Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern Joins JLR Board

Gerry McGovern’s appointment reinforces that gorgeous design will remain a priority for Jaguar.

While I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Jaguar fan and work in automotive industry, I don’t honestly spend too much time thinking about the corporate end of Coventry’s affairs. When it comes to my favorite car brand, I’m generally too preoccupied looking at priceless racing machines, gorgeous recreations of timeless classics, or listings for clean, early series XJ cars with Chevy swaps to care about any machinations on the executive end.

But the appointment of Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern to the board made my ears perk up, for a few reasons.

First off, both the Evoque and the Defender were released on McGovern’s watch, and those massive hits revitalized the Land Rover brand. So it’s safe to say he has a green thumb when it comes to generating cash, which is key for any car company. Well, any car company save Tesla. But more importantly, putting a designer on the board reinforces just how important crafting beautiful machines is to very soul of Jaguar Land Rover brand.

As the old saying goes, “if you don’t look back at your car after you park it, you bought the wrong car,” and for all their random imperfections, Jaguars have always been lookers. That can never change, and elevating McGovern to the board should ensure it doesn’t.

But thinking about corporate structure of Jaguar made me consider some of the headwinds the company is facing, in a way I haven’t for a while.

Obviously, there’s the ongoing pandemic, which has thrown the economies of the world into chaos, shuttered businesses, and put millions out of work.

While there’s hope on that front — thanks to expanding vaccination programs on both sides of the Atlantic — it’s not like there’s a magic switch we can flip and put everything back to normal. We’ll be cleaning up the devastation of the coronavirus for years to come — and we don’t even have a clear picture of all the destruction yet.

To compound things, there’s the looming impact of Brexit. Because while it was billed as a boon to British industry, the global community seems to be united in the idea that leaving the European Union will make doing business in merry old England too pricey. Ford and Honda have already make significant cuts to their UK manufacturing operations, and nobody with two brain cells to rub together thinks the worst is over yet.

Remember, the powers that be in Brussels have little incentive to cut Boris Johnson’s government a deal.

Finally, there’s the sibling rivalry element to consider. Because as Automotive News noted in considering the historic marque’s current challenges, “the Jaguar brand has also underperformed Land Rover in recent years with some model overlap.” Given the current appetite for SUVs, crossovers, and trucks, it sure seems like Land Rover is better poised to take advantage of the situation, and that makes me wonder about the brands will differentiate themselves.

Will we see the Jaguar side shrink into more niche-market electric vehicles? I’d certainly be happy if Jaguar Classic started producing electric retrofit models, akin to this lovely XK120. But maybe I’m nuts — shoot me a message and let me know what you think!

Photos: Jaguar Land Rover

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