Jaguar Land Rover—sorry, JLR, as the marketing bods insist we call it these days—has reportedly shown the door to its long-time design supremo Gerry McGovern. Autocar India broke the news, and while JLR isn’t saying a peep, the silence is speaking rather loudly.
McGovern, who’d been steering the company’s creative vision since 2020, apparently found himself surplus to requirements after the arrival of new CEO P.B. Balaji. Balaji, formerly the numbers man at Tata Motors, stepped into the top job last month following Adrian Mardell’s retirement. Nothing like fresh leadership to rearrange the furniture—and occasionally chuck someone out of the window.
The timing is hardly subtle. JLR is still dusting itself off after a hefty cyberattack that froze its factories, Jaguar’s pricey electric grand tourer has slipped down the calendar, and the company’s broader reinvention looks wobbly enough to need stabilisers. A new boss with a new direction was always going to mean casualties.
McGovern, of course, wasn’t just sketching bonnet lines. He helped spearhead Jaguar’s contentious reinvention as an ultra-luxury, all-electric marque—a strategy that birthed the eyebrow-raising Type 00 concept. Critics called it bold; others called it something far less printable.
Love or loathe his latest work, McGovern’s influence on the company is undeniable. He had a hand in shaping the reborn Land Rover Defender, the Range Rover Evoque, and the Velar—models that helped prop up JLR’s image even when the spreadsheets looked grim.
For now, JLR is keeping its lips tightly sealed. But the message seems clear enough: a new era is coming, and not everyone gets to ride along in the back seat.