News of the abrupt departure of JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern elicits feelings of both shock and long expectation, depending which group of commentators you consult.
Reasons for the shock are clear enough: McGovern was given a huge amount of control over the “reimagination” of Jaguar when former CEO Thierry Bolloré arrived to give shape to a rescue plan at the back end of 2020. What’s shocking is that McGovern’s close connection with the first "reimagined" model should be summarily severed merely months from its much-heralded public debut.
The expectation faction’s arguments are also easy to follow. Apparently unbidden, McGovern assumed a remarkable degree of autocratic control over not only the new Jaguars’ designs but also over many aspects of car creation that designers don’t usually control: publicity, advertising, brand development, timing, public statements and much more. No one inside the business seemed to have the intestinal fortitude to take him on, but many of those involved began to assume that such a situation was bound to cause festering resentments - and to end with a bang.
When PB Balaji, a new and deeply financially literate new CEO recently arrived at JLR from the very core of the parent company, Tata Group, many (not least the outspoken Indian financial press) believed his first mission would be to bring JLR (and McGovern) to heel.
The conservative managers of Tata hadn’t much enjoyed the adventurous, bizarre and often disastrously adverse publicity that had surrounded the unveiling of the Jaguar Type 00 concept and the reshaping of a fine old brand that went with that.
It can be safely assumed that McGovern’s departure results either from the designer’s own impatience with the new management’s attempts to bring him to heel or from the new regime losing patience with a talented maverick. It’s not yet clear which version is correct, but details are bound to emerge, and soon.
My own feeling is that it’s deeply disappointing not to see McGovern given the opportunity to see his first "reimagined" Jaguar through to its public debut - out of fascination for seeing how he would front a promising product.
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I think the biggest question is how badly mismanaged JLR has been in recent years. Especially selecting Thierry Bollore as CEO after he was fired at Renault for his Boston Consultancy Group plan, and for enacting it at Jaguar with the disasterous consequences of Jaguar now effectively dead.
It was easy to tell it was never going to work and Jaguar needed to continue to modernise and take a hybrid path, not throw everything out and go full EV. The market has punished companies that think this way already.