Gerry McGovern leaves JLR | The Car Podcast – Emergency Podcast
The Car Podcast with Chris Harris & Friends
Gerry McGovern leaves JLR | The Car Podcast – Emergency Podcast
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Car
Jaguar F-Pace
The Jaguar F-Pace is a type of SUV made by Jaguar. It's designed to be both luxurious and sporty, making it a popular choice for those who want a nice car that can also handle well on the road.
Brand
Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover is a company that makes fancy cars, including luxury SUVs and sports cars. They are well-known for their stylish designs and high-quality vehicles.
Car
Land Rover Range Rover
The Land Rover Range Rover is a fancy SUV that can drive on tough terrains like mud and rocks, but it also has a lot of luxury features inside. People talk about it because it's both stylish and capable, making it a popular choice for those who want a nice car that can handle adventures.
Company
Lincoln Mercury
Lincoln Mercury was a part of Ford that made luxury cars and other vehicles, but it no longer exists as a brand.
Company
Chrysler
Chrysler is a car company from the United States that makes various types of vehicles, including cars and SUVs.
Company
Aston Martin
Aston Martin is a famous British car brand that makes luxury sports cars, often seen in James Bond movies.
Brand
BMW
BMW is a well-known German car brand that makes luxury and performance vehicles, famous for their sporty feel and engineering.
Brand
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce is a famous British car brand that makes very expensive and luxurious cars, often associated with royalty and high status.
Brand
Mini
Mini is a car brand known for making small, fun cars that are easy to drive and park, originally popular in the 1960s.
Car
Jaguar Xjs
The Jaguar XJ-S is a stylish sports car that was made for long drives and comfort. People like to talk about it because it looks cool and drives really well, especially if you enjoy classic cars.
Car
Daimler Super V8
The Daimler Super V8 is a fancy car known for being very comfortable and powerful. It's made by the same company as Jaguar and is considered very luxurious.
Term
Grace, Pace, Space
Grace, Pace, Space is a saying that describes what Jaguar cars are all about: being stylish, fast, and comfortable.
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The red lights are blazing against the emergency podcast. There are so many emergencies in our
wonderful automotive landscape at the moment. It's just a manner from heaven. We're filling
our boots and every other key chair imaginable, but would you believe it? Jerry McGovern has
left the building. Now, before we say anything, nothing against the man personally,
don't know. However, I've heard lots of not very good stories and also didn't like the
direction Jaguar was going in or some of the statements and defences of what now we have
to accept surely was a ludicrous Jaguar strategy a year ago. So I'm going to pass
straight over to Chris Cooper, who is dutifully standing outside a Jaguar in Southern England
to demonstrate the fact that he always goes to the location of the problem. Therefore,
I'm going to him first because he deserves to talk first. He's been standing in front
of what looks like a rather sad F pace or something that's been abandoned, probably not
working outside the digit. Off you go. No, I've already been chucked out, actually,
but we're standing just over there five minutes ago. And then there's a booming voice from
the master above me told me that we're being recorded for security purposes and we should
leave the premises straight away. I think this is the biggest emergency podcast emergency
subject we've had. I mean, it's bigger than big. It's it's large, isn't it? Spartacus Mills,
where are you now? I think there are two scenarios. The new Jaguar Landry of a CEO took over last week,
taking over from Major and Mardell, who's retiring. Scenario one is that it's simply
a clash of personalities wanting to go a different way with the team of people.
And that's scenario one. Scenario two is the bigger implication, which is that the new CEO
has looked at the strategy or some aspects of his execution or both and just said,
no, we're not going. And the moment it's not obvious, but it's one of those two scenarios
or is Cameron and I were saying on the way here, in his view, a combination of the two.
Either way, it's it's a massive step. And I can imagine that I mean, I talked to some of
the cars in here slightly earlier on, they were all gray, literally bloody color, you can get on a
fucking Jaguar Land Rover color chart these days. And they had happy faces on that maybe the strategy
might change. So from the scene here on the ground, I think there's a cautious optimism that
maybe it's the strategy that could change or at least positive. I mean, goodness me,
they showed that bloody car today, didn't they? I mean, maybe the new Tata CEO saw the pink thing
in Mount Street in London thinking, no, that's it, I've seen enough. He's off.
So here's a response to that. Balaji actually said in August before he took up the role,
he defended the strategy. He said, we've put our plans together, the cars are being revealed,
they're getting exciting response from the customers on the ground. Therefore,
that's what the strategy is. So it does point more to a personality clash, doesn't it?
If he's supported in that case? No, in the public.
Neil Clifford sitting in the, look, what looks like the BA lounge in JFK, have I'm right about that?
