After two decades, Gerry McGovern is apparently out as JLR’s design boss.
Following former CEO Adrian Mardell’s retirement from the company in August, chief creative officer Gerry McGovern is now out at Jaguar Land Rover as well. While the company itself has yet to confirm his departure, Autocar India reports the company veteran was abruptly fired and “escorted out of the office”, though many details are still murky on the matter.
The timing is a critical element in McGovern’s exit, however, as PB Balaji just ascended to JLR’s chief executive post on November 17. Within two weeks of that transition, JLR is now short a 20-plus-year veteran. McGovern rejoined the company in 2004, technically working under Land Rover before joining the executive committee of the combined Jaguar Land Rover when the brands merged under the Indian Tata Group in 2013, before eventually becoming JLR’s chief creative officer in 2020.
Even though McGovern’s tenure fostered both Jaguar and Land Rover’s modern design identities, also championed the brand’s polarizing rebrand, culminating in the Type 00. The Jaguar brand’s most recent strategy has been to fully electrify — even as consumers broadly spurn the idea — and shift upmarket to take on the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley.
The so-called “Copy Nothing” campaign apparently met with a lot of internal friction, however, as a 2022 letter supposedly signed by more than two dozen of McGovern’s design team seethed at JLR’s decision to outsource part of the rebrand to third-party firm Accenture Interactive, rather than keep it in-house. Even before Balaji officially took the reins, there were signs this summer that the company may be rethinking its tack. Now, McGovern’s abrupt departure tracks with the sentiment that the company may be changing course.
To what end that will ultimately mean for JLR, we will obviously need to wait and see. The company is also recovering from a major cyberattack that crippled its production for a full month. The plan has been to wind down production of its remaining current models in preparation for the Type 00, but even that launch isn’t slated to happen until next August or so, if all goes well.
At time of writing, the company has not issued an official statement on McGovern’s reported exit. Nevertheless, there is now even more uncertainty, particularly for the Jaguar brand, of what’s to come as the company tries to pull off this audacious rebrand.
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