christopher wilson: my jaguar manifesto
A beautiful story always begins with wreckage. That is why we burned our maps, and toppled all our lighthouses and cathedrals to certainty; and became nothing but Phoenix ash and feathers, with only broken hearts for our broken Earth alive and beating.
But that Love - that shining sliver of Life - was all that was required to resurrect ourselves as a car company for the planet. Perhaps this is madness (we thought). Perhaps our dream is an Icarus one. But as citizens of this world, having heard the tolling bells, and the cracking ice, and the crying science, we HAD to rearrange our molecules as if our lives - all of our lives - depended on it. (Which it does.) NOT to do so was unsustainable, untenable, perhaps unconscionable.
So we began - galvanized, with heartache and hope - an audacious raid on the utterly impossible: to build an electric car that would silently shake the world to its senses. Of course this car had to be beautiful in its own right, - for who would want it if it was not? But if we were to build an electric car, it had to be more than a revelation to look at and to drive, it HAD to be a gift to life, and wholly in harmony with the healing that is needed.
But could we do that? Could we - a car company of all things - possibly become a steward for the environment? Wouldn’t that seem an oxymoron at best, and disingenuous at worst? Perhaps. But our heartbreak demanded we be deaf to the noise, and kill conformity, and begin anew, with fierce hearts, to create cars on our tiny spit of Earth for ALL of Earth. We believe we have that electric car. But is it the be all and end all? Of course not. Nothing could be that. However, it is a breathtaking beginning - for us, and for all of us (if we can be so bold). It is, in the end, our beginning (and only a beginning) to being a global car company in balance with the globe.