Yes, I've battled through the snow to get here. Well, I think he pulled him into his office and
said, Tata are saying Tata, Yuri. It looked, it looked to me actually that the Instagram has
already changed. If you take a look at today's communication with the Jaguar on Instagram,
they're now referring back to the first ever Jaguar and the wording has changed around
their marketing. So I think they've already made a decision and clearly he had no choice
but defend it when he was, wasn't he the CFO? He was, yeah. He was the CFO. So he had no choice
because Jerry probably thought he was significantly a higher level than the CFO. So when he,
I think, I think they had to, I'm sure they'd made a decision that that strategy of Jaguar
was wrong. And clearly we all knew it was wrong, didn't we? And we don't want to,
you know, anyone losing their job because I'm sure it will happen to me one day. And
your only strategy in our position is to sort of go out like Alex Ferguson and not go out
like Margaret Thatcher. And unfortunately, he's gone out like Margaret Thatcher, isn't he?
And I think it's, it's a very tricky situation personally for any human being,
including Jerry, but the only thing I hope is this means there'll be a new strategy for Jaguar
and maybe there will be some cars that we want to buy in the future because that's all we frankly
care about is Jaguar and the survival of that beautiful brand. I mean, we feel that it's a
big, big gamble though, given the cranky they were actually showing the car in public sort of
moving for the first time ever today. And that yesterday, I know these are extraordinarily
unhappy coincidences, but to say we're changing that, I mean, it's more years of delay. I mean,
if you asked us, we'd say we don't know if we're going to buy that car they talked about.
Yeah, big, big. Before I move to Manish, can I just read something out? This is from someone
who works at Jaguar, but I've had a lot of comments from people that work at Jaguar
to be balanced. There's only one individual that half defends Jerry, everyone else goes in
pretty hard actually, I have to say. In my opinion, Jerry survives as long as he has
been allowed to foster, as long as he has, as he's been allowed to foster the images
being the guardian of all things that make particularly Range Rover so valuable.
That's the cash cow obviously. We can and should take some of the credit, but there's
much more to it than that. The cadence of outgoing and incoming CEOs, it probably helps him stay on
longer. Thierry certainly thought he needed Jerry. As I'm sure you're aware in a large
corporate and hierarchical environment, people have a tendency to follow the leader
because of his own personal insecurity to need to control it has led to a department with
more than its fair share of sycophants in a fear culture in which people can't say their
true opinion, instead always looking to apply an interpretation of what Jerry would say
or simply hide behind something he has said before, whether the context is appropriate or not.
He has ruled the roost and has dispatched all challenges from Ian Callum, Julian Thompson
and more recently, Mastomo, who's now an Audi. L663 new Defender Design Chief,
Tom Crady was sacked a year or so ago too, so he's basically not went out.
Jerry was involved in a big piece of work around three years ago trying to change the
company culture. Part of it, as I understand it, was that he had such bad feedback from the
department that had been told at board level to up his game. This resulted in what's called
the Creator's Code, which tries to define what modern luxury is all about. Most of it is sensible
and open to interpretation crucially though. It states that we're all proud creators,
i.e. every employee. However, it led to Jerry renaming his department from design
to creative. i.e. we're all proud creators but some of them are more especially creative
than others. A huge amount of progress has been made in the engineering teams to break down barriers
and encourage collaborative working. Design or creative have been held back by Jerry in their
ivory tower and regime change will hopefully allow for much better work and culture to follow.
It's pretty damning and I like to say that's just the opinion of one individual,
so I'm not saying that we state that but that's a real message I've received from
some of the works of JLR. Manish, what do you think?
Well, the acronym for Chief Creative Officer is CCO, so I thought about this in terms of
three-letter acronyms. I thought Jerry McGovern, CCO, JLR, OBE, RIP, that's what it is.
He vanished. I mean the telegraph was doing its usual. A plus B equals three million
wrong and so it was gloating about the fact that apparently he was escorted out
and directly linking that to the Jaguar concept car. I mean it was broadly
man who creates woke Jaguar concept car, escorted out of JLR just a year later.
It was a bit gloaty but actually I think there's no, the man has created some,
you know, he had extraordinary training including the Royal College of Art. I mean
he's reading about him today. Stintz at Chrysler, Lincoln Mercury in the United States.
He did hire Maric Reichman, who's Aston's We Do Love, right? There's no doubt about that
and he's been in this job, I mean he's been at Jaguar Land Rover since April 2004, 21 years,
that's a hell of a stint. So it's to be a little bit of credit. I mean the final,
somebody wrote I thought rather pithily in the FT, it was a comment today.
Self-appointed apex predator, preyed upon by commercial reality,
might have been an appropriate job title. His linked out profile has a lovely font.
I thought that was just genius. That was really genius. I mean it does feel,
it does feel as if everything that everyone thought just over a year ago about
everything going electric and Porsche actually being the bellwether there. I mean if they
can't make this strategy work with what they know and what they have, it's very hard to
see how Jaguar, sorry Mr Cooper. No, sorry, you finished my first.
