Callum Skye unveiled with segment-defying design and electric drivetrain

Long-time Jaguar design boss Ian Callum retired in 2019 and started the design company that bears his name shortly after. The young brand has embarked on several projects since, including turning the Jaguar C-X75 concept into a street-legal model, and it has announced its most ambitious undertaking yet. Named after a whiskey-distilling island off of Scotland, the Skye is the first car developed by Callum from scratch.

We first heard about the Skye in late 2023, and the project has made big progress since. It has reached the prototype stage, and it will make its public debut at the Concours on Savile Row that’s opening in London on May 22, 2024. The overall proportions haven’t changed in the past few months, meaning the Skye remains difficult to pin into a market segment. Is it a coupe with SUV-like ground clearance, an SUV with a coupe-like body, or a more sophisticated take on the decades-old concept of the beach buggy? Regardless, it’s sure to turn heads.

Callum revealed the Skye’s interior ahead of the EV’s debut. There’s space for four passengers in a 2+2 layout, and the driver faces a three-spoke steering wheel, a tablet-like touchscreen for the infotainment system and a vertical row of small, round touchscreens on the center stack. The 2+2 layout includes a pair of sport seats for the front passengers and a rear bench seat designed as storage or to carry smaller passengers.

The drivetrain is built around a 42-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that holds enough electricity for about 170 miles of driving range. While that hardly qualifies the Skye for the “long-range” label, Callum notes that an available fast-charging system charges the pack in less than 10 minutes. The brand quotes a 0-60-mph time of under four seconds, but additional specifications haven’t been announced. We know the dimensions, however: it’s about 159 inches long, 74.8 inches wide, and it weighs 2,535 pounds, which is surprisingly low for an EV.

For context, the Skye is around half a foot shorter and an inch wider than a two-door Jeep Wrangler and about 200 pounds heavier than a current-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata. The big tires aren’t there just to look cool: Callum is developing the coupe for serious off-roading.

The order book is already open, and pricing ranges from £80,000 to £100,000 depending on options; these figures respectively represent approximately $101,600 and $127,000 at the current conversion rate. Callum expects “low-volume” production numbers and it will announce more variants of the Skye later in 2024. Some will put an even bigger emphasis on off-road capability, while others will be road-focused.