taking control of both Jaguar and Land Rover, Tata merged the two into JLR: that brought stability and removed immediate doubts over Jaguar’s upcoming.

But while JLR has performed relatively well over the history decade, despite the downturn caused by the Covid pandemic, it is the part of the business that used to be Land Rover that has been driving recent growth.

This has been largely thanks to powerful demand for luxury SUVs in markets such as North America and China, as well as in the UK.

In April, the corporation reported an boost in annual sales across its Range Rover, Defender and finding brands of nearly 25%, helping to drive revenues and profits up across the business. Jaguar’s sales did rise as well – by 7%. But that came after five years of steady decline.

In the 2018-19 budgetary year, Jaguar sold more than 180,000 vehicles. In 2023-24, the figure was 66,866 – a relatively tiny proportion of JLRs overall sales of 431,737.

By 2021, other pressures were mounting on JLR, not least the introduction of increasingly stringent environmental rules in the UK and the EU. At the period, JLR had only one electric model in its line-up, the I-Pace.

In February 2021, JLR’s chief executive Thierry Bolloré announced a recent way: a wholesale revamp of its range, with all models to become available in electric form by the complete of the decade. But crucially, he said Jaguar would be “re-imagined” as an all-electric brand.

Although Mr Bolloré would leave at the complete of the following year, his schedule was picked up by his successor, Adrian Mardell – who promised the corporation would invest £15bn to turn it into reality.

Within JLR, there is widespread recognition that something had to transformation.

“Jaguar’s act over the history 10 years has been challenging,” Rawdon Glover admitted in a previous BBC interview. He pointed out that Jaguar had been trying to achieve in a high-volume trade, where the bigger players can keep their costs down through economies of scale.

“While our vehicles were highly competent, and critically acclaimed, actually the ability to commercially achieve in that surroundings was challenging,” he said.

The shift upmarket, in hypothesis at least, gives Jaguar the chance to sell fewer cars, but with much bigger returns margins.

“I’m fully in agreement that they had to do something,” says Andy Palmer, an industry veteran and former CEO of Aston Martin who has also been a leading executive at Nissan.

“But it’s very courageous to be planning to walk away from 85% of your customer base. They are going to have to discover recent customers to replace them. And purchase of recent customers is always more expensive than retaining existing ones.”

The large question, though, is whether the changes being made are the correct ones.

Arguably, one of the reasons why Jaguar’s rebrand has attracted such attention is because although relatively few people buy the actual cars, the name itself still resonates with cultural significance, thanks to a heritage going back more than seven decades.

In its early days, under founder Sir William Lyons, Jaguar was truly innovative, and it knew how to grab attention. In 1948, it launched the XK120, an elegant two-seater sports car with swooping lines and a powerful six-cylinder engine. As the name implied, it had a top speed of 120mph, making it the globe’s fastest production car at the period.

In a country still recovering from the ravages of globe War Two, this was a revelation. Jaguar had originally planned to construct just 200, but demand was so high, it ended up making more than 12,000.

Victories in motorsport put Jaguar’s name in lights, especially at the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans – but the corporation continued to produce striking machines off track as well.

A number of these have stood the test of period, not least the Mark II and its successor, the S-Type. First produced in 1959, this was a luxury saloon that happened to have plenty of impoverished-boy appeal.

Arguably Jaguar’s greatest instant, however, came with the launch of the E-Type in 1961, which came with 150mph act, and movie-star cachet. It was the car to be seen in and gave the Jaguar badge a lustre that lasted for decades.

But nostalgia alone will not sell cars. Jaguar has been harking back to former glories for a long period.

“I would certainly declare they’ve been market activity off nostalgia for decades,” says Matthias Schmidt.

Prior to the relaunch, he says Jaguar has been “like a luxury hotel that doesn’t feel the require to refurbish its brand”. He adds: “The setback to look over one’s shoulders and view what the competition is doing can be fatal.”

This week’s relaunch seems designed to get the brand out of a comfortable rut and attempt to make it edgy again, while retaining at least some of its history cachet. Or, as Gerry McGovern put it from the Miami stage, “recapture the essence of Jaguar’s original creative conviction”.

Under normal circumstances, the debut of a recent car might gain a sure amount of attention in motoring magazines and websites, but it would rarely, if ever, get onto the front pages.

The corporation has not said who was behind the teaser ad that went viral – generating more than three million views on YouTube – but JLR has been working with Accenture’s creative marketing arm, Accenture Song, for three years.

Accenture has not commented.

Branding experts have mixed views about the campaign.

“What we had was a really bold advertising campaign, that has now been followed through seamlessly with a concept car that completely matches the campaign,” says Mark Beaumont, founder of branding agency Dinosaur.

“It is potentially a masterclass in advertising awareness”.

But Tim Parker, way director at Conran Design thinks it is a risky way. “They have indeed copied nothing that has arrive before in the brand’s wealthy heritage, but at what expense?

“Few brands ever achieve by alienating their traditional customer base over the longer term,” he continues. “If the objective is to construct relevance in a crowded luxury EV trade, then differentiation makes sense – but only if the underlying way is coherent.”

What we have not seen yet, however, or at least in any specific, is an actual road-going car. The concept is just that – an concept.

Jaguar is in the procedure of developing three recent models, the first of which is unlikely to leave on sale until late 2026. All we have been told is that it will be powerful, with more than 575hp, and have a range of more than 430 miles.

It has begun road-testing, and a handful of leaked photos display a large boxy machine that is both similar to the concept – and very different.

For any car corporation, trying to discuss the shift to electric vehicles without alienating any of its customers is going to be challenging. And for a brand like Jaguar, with the scent of petrol and the sound of six and 12 cylinder engines built into its DNA, it likely to be even harder.

But among all of this is another question that hasn’t yet been asked. That is, does that DNA even matter any more – and how useful really is it when it comes to selling cars today?

Andy Palmer puts it more bluntly: Jaguar, he thinks, may well be disposable.

“I ponder it’s a very fair question to inquire – does JLR actually require the Jaguar brand? Does the globe require the Jaguar brand?”

We won’t discover out the respond until 2026. In the meantime, we recognize what Jaguar’s schedule is. Now it has to deliver.

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