Yeah, no, all I was saying was I think it is, it's, this is a challenging time we say
every single week on the pod. It is hard to adapt when you've got government pulling in one
direction, the customers pulling in another direction, government trying to say to customers
stop buying ICEs but not in any way shape or form either compensating them or contributing
massively to the kind of infrastructure you'd need. And I think Jaguar have fallen victim to this
without any of the reserves or the ability to press the reverse button that Porsche have.
So I think I do wonder whether that's exactly why he's been fired because at the end of the day
they're going to reverse their strategy. They're going to have to.
I mean we don't know that for certain. I just wanted to say, I just wanted to say
listening to Chris, the note that you'd had, I know you've had a number today and we obviously
can't say but we're satisfied and you know Chris that the people from whom you've received
those notes are authentic and they're credible people of substance and stature and decency
who have been communicating actually for some time. When I listened to that description you gave
just now and I put my boring corporate life hat on in large complex organizations which find
themselves in this predicament in whichever industry they're in from time to time.
That description has a total reek and whiff of authenticity and it feels like
it doesn't necessarily say everyone's decided, everyone had dropped down talk because the strategy
is wrong but it does say we've dragged the anchor. We've dragged the anchor on what we think we're
trying to do, how we think we're trying to do it and the type of culture and organization within
which we're going to operate to do that and it just has an awful reek of sort of authoritarianism
and the dominance of a talismanic character and culture and Gerry will want his response to that,
I'm sure he will at some point but it does feel like the new CEO decided in some way enough is
enough whether it's to change the person, to change the culture, drag the anchor back
somewhere closer to what Jaguar should be or maybe going as far as actually the strategy
itself, the fundamental shift to a very small number of very expensive electric cars that look
like that, they're no link to the Jaguar strategy, maybe that's in play now as well and if it is I
really do hope we don't hear ever again that phrase the Jaguar brand has no equity left in
it because none of us believe that. Yeah that was the worst thing, I mean I think they'll sell
it, sell it to bloody JCB, sell it to someone that cares about the brand and give it to
someone that's going to bring back what, I know it's difficult, I know it's hard.
They've got pretty much finished car so whether they like it or not they're going to have to
come to market with it, they can't do that. Do you think the Chinese would buy a brand like
Jaguar, just leave it on the show, just in case they can turn one of their whatever into a Jaguar
they need to? I think it's someone who comments on the industry and has done sort of before this
podcast you know in different forms. He's probably one of the most interesting mercurial characters
that I've ever really sort of reported on, I don't write specifically about design because I'm not
on East Eat but there were some things that really marked him out, first of all profoundly
successful, I mean let's face it, he designed, he exported to the world the most successful
British automotive designs of the last 30 years without a doubt, the Range Rover is the most
successful British automotive product via his mind and he did it. So you've got to absolutely
salute what he did but let's be a point of these people's careers that when they reach a point of
success where they become unchallengable within an organisation which is sort of as described in
that message there, it's curious to see the skin about his products as well, like when the
Discovery 5 came out and everyone went, well this is a bit ropey, he really didn't like that
and responded quite robustly and then of course I think the life on the cake was the response to
the Jaguar which I found mirrored a lot of current opinions, I won't use the W word that
Trump used, I'm not sure it's really appropriate but I think what they were trying to do was
buy into this rather reactionary cultural shift where not only, they weren't saying we're going
out on our own doing something brave, we're saying if you don't agree with us you're the enemy,
you know basically if you don't agree with us then we've got a problem here and I just think
that was really sad. That was tricky, that was tricky. Jaguar didn't need to do that so all
what they do is they paint all of us as bacon or or carans or whatever they call us but we're
not and I'm inclusive, I love everyone but I didn't really see the point in producing a tradition
and why do you have to forget your past, you didn't need to do that, you could have
launched that pink thing and said we're doing this, we're giving it a punt because we can't carry
on doing what we did before, we've got to give it a punt. They had to change, they had to change
something, agree with us. But they also, the messaging around it was we don't care about
you, you're all dinosaurs, I just don't think they needed to do that really.
They're really upset the Jaguar community actually and when you go to a Jaguar event,
Jaguar Drivers Club or a Plenty Owners Club meeting or a track day, they're a wonderful bunch,
good god are they strong brand advocates, they really want the brand to succeed and they felt
like they just had a you know a massive kick in the goolies. I suppose the other thing I
have to say, if I look at the message I receive you know quite often about from people that
work in car companies, I've never had so many messages saying that they weren't very fond of
working alongside or underneath someone, it was quite a lot actually, quite sort of breathtaking.
