I’M ON THE ROAD AGAIN [556]

148 inches versus 206 inches

Nearly two years since Jaguar Cars announced an even-more-upmarket rebrand under the phrase “copy nothing”, and ten years since I first wrote about the Citroën 2CV, a car as far away from a Jaguar as you can get, two new cars were announced within a week of each other.

On Tuesday 6th October, the Jaguar Type 01, a four-door, four-seater grand touring saloon, and an evolution of the Type 00 coupé concept shown in 2024, was unveiled by JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) at an event in New York, with a starting price of £129,995. Five days later, Stellantis unveiled their own concept car, a Citroën 2CV reimagined as a modern supermini-sized city car, alongside a new version of the “Fourgonnette” van, aiming to be among the cheapest of available new cars, a tenth of the Jaguar’s cost, when the eventual production model goes on sale in 2028.

The timing of these cars’ launches was not the only reason for me considering them together, as the owners of both Jaguar and Citroën are using these new cars to reposition our perception of these brands. Jaguar is deliberately being pushed away from “premium mass market” Mercedes-Benz and BMW customers towards Bentley, Aston Martin and, well, Range Rover drivers, with an imposing design and price to match. Meanwhile, the outright quirkiness and excitement of Citroën car design arguably began fading after it merged with Peugeot in 1976, before becoming part of the even-larger Stellantis in 2021 – the current Citroën C3, sitting above the 2CV in size and also originally a 2CV-inspired design, can also be bought as both a Vauxhall/Opel Frontera and Fiat Grande Panda, with cosmetic and dashboard changes separating them.

Importantly, both the Type 01 and 2CV only have electric drivetrains. Jaguar had already stated their range would be electric-only by 2025, by which time they had stopped production to prepare, while European emissions rules had added enough to the cost of producing a new petrol-driven small car to make their price too high to be viable, already ending in the production of cars like the Peugeot 108, Citroën C1, Volkswagen Up! and even the Ford Fiesta. However, the Type 01 will be far less frugal with energy than the 2CV, with one electric engine in the front and two in the rear, producing an expected one thousand horsepower. I could not find details for what engine or batteries Citroën have planned, other than they want to keep the 2CV’s weight to under one metric tonne – a base Mini Cooper from BMW is 400kg more than that these days – so it won’t match the Jaguar’s expected range of four hundred miles on a single charge.

The Jaguar Type 00 concept was a two-door coupé, with my expectation being that a modern E-Type would appear. Instead, with two extra doors and a “grand tourer” description, the Type 01 is not a new XJ6 saloon either. Armour-plated XJs had often been used as British ministerial cars, but since Jaguar ended XJ production in 2019, its replacement in this capacity has either been the Range Rover, or even the Audi A8 – the Type 01 is too ostentatious for a politician to be seen using it in an official capacity. 

My having mentioned Aston Martin earlier is because the car the Type 01 reminds me of the most is the 1976-90 Lagonda, a cutting-edge design plied with computers and touch controls and, having been built by hand, made exclusive through its increased expense – they are even about the same size.

The Citroën 2CV, however, will only remind me of the original 2CV – every styling choice, from the tiny door handles, corrugated bonnet and headlights sticking out from above the front wheel arches, is a nostalgic exercise, and not just an inspiration like the original C3 from 2002. Coming from a mass-market car company with multiple names, the 2CV concept looks so much like the original 2CV that I cannot imagine the final version looking so close, as the platform on which it is built cannot be then shared for other cars – a very rounded-looking Peugeot or Vauxhall city car will just look suspicious.

That said, one other small car had a similar rounded design and protruding headlights, selling in huge numbers: the 2002-10 Nissan Micra. Nissan had already made retro cars like the Figaro convertible and a 1989-91 van inspired by the Fourgonnette, named the “S-Cargo” – the 2CV had already been nicknamed the “tin snail”.

But the new 2026 Nissan Micra is why my original point stands. Based on the Renault 5 E-Tech, with Renault having also dipped into its back catalogue for its small car range, along with the Renault 4 and Twingo, the new Micra has only a restyled front and rear, and even that doesn’t stop it from looking like a Renault 5. Renault has since insisted other cars using its platform need to look more distinctive, as a new Ford Fiesta will be based on it too.

What I was surprised most about was the new 2CV’s spartan yellow interior with front and rear bench seats, a tiny heads-up dashboard display and a central console made from a wicker basket. The nicest touch of all is the on-screen control system that uses illustrations from Belgian comic book artist Jean-Luc Delvaux, a hand-drawn touch I have not seen on any other car, while I hope the removable “Radioën” sound system makes it to the final car, because that means I could by one for myself.

I anticipate seeing a new Citroën 2CV on British roads before a Jaguar Type 01, despite the former still being two years away. Both JLR and Stellantis hope these cars will revitalise their brands, but that is a question that will be answered by what cars follow them. Neither the 2CV nor the Type 01 can afford to be a one-off.