Jaguar Thinks Its Mistake Was Trying To Please Everyone

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, July 25, 2023 and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.

According to Bob: Why the AMG C63 Hybrid Is So Goddamn Cool

1st Gear: The Brand With ‘No Equity Whatsoever’

Those are not our words, but the the words of Jaguar’s Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern, who recently joined the rest of Jaguar Land Rover to present the the British automaker’s plans for the future to investors in England. It just so happens that the United States is key to this strategy, because the U.S. has plenty of millionaires. Again, not our words. Courtesy Automotive News Europe:

Jaguar’s past U.S. success is now “lost within Ford Motor Company data,” said [Adrian] Mardell, who was confirmed as JLR CEO on July 20 after holding the position on an interim basis.

Mardell joined JLR in 1990, the year after Ford bought the company from British Leyland. Back then, Jaguar was targeting a much richer customer. Its XJ sedan started at $54,750 in the U.S., equivalent to around $100,000 today, while the XK coupe cost from $69,900.

The brand hopes to be similarly successful with its new, more luxurious range. “There are 20 million millionaires in the U.S. alone,” Mardell said. “So, a lower volume, higher price positioning is absolutely the right position for Jaguar today.”

It’s unfortunate, though not terribly surprising, that Jaguar has seemingly lost a chunk of its history to Ford’s annals. Either way, the brand will draw upon its strategy then to determine how to proceed in North America. It’ll also try to upset people, because that’s always a compelling strategy when potential buyers aren’t paying attention to you:

Trying to appeal as many premium buyers as possible pushed the brand into “mediocrity,” JLR Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern said at the same investor event, held at JLR’s HQ in Gaydon, central England.

McGovern is leading the design of the first new model of Jaguar’s new era, a full-electric four-door GT. The GT will be the first of three all-new electric Jaguars. It will be unveiled this year and will go on sale next year, starting at 100,000 pounds ($129,000) in the U.K.

The design of the new models will split opinion, McGovern said.

“What we will not worry about is being loved by everybody, because that is the kiss of death,” he said. “That is what put Jaguar in the situation it is in today, which is with no equity whatsoever.”

McGovern’s perspective sounds not terribly dissimilar from that of BMW’s designers over the past few years, which basically amounts to designing cars to generate discord, rather than approval. This was Jaguar’s faux pas, the way the chief designer sees it, and not that its offerings have been routinely middle of the pack or obviously aged over the past decade.

Here’s our friend Andrew Collins’ review of a Jaguar E-Pace from five years ago where he recommends a Mazda CX-3 instead. Here’s our friend Kristen Lee’s review of a Jaguar F-Type SVR from 2020, which she found to be good but definitely not worth $150,000. Perhaps these products failed to reach buyers because they were too conventionally pretty or everything to everyone. (I’m less inclined to believe the latter for the six-figure F-Type.) Or perhaps they failed because they were merely fine, rather than astounding, and Jaguar didn’t do marketing at the time. A poor reputation for quality probably didn’t help things either. Jaguar need only look within the family to understand making enemies isn’t necessary to get noticed. But that’s the playbook it’s chosen to follow.

2nd Gear: Even The Big Bolt Recall Couldn’t Ruin GM’s Second Quarter

General Motors’ second quarter figures are in, and they’re looking good, with a 52 percent rise in income year-over-year during the period. The result has emboldened the company to plan to slash $3 billion in fixed costs, rather than its earlier target of $2 billion, by 2025. And it now expects to end 2023 with an extra $1 billion in adjusted earnings, for a total of $12 to $14 billion, per Automotive News. Unless a strike throws a wrench into things, anyway.

“We’re building momentum thanks to incredible customer response to our new trucks and SUVs, and strong execution of our business plan by the GM team, our dealers and our suppliers,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a letter to shareholders.

GM’s updated guidance assumes the company will reach a new contract with the UAW later this year without a work stoppage, which could prove difficult given the union’s heated rhetoric. CFO Paul Jacobson, speaking to media, declined to say how a strike this fall might impact the automaker.

Jacobson also said the company’s more aggressive cost-cutting efforts would not include any additional planned staff reductions. About 5,000 salaried employees chose to take a buyout early this year as part of the automaker’s previous $2 billion reduction target.

