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Jaguar's internet-breaking Type 00 concept has made its UK public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, just months before the firm reveals the production version of the radical electric super-GT that will start its new era. 

The concept was revealed late last year as a statement of intent for the reinvention of Jaguar, which has taken all of its models off sale for a year while it lays the groundwork for a new range of all-electric luxury cars in a far higher price bracket.

The first of these will be revealed at the end of this year as a sleek, four-door GT with up to 986bhp and a design that departs completely from Jaguar's past line-up - both inside and out, as previewed by the Type 00. Due in production in the middle of next year, it will be followed by two more luxury cars, thought to include a larger limousine-style saloon and a Bentley Bentayga-rivalling SUV.

The concept car is a two-door fixed-head coupé, a body type we’re told will not be built. But it has perhaps been artfully chosen because it loosely echoes the layout of the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, the car nearly everyone cites as the leader of a previous great leap forward in Jaguar design.

 

 

 

 

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Company insiders say the concept coupé’s size, proportions and, above all, its design style are all “very close” to the brand’s first next-generation production car: a blocky Porsche Taycan-rivalling super-GT that has been recently pictured testing. That car and its radical styling were first revealed by Autocar back in 2023, and the Type 00 concept shows how accurate our sources were.

This will be the first of three models to be launched, with about a year between them, on the new purpose-designed JEA architecture. That platform will, Jaguar estimates, offer as much as 430 miles of range and the ability to add 200 miles with 15 minutes of charge. This would suggest power being drawn from a battery in excess of 100kWh, but Jaguar has yet to confirm a pack size.

This concept is the product of an exhaustive process that led designers to produce 13 full-size models on the way, and its maturity shows. All were avant-garde, according to design chief Gerry McGovern. “Anything iterative would not have taken us where we wanted to go,” he said.

Its name, which reprises the word ‘Type’ used for so many great Jaguars, also suggests that future nomenclature won’t stray too far from the past.

Although the Type 00 is a two-door car with forward-hinged dihedral doors and built on a shorter-than-production wheelbase, it tells us plenty about the forthcoming saloon. We already know this is a low, lithe car in the old Jaguar mould, with a raked roof, a long wheelbase and a uniquely long bonnet.

It’s also one of a new wave of cars that ditches a heavy and fundamentally useless rear window and uses twin side cameras, and a digital rear-view mirror like that offered in its Defender cousin.

The Type 00’s shape is defined by long, confident lines that spell out beautiful, opulent proportions, according to its maker. The modernist surfaces are starkly simple, almost flat in places, but they incorporate sleek compound curves where needed.

The overall effect is boldness – a key aim of the designers – yet the surfacing and sparse details carry impressions of sophistication and restraint, as befits a Jaguar selling in the £120,000 bracket, more than twice the price of an outgoing-generation Jag.

The glasshouse stresses the theme of lowness. The Type 00 has a fairly high waist and a flattish roof with a ‘fast’ rear panel (without window) that gives it almost a chop-top look. In that one way, it faintly resembles one previous Jaguar: the XJS.

The car has a bluff front with no ‘proper’ grille, using Jaguar’s new 16-bar Strike Through design device as frontal embellishment. The same device is used again atop the long bonnet and it even flows through the raked windscreen to become a fascia-topped feature. The massive 23in alloys also use the same multi-line Strike Through as part of their own design.

Inside, it is a stunning, cream-coloured compartment for two that shuns leather in favour ofmodern, sustainable textiles such as Kvadrat (already popular in production Defenders and Range Rovers). It features a pair of elegantly designed bucket seats, constructed in a way that avoids visible stitching (as in the Defender Octa). There’s also a surface called Travertine Stone on the centre console (a genuine stone veneer) and a brass spine runs along the length of the cabin.

The concept’s controls and instruments are comprehensive, rethought but minimised in what has become a very JLR way. “Just as on the outside, deployable technologies are a hallmark of the interior,” said interior design chief Tom Holden.

This is shown by two rearview screens (“that glide silently and theatrically”), which save the Type 00 from having untidy exterior rear-vision mirrors. The door releases are in the roof console next to a long panoramic roof. And instead of choosing your driving mode from a switch, you drop a brass token into a slot in the centre console.

Some of it is beautiful, some features are gimmicky and, unlike with the exterior, it’s far from clear how influential the Type 00’s cabin will be on the 2026 production car.

