Does it feel like people are perhaps a little grumpier or more on edge these days? It’s not like it’s without reason. There are wars. The climate is going haywire. Someone just died of plague. Scientific research is under attack. Machines keep stealing humans’ work. The media is a mess. And just when it all starts to feel a little overwhelming, Jaguar goes and unveils a new car.

The Type 01 is the first model to arrive from Jaguar’s rebirth. The British carmaker was an early entrant to the modern EV market with the 2017 I-Pace, which was fun to drive even if it was too small inside and perhaps completely unreliable. An all-electric sedan was supposed to be next, but a year from the showroom, it was abruptly canceled, leaving the automaker with nothing to sell as old models like the F-Pace ceased production.

Instead, Jaguar got to work on an all-new electric vehicle platform called JEA, which will underpin an all-electric product line. An elevated ownership experience and a starting price of about double the brand’s previous $60,000 entry point was the idea, Jaguar boss Rawdon Glover told me in 2024. Then last year the brand started teasing its relaunch, and everyone got upset. Things got even worse when the first images of the slab-sided and pastel-shaded Type 00 coupe concept leaked.

Credit: Jaguar “The jag, it looks like a car you’d steal in Cyberpunk 2077,” said one Ars staffer approvingly. “The jag, it looks like a car you’d steal in Cyberpunk 2077,” said one Ars staffer approvingly. Credit: Jaguar

Today, we can see an iteration of that design, now a four-door GT called the Type 01. The previously brutalist shape is now adorned with the jewelry of reflectors that are required by the necessities of street legality, and of course there are now four doors rather than two. There is no rear window, but then there’s no rear window in a Polestar 4, and to be frank, barely a view out the back of a Corvette or even a Land Rover Defender when the spare tire is on the back. These days the technology for a central rear-view camera that replaces the mirror is proven and robust, happily.