I’m not going to lie: yesterday was not my best day, nor our best Morning Dump. It started out fine and then went quickly off the rails. And, sure, it was a privileged sort of bad day where I felt miserable for long chunks of it, and things kept going wrong, but the sun came up today, and everyone has all their limbs.
My goal for this morning was just to take it easy. Just to get the fun news. It’s almost membership renewal time, when we hold our breath to see if all of our original members still like us and keep their memberships rolling. It’s more important than ever this year as the AI-ification of everything has hit our bottom line.
So my instinct, in the morning around this time, is just to keep the vibes good. Avoid politics as best I can in an effort to keep the comments happy and positive. Well, it all went wrong. Sorry.
I already knew I’d write about the reported sacking of JLR design guru Gerry McGovern, which is a delicate thing to discuss and can be as political as you want to make it. New car affordability? No one likes to talk about it, but people are finding it harder to shell out the money car companies are asking for right now.
A solution to that? The White House is proposing further rolling back emissions requirements, which, at least in the near term, is going to do almost nothing to solve the affordability issues, especially in the face of tariffs. There’s a can of worms I’m not tempted to open. And, finally, it does look like the EU is going to roll back its own emission requirements.
I have no safety goggles to put on this morning, and I’ve been informed that the goggles do nothing. Instead, I will shield myself in memes. Specifically, I will use Tim Robinson. He’s becoming something of an unlikely avatar for modern life, playing characters both trapped in a larger system out of their control and then, when offered a little bit of agency, largely flailing helplessly around. I feel that.
Did They Really Escort Gerry McGovern Out Of The Building?
Ok, head right into the lion’s mouth. Let’s do this.
Gerry McGovern is the powerful but controversial JLR designer who built a career around a number of very successful designs. The MG F, the Range Rover Evoque, and, more recently, the new Defender.
None of those designs explain why he’s controversial. It’s the decision to blow up all of Jaguar’s design conventions to make a car that looks like a concrete shithouse, and then dress it up with a bunch of faux transgressive Art Basel artistic nonsense. It’s exactly his style.
Our own Adrian Clarke, who worked with ‘Uncle Gerry’ at JLR, made the point that Jaguar had to do something to rescue the brand from redundancy. Perhaps. I’ve now seen the Type 00 in person and, frankly, it’s not for me. That’s ok! However, the bad feelings it generated were poorly timed for JLR, which was about to face tariffs and then a crippling cyberattack.
So what happened? According to Autocar India, this:
Jaguar Land Rover’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern, has departed the company, marking another high-profile exit following CEO Adrian Mardell’s retirement in August this year, a story first broken by Autocar and Autocar India. According to sources, McGovern was sacked and ‘escorted out of the office’, though details remain unconfirmed. An email to the company seeking confirmation of the news went unanswered.
McGovern’s sudden exit comes swiftly after PB Balaji assumed the CEO role on November 17, 2025, succeeding Mardell after a structured transition. McGovern, long regarded as a favourite of the late Ratan Tata, enjoyed strong backing during Tata’s influential tenure at Tata Group, which owns JLR; with Tata’s passing, that key support waned, leaving him more exposed to internal shifts.
No one knows anything right now, and no one is commenting, but take it as a sign that Autocar India was the first to report this. JLR’s parent company, Tata Group, is an Indian company, and when you use an Indian outlet to spill your Tetley, well, you might be sending a message.
This feels coordinated.
Why did this happen? The Brits, who have barely a fleeting concept of a car industry, are all excited about it. Chris Harris impaneled an emergency podcast to discuss it:
The notion discussed in the podcast is that one of two things is happening:
- A personality clash somewhere that McGovern is losing.
- New CEO PB Balaji believes that the company’s direction is wrong.
I think both can be true at the same time. When things are going well, you can absorb the slings and arrows. When things are going poorly, as they surely are for JLR, it’s a lot harder.
When Adrian comes out of his bunker, I’m sure we’ll have more on this.
