Gerry McGovern is right man to steer Jaguar reinvention

The complete reinvention of Jaguar is perhaps the toughest assignment of Gerry McGovern's career.

McGovern, Jaguar Land Rover's chief creative officer, will oversee the team charged with one of the biggest jobs in the industry: developing a completely new design language for a luxury brand. And Jaguar is not just any luxury brand.

It's a marque whose key appeal has always been about melding extraordinarily handsome design with advanced technology in an attainable package. Jaguar's sexy sports cars and sensuous sedans from the late 1940s to the mid-'80s were some of the industry's most admired vehicles new and remain some of the hottest classics today. Style never goes out of style.

If you are familiar with McGovern's large body of work, you know he's not going to spend much time looking in Jaguar's rearview mirror for inspiration, especially not now when he's got a blank canvas on which to work.

Jaguar will cease to exist as we know it in four years. The brand’s entire lineup will be replaced in 2025 with vehicles built on a Jaguar-only, electric vehicle-only platform. Freed from the constraints of having to design around a traditional combustion-engine powertrain and all the baggage that goes with it — radiator, exhaust, cooling requirements, transmission tunnel, etc. — McGovern’s crew will have unprecedented levels of freedom as they reimagine Jaguar’s proportions, stance and the other elements of the brand’s design language

JLR's new CEO, Thierry Bollore, who last week detailed much of the company's strategy, said Jaguar is moving away from SUV-like vehicles to create a separate identity from Land Rover. While we don't yet know the body styles of the new Jaguars, we do know they are going to be far more opulent and expensive than current Jaguars. The new Jaguar lineup will be moving upmarket to compete with some models from Bentley and Aston Martin, two sources told Automotive News.

McGovern has proved his team can design a vehicle every bit as stylish and luxurious as a Bentley or even a Rolls-Royce. But the world never got the chance to buy it. The Range Rover SV Coupe, which had an announced base price of $295,000 was — to my eyes — much better looking than both the Bentley Bentayga and Rolls-Royce Cullinan. It was axed during JLR's 2019 financial crisis, but it would have shown well against Rolls-Royce.

The pressure on McGovern's team to create something equally as exquisite for Jaguar is immense. The brand likely won't survive if the next generation of vehicles struggles. I don't know if there's a better man in the entire automotive industry than McGovern to lead the project.

For much of his career, McGovern has been handed one famous vehicle after another to redesign, or he's been given the task of creating vehicles for new segments. And he's aced the test every time.

In the early '90s when McGovern was working for the Rover Group, he penned the midengine MG F, the successor to the classic MGB. The car went on to knock off the Mazda Miata and become one of Europe's top-selling sports cars for nearly a decade.

When Rover Group needed a small sport utility, McGovern led the team that created the compact Freelander, which also became one of Europe’s top-selling vehicles.

He had a hand in redesigning the last three generations of the Range Rover — all have established sales records for the brand. More recently, McGovern led the team that reimagined the Land Rover Defender, which has now become a global hit and one of the company's most profitable vehicles.

McGovern, now 65, grew up in Coventry, Jaguar's hometown, and went to school there, where he studied industrial design before earning his degree in automotive design at the Royal College of Art in London. But his work shows he's not shackled to the past. While he might create a subtle design cue here and there meant to create a connection to a vehicle's heritage — the MG F's grille or the Defender's Alpine roof windows — McGovern doesn't do retro designs.

The new Jaguars may be unlike anything we've ever seen from the brand. Some critics are already writing Jaguar off. But I'm not betting against McGovern.