It’s been less than a year since the Jaguar automotive brand introduced what many — including this publication, I must note — called the “worst car ad ever.” And, while “go woke, go broke” isn’t a new phenomenon, Jaguar has taken it to previously unseen lows.
Now, a little over eight months since the ad was introduced — famously featuring what apparently was a gaggle of garishly dressed nonbinary flibbertigibbets and not a car to be seen — the marque is basically fulfilling the spot’s car-free promise.
The brand’s sales are down 97.5 percent (not an errant decimal point there), the corporate overlords behind it might be splitting with the geniuses behind the rebrand, and there’s no cars anywhere in the near future for a make that wants to go upmarket but doesn’t have the products or the cachet to do so.
Just in case you somehow missed it, I didn’t, and misery loves company. Thus, please sit through what appears to be an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” held in a post-apocalyptic fallout bunker:
Copy nothing. #Jaguar pic.twitter.com/BfVhc3l09B
— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024
Copy nothing — except dimwitted, androgynous high fashion and faceless 1990s industrial electronic music.
The general consensus was echoed by Tesla impresario Elon Musk, also the owner of X:
Do you sell cars?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
Would you consider buying a Jaguar?
Answer: Not anymore, pretty much!
According to an article in DesignRush last month, Jaguar only sold 49 vehicles in Europe in April and “now expects near-zero free cash flow due to new U.S. tariffs and EV investment.” Whoops!
“Jaguar’s April 2025 Europe sales plunged 97.5%, from 1,961 units to just 49 vehicles, marking a near-total collapse during its rebranding phase,” the outlet noted.
“BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi each retained market stability, selling approximately 50,000 to 75,000 units in April 2025 across Europe. Jaguar eliminated nearly its entire product lineup before replacements launched, leaving dealers with almost no inventory and alienating long-time customers.”
There are still some Jaguars left over, mind you, but they’re all the F-Pace compact SUV — which, to be fair, should be the best-selling vehicle in Jaguar’s lineup since it’s one of the most popular segments in the auto world. In fact, the vehicle sold over 45,000 units in its debut year, which was in 2016. Some Jaguars are timeless, but a compact SUV isn’t that timeless.
And, while the Jaguar Land Rover brand of Tata Motors can use the Land Rover part of the division to drive sales in the absence of any Jaguars, it can only do so for so long without the brand fading into irrelevance. That’s kind of important, because remember the switchover to EVs that was supposed to happen? That was slated for 2025 or 2026.
The infamous ad showed zero cars. Do you know how many legit running reboot EVs we’ve seen from Jaguar since then? None — and this concept, which was met with better reception than the Jaguar ad only by default, is more or less what’s been making the rounds since then:
A concept of the new Jaguar. I can only assume it’s another wind up. Or a bespoke effort to replace Lady Penelope’s Rolls Royce in the Thunderbirds. pic.twitter.com/dQ4Qs9Xf9O
— Andrew Neil (@afneil) December 3, 2024
That looks like a low-poly unlicensed car for an Atari Jaguar driving game, not a Jaguar EV that you’re expected to fork over $100,000-plus for. And, in case you’ve noticed, this is already 2025, so the idea that the Type 00 — as that concept is known as — is going to come to market sometime soon is wishful thinking at best. So, on top of woke messaging, you also have the woke decision to phase out all internal combustion engines for electric vehicles that aren’t selling the way car companies would have hoped anymore. Stellar thinking, that.
Jaguar is apparently searching for a new ad agency, outlets have revealed; in May, the U.K. Telegraph reported that Jaguar Land Rover was undertaking a review of its global marketing account, which means they’re probably shopping for someone who isn’t Accenture Song — the wonderful people responsible for that garish mess I forced you to watch.
However, the contract with the firm runs until the middle of next year — by which time, I’m guessing, we’ll still be laughing at the ad and Jaguar still won’t have any new cars for sale.
But, the fact we’re still talking about the ad is a sign of its success, according to some. Yes, it may still be on our minds, but in the same way that cars like the Yugo GV and the Chevrolet Corvair have lived on long past their end-of-sale date. This was a rebrand of an entire car company — only without a car and with a lot of woke symbolism that caused viral derision and collapse of a brand, not positive chatter.
Usually, when we talk about “go woke, go broke” in these pages, we’re talking about a movie that underperformed at the box office or a company seeing a disappointing quarter after getting mired in the culture wars. In this case, we’re talking about a car company that sold 49 — 49! — cars in all of Europe in a month. This is the total collapse of a brand in real time. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of people.
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