Gerry McGovern finally explained why he left JLR, and he's still defending the Jaguar rebrand
Gerry McGovern finally explained why he left JLR, and he's still defending the Jaguar rebrand.
Gerry McGovern spoke to Autocar's My Week in Cars podcast this week, his first interview since leaving JLR, addressing both his abrupt exit and the aftermath of Jaguar's polarising “Copy Nothing” rebrand campaign that he led.
A 24-year career that ended abruptly, and quietly
McGovern spent 24 years at JLR, rising to chief creative officer and leading the design of the reborn Defender, which this week spawned the road-legal Defender Dakar, along with several generations of Range Rover and Discovery. Autocar first reported his abrupt departure from the company last December, but JLR did not officially confirm the move until March this year, a gap that fuelled speculation over whether McGovern had quit or been dismissed.
McGovern's version of events
McGovern called the rumours around his exit “all pretty inaccurate,” though he stopped short of detailing exactly what did happen. He is now serving as an advisor to Norton Motorcycles, but was clear his time designing cars isn't over: “I want to do new stuff, and I'm aware there are many opportunities out there. I've had a lot of approaches. I'm very particular about what I want and who I work with. But I'm definitely going to do more cars. They're in my blood.”
Still no regrets about “Copy Nothing”
McGovern also used the moment to defend Jaguar's 2024 “Copy Nothing” rebrand, the campaign that showed no cars at all, instead built around eclectic models in bright clothing and unusual hairstyles. The reveal drew immediate, hostile backlash, with Elon Musk and Donald Trump both publicly labelling it “woke,” and forced Jaguar to shelve additional campaign materials that had already been prepared. McGovern's defence was blunt: “I didn't even know what woke-ism meant at the time,” insisting the point was simply to communicate that Jaguar would be a copy of nothing.
The reveal that changed the conversation
The backlash cooled once the Jaguar Type 00 concept itself was revealed, including a pink version McGovern described in typically direct terms: “We're going to Miami, boys and girls, think Miami, think Florida, flamingos, think art deco, pastel colors.” McGovern maintains the campaign worked on its own terms, claiming Jaguar became “the most talked-about brand in the world” for four months, after years of barely being discussed at all.
What Jaguar does with it next
The production version of that concept, the Type 01 electric sedan, is still coming, and Jaguar has confirmed it will move from the concept's two-door layout to four doors, with around 1,000hp on offer. Whether that car lands any better with buyers than the campaign did with the internet remains the real test of McGovern's era at Jaguar.
AutoNext Take
McGovern not apologising for “Copy Nothing” is the more honest position, even if it's not the more comfortable one. A rebrand campaign that gets a sitting US president weighing in unprompted has clearly failed at being ignored, whatever else it achieved.
The real tell here is the timeline. He left the company quietly enough that JLR sat on the announcement for three months, and it's taken this long for him to speak at all. That is not the posture of someone who thinks the story is fully resolved, whatever “pretty inaccurate” is doing in that sentence.
