In a recent interview with Autocar, Mardell revealed that he had driven the new GT and said it was the “most fun I’ve had” in his time as JLR boss.
“It was stunning in terms of its speed, its acceleration, its performance, but also how it delivered the power with a real sense of character,” he said. “The chassis team are really excited about the possibilities of the vehicle.”
Speaking more generally about Jaguar’s prospects as an all-electric luxury brand, Mardell said he was “certain we will have wait lists which are significant relative to the volumes we aspire for with the first product”.
He continued: “In today’s market conditions, I don’t see anything which is going to concern me about the success of the new Jaguar in this new world at all, actually.”
Mardell leaves JLR in a position of far greater stability than that it was in when he took the top job, but the company still faces strong headwinds.
Chief among those is the imposition of new tariffs on foreign-built cars in the crucial US market, which accounts for a huge proportion of sales of JLR’s most profitable models.
The UK recently secured a trade deal that reduced the US import tariff on its exported cars from an initially mooted 25% to 10%, which is good news for the Solihull-built Range Rover models and the Halewood-produced Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport.
But that levy only applies to the first 100,000 cars shipped to the US in a year, meaning any JLR models shipped above that number are liable to attract the higher 25% fee.
Similarly, while the EU has now struck a deal with the US, cars shipped from the region to North America will still attract a 15% tariff, which will have significant implications for the Defender and Discovery, both built in Slovakia.
Mardell’s eventual replacement will also have to negotiate JLR’s inevitable shift to a pure-electric line-up over the coming years, in the face of waning global demand for premium EVs.
