Inside Jaguar's DNA: How the greatest ever Jags helped build the new GT We take the chance to drive new GT alongside its iconic forebears, to see if the brand’s lineage remains intact Jaguar’s ‘Copy Nothing’ strapline and associated ad campaign marked a new era for the brand – just before the covers came off the Type 00 concept in late 2024. It’s a mantra that will apparently inform everything the company creates over the next few years, as it looks to reposition itself as a luxury car maker “bigger than Bentley” in terms of outright sales volume. You might ask therefore – as indeed, we did – why we’re sitting in an early E-Type, preparing to drive a still-camouflaged version of Jaguar’s new four-door electric GT; if this EV is a copy of nothing, why front the firm’s most iconic reference points from its illustrious 90-year history, alongside senior executives from engineering, brand and design? “It’s OK to copy yourself, isn’t it?” remarks JEA (Jaguar Electric Architecture) chief engineer, Jon Darlington. “Instead of benchmarking stuff already out there, we went and drove cars from our back catalogue. It wasn’t about taking measures. It was about a feeling: what do you see, what do you feel? The process you are going to go through – driving these cars – is the process we went through.” Even without peeling back the layers of black and white disguise, there’s no missing the long bonnet and swept-back shape of the new GT – not dissimilar to the stunning E-Type that’s been brought out for us to try. “The team [at Jaguar] really understands good proportions,” Jaguar’s production design director, Andy Wheel, tells us. “That distance – from the front wheel to the A-post – that is something that instantly brings back all those