This vehicular Pink Panther is falling flat on its face.
Jaguar’s alleged attempts to woo Generation Z with a Barbie-pink electric vehicle backfired spectacularly after Zoomers dubbed the luxury UK automaker’s creation “cheap” and compared it to a “pink Batmobile.”
Pictures of new Jaguar Type 00 concept, dubbed the Design Vision Concept, had leaked online ahead of its official release at Miami Art Week this week, the Telegraph reported.
Per the photos, the $126,519.50 vehicle featured a giant bonnet, slatted rectangular grills and no rear window while the leaping Jaguar logo has vanished from both ends, taking a back seat to a divisive, new round logo, the Daily Mail reported.
However, the hot-omobile’s most noticeable feature was its “Miami pink” exterior, which evoked a boxier version of the Corvette from the “Barbie” movie. It also comes in metallic blue.
Gerry McGovern, the chief creative officer of Jaguar Land Rover, deemed the flamboyant concept car a “taste of things to come” at the Miami convention.
The EV-only hot wheels are seemingly the latest part of Jaguar’s seemingly “woke” rebranding campaign to win over Gen Z, which was promoted in a video ad that featured androgynous models in bombastic outfits, including one man wearing a dress and, most notably, no cars anywhere in sight.
Jaguar Managing Director Rawdon Glover notably dubbed the company’s new direction a “complete reset” meant to “inspire a new generation.”
Ironically, many of their so-called intended younger customers were quick to put the Type 00 model in the rhetorical car compactor.
“If you thought the Jaguar rebrand was peak cringe, you gotta look at their new car,” scoffed one detractor on X.
TikTokker Fionnuala compared the car to Muck, a red digger from the kid’s show “Bob the Builder.”
“Now you’re telling me Jaguar had all that faff (Brit slang for fuss), all that rebrand, all that nonsense for a car that looks like Muck, and to be honest I’d rather [have] Muck,” she declared.
Other unimpressed Zoomers took shots at the rebranding efforts in general.
“What on Earth is Jaguar thinking?” exclaimed gearhead Luke Malpas in one TikTok clip. “They’ve gone from being a staple of British engineering, creating some of the best cars we’ve seen on the road, to this”
“Go woke, you know the rest,” wrote podcaster Jay Anderson on X, while journalist Jordan Schachtel wrote, “Go DEI go absolutely broke. This is a mockery of the Jaguar brand.”
Some critics found the “Copy Nothing” slogan ironic, given that the new EV vehicle seemed to rip off many storied vehicle brands.
“Copy nothing except Rolls Royce, Bentley, and then put a Studabaker radiator on the back of the car,” snarked Canopy Capital Group CEO Eric Golden on X.
“Copy nothing? It’s a pink Batmobile,” scoffed another naysayer while decrying the vehicle’s departure from the brand’s iconic macho mobiles of old.
Some accused Jaguar of risking alienating their consumer base by attempting to appeal to people who will never buy their product.
“Someone on the Jaguar marketing team has greatly overestimated the size of the ‘vegan barista who wants to roll up to the drum circle in a luxury sports car’ market, I fear,” mused Lulu Cheng Meservey, a board member at tech company Shopify, on X.
“I have a feeling @Jaguar may be about to find out that there are fewer well-off, non-binary, woke lesbians of color than their echo chamber assured them there were,” sniped right-wing British Reclaim Party founder and “political correctness” foe Laurence Fox.
The criticisms extended beyond accusations that the model was ugly in pink.
“That @Jaguar concept car is one fugly monstrosity,” griped one. “The switch to electric gave huge potential for a radical redesign to live up to their unimaginative ad campaign, but they had so little imagination that they gave it a huge view-restricting nose to house a non-existent engine.”
Despite the online savaging, a few vehicle buffs have praised the Type 00s, with “Top Gear” host Rory Reid commenting: “Having been massively underwhelmed by XE, XF and XJ (which are only even vaguely interesting with a 5-liter supercharged V8 under the bonnet) … This is the most ‘I would actually look twice at this’ Jag since … forever.
“I’d even have it in pink for the haters,” Reid declared.
McGovern also seemingly defended the creation, saying: “Getting attention in today’s world is not always easy, and I assume all of you and those following from around the world may have read a thing or two about the new Jaguar brand.
“And we’re delighted to have your attention,” he continued. “Controversy has always surrounded British creativity when it’s been at its best.”
McGovern then analogized the company’s makeover to visionaries like singer David Bowie and designer Vivienne Westwood, who “challenged convention and had no desire to copy the norm.”