Overwhelmingly, the Type 00 fulfils its mission to be “a copy of nothing”, to employ once again that grievously overused quote from Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons. It also brings a new logic to the much-discussed rebranding elements: the Device Mark, the Strike Through, the Maker’s Mark (the new ‘leaper’ and simpler ‘JR’ medallion).

The new ‘jaGuar’ script looks okay on the car, despite its middle capital letter, and the Strike Through provides interesting detail for the car’s frontal surface – where traditionally a grille would be – while also giving the rear body panel an unmistakable ‘new Jaguar’ identity. The new brass leaper provides detail on each of the car’s front flanks and the ‘JR’ medallions are used as wheel centres. It all comes together far better than many critics might have imagined a few weeks ago.

In most ways, the Type 00’s design collides head on with the proportions of the outgoing I-Pace, Jaguar’s first full EV that was launched only six years ago and whose creators took pains to emphasise their car’s forward-control layout (and consequent short nose) and to brand it an SUV. This allowed it a sleek but high-riding shape with plenty of space for the battery below the cabin floor. We have yet to discover how the new-generation Jaguars will accommodate their batteries while retaining their low-slung stance.

The lowness of the Type 00 and the similarly low-riding production models to come promise a relatively small frontal area (despite a very upright, bluff front) as a way of delivering decent aerodynamic performance.

But good aero is not the only priority, it seems. Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover said it was a key objective from the project’s earliest days to resist – for concept and production models – the arch-conventional, somewhat hackneyed use of high-riding, forward-control shapes that had “spent too long in the wind tunnel” and been adopted by many current EVs as a way of delivering Jaguar’s avowed “fearless creativity” of design.

Though everyone at JLR takes pains to credit the whole 600-strong JLR design group for work on this project, the influence of McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer whose success with highly profitable Range Rover models has underpinned the four-year-old Reimagine plan, is clear. The idea to “think Range Rover” at Jaguar has driven the adoption of its reductive, modernist approach to the new cars.

While promoting something “very different”, McGovern sympathises with the plight of his design predecessors at Jaguar, pointing out that the company’s product objectives 10 years ago simply wouldn’t have allowed this bold approach. “Back then, the company thought very differently,” he said, “and was aiming at very different competitors.”

The target was to grab sales from BMW and Audi with good but mainstream premium models like the XE and XF saloons and the E-Pace and F-Pace SUVs. In the past months, all of those cars, as well as the I-Pace have been ditched.

Understandably, none of Jaguar’s bigwigs wants to get into a discussion about the size of the risk they’re taking with Jaguar, though most admit there is one. JLR CEO Adrian Mardell takes a determined tone by insisting that “there will be no success for JLR without Jaguar”. That’s probably just in case any of us thought JLR people could have a happier life at Gaydon by shutting Jaguar, selling the name to the Chinese and concentrating on making super-successful Range Rovers for a living.

While the reinvention risks alienating some of Jaguar’s traditional customers, the firm seems determined it will win over a new clientele of car lovers with £120,000 to spend. With its completely new products, this Gaydon team wants to live up to Enzo Ferrari’s age-old quote about their predecessors’ E-Type being the most beautiful car in the world.

Glover, who has spent a year telling people how excited he is by the size of the challenge ahead, cites copious research to back his view of the people who will buy a new-gen Jaguar.

“First and foremost,” he said, “they’ll be independently minded. They’ll have an appreciation of design and will be looking for exclusivity. We expect them to be young and wealthy, connected and more likely to live urban lives. They’ll be cash rich and time poor, so every aspect of their journey with us will need to be effortless.”

In the light of today’s EV slowdown, does he have fears for Jaguar’s acceptance? Not really, it seems. It’s all a matter of timing. Jaguar is talking about models that will be in their prime in 2030, he explains, not 2025.

“Besides, our product will be game-changing,” he said. “Up to 430 miles of range, and in excess of 200 miles of charge possible in 15 minutes. That makes it fundamentally different from what’s on the market today.”

It's a tough time for city cars. Over the past few years, we've lost several great ones to ever-changing CO2 regulations and new safety regulations – and it doesn't help that car makers simply make more profit from higher-riding SUVs. 

It's a shame, because the best city cars generally consume less fuel and use the least amount of resources in their construction. 

Still, the city car genre isn't going down without a fight, and despite the increasing challenge of making these mini marvels meet law makers' demands, the current crop includes some of the best ever.

Choosing the perfect city car can make all the difference for navigating busy streets, tight parking spots, and stop-and-go traffic with ease. But city cars are also getting much more accomplished at travelling long distances, delivering better fuel economy and utilising smarter technology than ever before.  

