Americans thought the Budweiser/Dylan Mulvaney debacle was one for the ages. It was certainly in the running. How could a company whose product was dependent on the good will and tastes of Normal Americans so badly misread its customer base? Anheuser-Busch (AB) lost at least $27 billion in market capitalization and couldn’t give its beer away. AB has never fully recovered.
But the Bud/Mulvaney mistake has surely taken second place to Jaguar’s self-destruction:
Last November, British sports car and luxury vehicle manufacturer Jaguar kicked off a major rebranding campaign on social media. According to finance website FinBold, the fierce backlash to their very first ad caused shares of Jaguar’s parent company, Tata Motors, to fall on a day when most other prices were rallying on the National Stock Exchange of India.
The widely mocked 30-second spot featured a racially diverse group of genderfluid individuals dressed in garish, brightly colored clothing. As the dour-faced actors emerged from what looked like a bright yellow pod, electronic music played in the background. Messages appeared intermittently on the screen that read: “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary,” “break moulds,” “copy nothing,” and finally the brand name was displayed. “Jaguar” was written using a combination of lower- and uppercase letters.
Graphic: X Screenshot
It was one of the most bizarre ads ever inflicted on an increasingly wary public. Jaguars have long been known as beautiful, expensive and often quirky vehicles with some models spending as much time in the shop as on the road. The ad, which featured not a single car, pegged the quirk meter with various beings of indeterminate gender with blank to surly expressions capering for the cameras.
For years, Jaguar has been repeatedly sold to a succession of parent companies, none of which seemed to have had any idea of Jaguar’s history or customer base. Bizarrely, its current owners have almost entirely stopped designing and updating its current offerings.
But, according to [Marketing Week’s Mark] Ritson, “Jaguar no longer cares about retaining its current customer base. … The company expects to retain only 10% to 15% of its current customer base. Jaguar will shift its targeting to younger, wealthier, more urban shoppers that the company describes as ‘design-minded’ and ‘cash-rich, time-poor.’”
In 2024 Jaguar’s sister brand Land Rover outsold Jaguar by six to one, leading to an epic disaster:
The Economic Times is reporting a nearly 98% drop in sales for April from a year earlier. According to the Times, “only 49 Jaguar vehicles were registered in Europe in April 2025, a 97.5% drop compared to 1,961 units in the same month last year. Year-to-date sales between January and April fell 75.1%, with just 2,665 cars sold across the continent.”
Graphic: Jaguar E-Type Series 1 4.2 Litre 1967. Wikimedia Commons.org. CC A-SA 4.0 International.
The company that built one of the most beautiful, iconic sports cars of all time, the XKE, lost 98% of its sales. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Jaguar announced it has stopped building internal combustion engine-powered vehicles and is focusing on producing nothing but electrically powered vehicles. At a time when the electric vehicle doom loop is closing at warp speed, such a decision is inexplicable.
In August of 2024 in Dodge emasculates muscle cars, I wrote of Dodge’s decision to turn their all-American muscle cars, the Charger and Challenger, into electric vehicles (EVs). Dodge at least recognized their customers bought those vehicles for the sound and feel only a powerful V8 can provide. Dodge’s solution? Software that would briefly interrupt power delivery to simulate shifting—“eRupt Mjultispeed Transmission”--and a high-watt stereo system that would simulate the sound of an accelerating V8. Dodge called the system the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust.” Dodge executives sneered at concerns about range—“Don’t care. It’s a muscle car; it’s badass”--and posted no range figures for their new, miraculous offerings.
Potential customers weren’t impressed, so unimpressed in fact that Dodge EV sales have been abysmal, and Dodge has recently announced it was reviving its big V8 engines. Even with that level of willful stupidity and unconcern for its customer base, Dodge has certainly not seen anything approaching a 98% drop in sales.
Dodge isn’t alone in going all in for EVs only to discover customers are all out. Ford has already lost untold billions on EVs and has “postponed” EV and battery plant production, yet apparently still hasn’t lost enough.
Jaguar certainly doesn’t have Ford’s financial depth, which makes its marketing and production decisions even more puzzling. Its infamous ad suggests it’s relying on people far more obsessed with their sexuality than any interest in expensive, British sports cars.
As the EV market is rapidly dying, so too is Wokeness. Pursuing that demographic may finally kill Jaguar.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.