Demand was particularly strong in North America, according to CEO Mary Barra. GM is working to build double the number of EVs in the second half of 2023 versus the first, where manufacturing for the Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer EV was constrained. Speaking of EVs, GM continues to take a bath on that massive Bolt battery recall, which cost the company $792 million in the quarter alone. To date, it reports that it’s fixed 80 percent of affected vehicles.

3rd Gear: Hyundai’s Latest Effort To Fix Theft-Prone Cars

As of June, Hyundai reported that only 9 percent of eligible vehicles had its anti-theft software update installed, while for Kia that figure rested at 11 percent. That’s simply not good enough. To address it, the Korean automaker has decided to take over a Washington, D.C. stadium that hasn’t been in regular use in 15 years and will soon be destroyed for a sort of mass-update party. From Auto News:

The automaker is staging a mobile service center in Washington, D.C., this week for owners of the affected vehicles residing within 25 miles of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where the event will take place.

According to company spokesperson Ira Gabriel, about 37,000 Hyundai owners were alerted via email about the opportunity.

The service center will cover two of the stadium’s parking lots. Technicians will be on-site to install and complete the software upgrade, a process Hyundai estimates will take less than an hour.

Gabriel said the clinic is the first in what could be a series of events and is a response to its dealer network being swamped with customers asking for the software update.

You know there’s a problem when customers are asking for an update, and yet the installation rate is still that low. I suppose we can all look forward to Hyundai and Kia to land in our local abandoned arenas in the coming months. They should sell tour date tees.

4th Gear: Toyota’s Woes In China Take Their Toll

Toyota has dismissed 1,000 contract workers in China who were part of its joint venture with Guangzhou Automobile Group, citing “the current production situation.” That’s code for “really poor sales.” From Bloomberg:

The slower transition to electric vehicles by Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. is translating into declining sales in China as car buyers embrace products by competitors such as Tesla Inc. and BYD Co. Toyota’s China deliveries declined for the first time in a decade in 2022, and the two dozen hybrids and EVs the brand has on sale haven’t been a hit with customers there.

The venture, called Guangzhou Toyota Motor Co., “will also provide the economic compensation required by law,” the spokesperson said.

Koji Sato, Toyota’s president, pledged in April at the Shanghai auto show that the brand would accelerate the development of electric cars tailored to the Chinese market.

In China Toyota sells a sedan called the bZ3, which is actually built by BYD on the Japanese automaker’s own architecture. It’s gotten off to a slow start and was recently the subject of a recall related to its door handles, per Electrek. Toyota’s dropped prices of both that sedan and the bZ4X in recent months to save its flagging relevancy in the country.

Reverse: Ford And Gandhi

On this day in 1941, 82 years ago, Gandhi made a new pen pal, per Smithsonian Magazine:

Ford wrote to Gandhi. “You are one of the greatest men the world has ever known,” he wrote in the brief letter. “May God help you and guide your lofty work.” In return, Gandhi sent Ford his portable spinning wheel. The relationship between two men from such different worlds might seem surprising, until you realize that they were united behind one aim: peace.

But Ford’s pacifism stemmed from a grim place. He was an anti-Semite. Years before he wrote to Gandhi, he was publishing an anti-Semitic newsletter, The International Jew, which inspired Hitler in forming his racist and delusional theories. […]

Gandhi, who also flirted with anti-Semitism, didn’t actually get Ford’s letter until December 8, 1941, writes History.com– the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, throwing the United States into war. The spinning wheel, called a charkha, that he sent back was one of the ones he used to make his own cloth, symbolizing his economic independence from British colonial rulers. The charkha was a symbol of Gandhi’s movement and India’s greater independence from Britain. Gandhi, who History.com writes was “greatly pleased,” signed the gift in both Hindi and English. It travelled 12,000 miles back to Ford in Greenfield Village, Michigan, reaching him in December 1942.

On The Radio: New Order – ‘The Perfect Kiss’

Credit: Enhanced Music Videos via YouTube

If Jaguar’s chief designer asked Bernard Sumner, Sumner would probably tell him that the “the kiss of death” goes actually more like this.