What’s more, with their skinny tyres, low mass and peppy engines, these machines often deliver driver thrills way out of proportion to their humble place in the automotive pecking order.

So which is the best city car on sale today? Our top 10 is packed with charming models – but our pick of the lot is the Fiat Grande Panda, which we've also named as the best small car on sale. It takes eye-catching style and blends it with an all-important dose of fun on the road. 

Read on to see which models stand out in 2025 for their urban agility and everyday convenience.

The next-generation Alpine A110 will introduce a new driver-focused cockpit design majoring on physical controls, which will then be rolled out to all of its models. 

The third-generation A110, due to launch next year with exclusively electric power and previewed below, will be the brand's first model to feature a completely bespoke interior, rather than one adapted from sibling brand Renault's cars - and the company will major on analogue switchgear over digital controls.

Alpine design boss Antony Villain spoke to reporters as the brand's new A390 SUV made its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and said that the brand will emphasise the importance of driver engagement and minimise distraction with its next-gen cabins.

"Starting on the future A110 we will enter a new generation of cockpit that will be really, really new. We'll stay with the same ingredients, but we push further. Once again, we are now building something really strong and this will be developed on all the cars that are coming."

The Alpine A290 hot hatchback is based on the Renault 5 and so largely shares that car's cockpit, with a large wraparound digital display on the dashboard, while the A390 has a similar set-up to the Renault Mégane E-Tech, with most functions controlled by a 12in portrait touchscreen. 

Villain acknowledged that such screens are the norm now, because "customers want technology on purpose", but said Alpine's more driver-focused cars need a more traditional and physical approach. "So we'll have a lot of physical button mixing with minimal digital things."

"Of course there is this trend of having screens everywhere, but to be honest, when you want to focus on driving, you don't really focus on screens. You need to have instinctive access to every crucial function," he said.

"But you have also an emotional relation with the machine, and you control the machines - it's not the screens controlling the machine.

"When you buy a sports car, you want to be in control. You don't want the car to start itself. You want to master the car. You want to start the car. You have your ritual. You want to set your things. 

"It's not the car that drives you and controls you, it's the opposite."

Villain also gave some more clues as to the final design of the electric A110, revealing that "there are no retro cues", unlike the current car which is heavily inspired by the 1960s A110. 

There will, however, be "all the codes of the A110" so it is recognisable as the descendant of today's mid-engined car - the quad headlights and squat, mid-engined silhouette being cited as key examples. However, the "form language" he said, will be more closely related to the A390 - so expect a sharply pointed nose, a swooping roofline and swollen arches to be among its defining characteristics.

Villain emphasised that the electric A110 will be no taller than the outgoing petrol car, hinting that it will not have its battery under the floor as is conventional with EVs - but perhaps behind the seats for optimal weight distribution, or arranged in a T-shape like the Maserati Granturismo Folgore.

"We'll keep it super low. It's super important that we keep it low."

Villain refused to be drawn on when the wraps will come off the electric A110, following the recent release of the first official preview image, but the current ICE car has only months left in production and it is likely the company will look to minimise the length of time its halo product is off the market.

Company bosses earlier confirmed that – as well as being as low as the current car – the new A110 will also be lighter than its combustion-engined rivals, despite the switch to EV.

Outgoing Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo told Autocar that the company had made a “not rational” decision to “invest a lot of money” in a bespoke electric sports car platform for the next A110 and its derivatives – including a 2+2 version called the A310 – but it had “looked at Porsche for inspiration” in how to successfully build a sports brand.

“Porsche has the 911 [platform] as their own, and then they use others [VW Group architectures] for the likes of the Taycan and Cayenne. You keep the heart then as very true to the brand,” he said.

To that end, the Alpine sports car platform – called APP – will be uncompromising in its purpose to root the French brand in performance models, which then lends credibility to its more lifestyle-focused mainstream models, such as the new A390.

“The next A110 will be lighter than a comparable car with a combustion engine but with no compromise in performance,” said de Meo.

He added that making the bespoke architecture was objectively “a completely stupid decision” due to the likely return on investment in pure sales terms. A planned tie-up with Lotus on the architecture fell through but Alpine places such importance on bona fide sports cars that it has continued development by itself. 

Alpine has experimented with lightweight electric models previously, such as with the A110 E-ternité concept, an electric conversion of the current A110 that just undercut the Porsche 718 Boxster at 1400kg.