If you check the Instagram, they're now comparing that car, the electric car with the model I think
SS and they're saying Jaguar Legacy Holds, that's a very, very big change from where we were
that. They've got the SS and the red car or pink car or blue car whatever it is, in the same
photograph, so it's already changed, they've already realised. Well they've used the L words Neil,
they've just been using the L word, it's just been showing everything. There was no equity six
months ago and now there's legacy, so it's changed already. I tell you what Neil, you've
sowed a little seed for me, just imagine Mr Bamford, Lord Bamford. I think that's the,
he's wanted to buy it before. Is he Lord or sir? Lord, Lord. He's got the wedge and he's been turned
down before. Has he? Yep. He's got the capital, he understands how to build stuff at scale,
he loves the brand, he owns some amazing Jaguars himself. He does.
I'd love, I tell you what, I'd love to see that. I'd like to see a really, really
enthusiastic, passionate fight over this between Bamford and say a BMW who've done such good
work with the Rolls and Mini brands and if the good Lord was to be able, if he had the capital and
clearly it's a different business to building the wonderful diggers that he builds and stuff,
but yeah, it's an exciting, the conversation itself is exciting, I totally agree with you.
He could do it, yeah. I think we all joined together and say that we hope this is the
end of the turbulent period. People that work there must have been in pretty tough
several months. So, you know, the hacking and all the other stuff and all the suppliers,
you know, I'm incredibly proud of Jaguar now in a way that makes people a shame not to have owned
any before. You know, I've got my Rope XJS which is coming along, update soon and I've got my
Daimler Super V8 which the Daimler Super V8 is the epitome of Jaguar for me. It does
things that Germans and who cars can't and maybe that's, I don't know, no one would never let me
anywhere near a car company but I'd love to define it. It's beautiful. The Jaguars doing well
do things that the Germans can't do. They make you feel a way that the Germans can't make you
feel. Well, I'm going to bring my Mark VII back out. Yes. Grace, Pace, Space, not all of it.
Yeah, yeah. I think, I think there's anything more to add Chris Cooper,
anything more to add? What's the feeling like at ground zero?
The feeling is quite cold and slightly damp and late in the evening here. I know it's not as late
in the evening as you in Kenya or as early in the afternoon nearly as for you in NYC.
I can see if I can turn this. Are you on the A41? No, I'm in Hatfield. Right. So over there
is the big sort of banner thing and it's got the leaper on it and that was sort of going
to disappear really, wasn't it? And I think to see the leaper there and you know the rather
otherwise empty side of the Jaguars show which has been the case recently. I'm really glad I came
because I feel positive about it. Let's see what happens. I think we now know also that with the
new logo that I, I'm sorry, manage off you go. No, no, no. I was just keeping my fingers
crossed. He just said, you know, let's wish it luck. I think I hope we can we just clarify
this. We're not, this is not a quote. It's just, you know, it's interesting news and we leap on it
and we're fascinated by it. We want the conversation to continue. There's no doubt that Jerry McGovern
achieved remarkable things, but much like so many characters in this wonderful industry,
once they get a bit high on their own supply, they sometimes go a bit tonto, don't they?
And I think we can name several of those as well, but maybe that maybe the real talents,
you know, clearly with the extraordinary talents, if left unchecked, that's the
name of what happens. They do an Icarus and they fly a bit too close to the sun.
So, but I will say this, it does look like the revised logo, remember that pink background
with the capital G, we were all led to believe that the G was for someone, maybe someone's
Christian name, but it sounds like if one assumes my best Richie Benow voice, it was for gone.
That's dreadful. So, no, it was I hope I hope he'll go and do amazing things, I'm sure.
Yeah, I'm I no doubt about that. But I hope it's I hope Jaguar, this is the end of the turmoil
and from now on, it's just build, build, build and you own a Jaguar, but you've got one in the shed,
get it out, drive it. Yes, exactly. Get out there, beat your horn. Solidarity.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Here end of the emergency podcast, red lights and all Chris,
who is somewhere in Hapfield outside of Jaguar dealership, Neil, who's in the BA lounge at
JFK, Manish, who's somewhere in North London and me, somewhere looking over the Indian
Ocean in Kenya. Thank you very much for joining us and the real pod, the full pod,
as recorded earlier today will be live on Friday morning. Bye bye.
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About this episode
Gerry McGovern's departure from Jaguar Land Rover has sparked intense discussion among automotive enthusiasts. The podcast dives into the implications of this significant change, exploring potential reasons behind his exit, including personality clashes and strategic misalignments. Guests share insights on the current state of Jaguar's branding and product strategy, expressing cautious optimism for a new direction. The conversation highlights the emotional connection fans have with the brand and the hope for revitalization amidst a challenging automotive landscape.
Original notes
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Gerry McGovern has parted ways with JLR. Hear the latest from Chris, Neil, Manish and Spartacus.
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The Car Podcast with Chris Harris & Friends
Chris Harris
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