You chose a fine time to leave me, Lucille!
Kenny Rogers’ lament to the tragedy of inopportune timing
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“Timing,” we are constantly told, “is everything.” Humour, whether it’s Jerry Seinfeld on the world stage or Uncle Bob telling a dirty joke on New Year’s Eve, is totally dependent on timing. Pretty much every boxer not named Mayweather or Pacquiao puts their faith in the adage that “timing beats speed.” And, as Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Burry, and David Ayres — that last one’s the lucky Zamboni-driver-turned-substitute goalie who subbed in for the Carolina Hurricanes and won his only NHL game — can attest, sometimes being in the right place at the right time really is everything. So, if you will, please allow me to present my favourite story about the serendipity of timing.
Naturally, it’s all about cars. Or, more specifically, one singular, solitary car. Its name was C-X75, and it was made by Jaguar. Despite it being a one-off — and, perhaps more importantly, a Jag — it was a great car. In fact, with some 41 years of performance-car evaluation as testament, I think it, without question, the greatest supercar never made. And, yes, I have driven all the others.
When it was first introduced back in 2012, the C-X75 had everything that a supercar required for success. It was powerful (it boasted nigh on 900 horses); fast (I can personally attest it went well over 300 km/h [186 mph]); and mondo exotic, its gas engine lifted directly from a Formula One car (actually, a proposed F1 car that never saw the light of day, but an F1 car nonetheless). It was also stunningly beautiful, a fact you can verify yourself via this peek at the recent one-off restyling of Ian Callum’s original.
Most importantly, at least for this story, it was the most advanced of the original hypercars, an impressive feat when you consider that its direct competition was Ferrari’s LaFerrari, Porsche’s 918 Spyder, and McLaren’s incredible P1. What made the Jag unique was that, unlike the other three — which were, despite their claim to battery power, really just straight-ahead big-inch supercars — the C-X75 truly was a glimpse into the future of electrification.
While the Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren essentially just tacked a relatively small electric motor onto the ass end of a big gas engine — in the case of the LaFerrari, a truly humongous V12 — the C-X75 mated its electric motors to a minuscule little 1.6-litre four-banger. Oh, it was a gem of a turbo- and supercharged little four that screamed to 11,000 rpm, originally designed by Williams for a stillborn F1 racer. Nonetheless, it was indeed a 1.6L turbo, just like that which powers the 2025 Kia Carnival PHEV parked in my driveway.
More importantly, considering our current rush to plug-ins, it was the most electrified of supercars. Its three electric motors accounted for almost 400 of its total 900 horsepower. It was powered by the biggest battery of the four hypercar rivals, with a capacity of some 19.3 kilowatt-hours, and offered the longest electric-only range (nearly 60 kilometres) and the highest battery-only top speed. Indeed, the 150 km/h (93 mph) I eked out of the C-X75 on battery power alone is about the same as Ferrari squeezes out of its latest SF90 today.
Unfortunately — this is a story all about bad timing, after all — you can guess the rest. The C-X75, so far ahead of its time, was cancelled. According to Jaguar’s then-brand director, Adrian Hallmark, it was all because it was “the wrong time to launch an £800,000 to £1-million supercar.”
The reason for that seemingly-long winded tribute to a car most have never heard of — and even fewer got to drive — is because Jaguar is presently at the centre of another story about timing. This one, too, is being sung by the branding department, is also about electrification, and, just to prove that no one reads history any more (not even of the most recent variety), it is also about some really expensive cars Jaguar hopes to peddle.
The internet — at least the automotive portion of it — is all a-buzz this week over a new ad campaign from Jaguar. Considering it’s but 30 seconds long, it’s already courted more than its fair share of controversy. It’s been called overly “woke”; lamented for not showing even a hint of an automobile; and, for a campaign with the tagline “Copy Nothing,” seems to have provided a surprisingly obvious homage to Apple’s famed 1984 Super Bowl ad.
Marketing department mistakes aside, we know exactly three things about the all-new Jaguar marque: that its lineup will consist of just three cars; that those cars will all be electrified; and, most dramatically of all, that they will be expensive. As in uber-expensive. Like, blowing right by Mercedes-Benz and BMW. No one knows what the exact price range will be, but Jaguar is adamant it will leave the German pretenders behind. And so, while Jag’s new EVs probably won’t go head-to-head against Rolls-Royce and Ferrari, we shouldn’t expect much change back from the MSRP of, say, a Bentley or Lamborghini.
More troubling — at least from a timing point of view — is that the company is launching this all-electric brand just as pretty much everyone else is retreating from battery power. Lithium-ion might have been all the rage when Jaguar’s brain trust hatched this plan five years ago, but the bloom is, at least temporarily, off that rose.
Mercedes, BMW, and Audi are all having trouble selling big-ticket electrics. Rolls-Royce’s electric Spectre stormed out of the gate, but hasn’t sustained its first-intender excitement. Rimac, they of possibly the fastest, most refined supercar ever, is having a decidedly hard time selling its all-electric Nevera despite its incredible 1,888 hp. In fact, Rimac’s difficulty in separating the independently foolish from their ill-gained millions is why Bugatti’s latest hypercar, the Tourbillon, is a hybrid rather than a full BEV.
So, forget all the controversy about silly ads. Ignore the lament — so aptly written by my friend Matt Bubbers — about the loss of storied Jaguars past. Yes, you’re right to contend that Jaguar desperately needs serious reinvention. The real issue is that right now is a piss-poor time to be launching any all-electric brand. Especially when you’re a luxury marque doubling down on the bet with seemingly no possibility of a retreat, as everyone else seemingly has, to hybrids.
That’s not to say Jaguar is doomed to failure. Oh, you’d be absolutely right that, if the first of these mega-buck, battery-powered Jags were introduced, as I just said, right now, Jaguar’s re-brand would almost assuredly be an abject failure. Current market conditions suck, economies around the world are on a precipice, and, as I said, the luxury EV market is struggling.
But poor timing works both ways, and the fine print left out of pretty much all the discussions of Jaguar’s rebranding is that it isn’t selling these new electrics today. In fact, they probably won’t hit the market until at least late 2026. And, just as today’s pessimism doesn’t reflect the headlong rush into electrification that we’ve seen for the last three years, it doesn’t mean that today’s negativity will last forever. Indeed, if there’s a lesson that Jaguar should have learned from cancelling the C-X75, it’s that the auto industry, like the stock market, is almost impossible to time.
So instead, imagine this: Jaguar will almost assuredly make some sort of electrified supercar to halo its new upscale lineup. Now pretend that the C-X75 — a car that was, more than a decade ago, already the equal of Ferrari’s much-celebrated SF90 — was not cancelled, and now has had the benefit of more than a decade of constant refinement. That would be a car worthy of stupid commercials. That would be a car that could carry an entire (re)brand(ing) on its shoulders. It would be, if such a thing actually does exist, perfect timing.
Author’s Note: There will be some, possibly many, who will disagree with my high praise of the C-X75. All opinions are, of course, encouraged. That said, fewer than 12 people outside of Jaguar, possibly even as few as five or six, drove the C-X75 PHEV back in the day. Of that small group, even fewer — perhaps even no others — were lucky enough, as I was, to drive all four of those Porsche, McLaren, Ferrari, and Jaguar first-gen electrified supercars on a race track. If you were one of those lucky few, I would dearly love to hear your remembrances. For the rest of you armchair engineers, kindly submit your comments to [email protected] to ensure your analysis is given the attention it deserves.
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