People Are Having A Hard Time With New Car Prices
Whenever I write about how to time buying a new car, I get a response that’s like: you sure about that? I always try to caveat that, because of the K-Shaped economy, it’s hard for a lot of people to imagine spending any amount of money on a car, let alone the average $50,000 transaction price. Still, I get why people find the idea of buying a new car so foreign right now.
The Detroit Free Press covered these feelings earlier this week, pointing out that many people are shunning new cars at their current prices. Those prices are expected to go up even though, at the beginning of the year, it looked like affordability was starting to improve:
All of this is a sharp U-Turn on the road to prosperity the auto industry was traveling at the start of the year. That was when many analysts forecast modest growth in U.S. auto sales for 2025. Cox Automotive said on Jan. 26 that new vehicles sales would reach 16.3 million by year’s end, stating that “positive economic” conditions combined with “improved buying conditions should lead to a 2%-3% gain” over 2024 total sales.
That was before President Donald Trump, in March, instituted 25% tariffs on imported autos and auto parts, the latter of which are used in many domestic-made vehicles. Trump later implimented 50% tariffs − the taxes paid when a good crosses a border − on aluminum and steel, which are used in most domestically produced cars.
Many automakers held off raising manufacturer’s suggested retail prices due to tariffs. But J.P. Morgan Global Research said in September that the cost to the industry of the combined tariffs on vehicles and parts will be around $41 billion in the first year and automakers and consumers are expected to share the burden equally, with a projected 3% increase to new vehicle price inflation at some point.
The world is a complex place, and tariffs aren’t the only cause of price increases, but they’re a big part of it. It’s possible you think that this pain in the near term is worth it for geopolitical or industrial policy reasons. Hopefully, this will cause some automakers to reach for more affordable models after years of Trimflation.
It’s hard to say, but tariffs are certainly not helping, and at some point, presumably, prices will have to go up.
President Trump To Roll Back Standards To Address Car Affordability
Gee, car prices are going up? Who could be responsible? (OK, Tariffs aren’t the whole issue, but they’re not helping).
I’ve covered in detail before how I think the discussion around the EV tax credit and other policies led to this idea of an “EV Mandate” in the United States that wasn’t exactly real, but also not exactly false, and was all around bad politics.
President Trump, sensing that inflation is not exactly under control and that the automotive market is stumbling a bit, has stepped in to fix it by rolling back stricter emissions policies from the previous administration.
What does that mean? No one is quite sure. Reuters has the scoop, but the details are scarce.
Are car prices higher because of efficiency standards? Yes, and no. The rush to make electric cars was both a response to regulatory requirements and a desire to make Tesla margins, which made it seem like everyone wanted EVs. The scrapping of those plans and the shift in focus back towards hybrids and other cars has a real cost, which at some level has to be paid for.
Is that the main reason for the price of cars going up? I’m not sure that it is, frankly, and I’m also not sure that rolling back standards is going to dramatically cause prices to drop as Bloomberg explains:
Easing fuel economy requirements is unlikely to swiftly lower prices for consumers. Carmakers plan their lineups years in advance, meaning changes stemming from policy shifts take time to appear in showrooms. Tariffs enacted by Trump have also raised automaker costs by billions of dollars.
The move also threatens a policy that would have reduced household fuel spending and slashed planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. The Biden administration had said the standards would cut gasoline consumption by almost 70 billion gallons through 2050 and save US consumers more than $23 billion in fuel costs. That translates to about $600 in savings over an individual vehicle’s lifetime.
Stellantis’ shares rose as much as 3% after Bloomberg reported the planned announcement, touching a session high. General Motors Co.’s stock erased earlier declines to trade up 1.1% at 3:42 p.m. in New York.
There’s going to be an Oval Office meeting later today, and, at least, Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa will be there. If there’s any company that could benefit, it’s the one with the aging lineup that makes a lot of Jeeps.
Europe Reportedly Going To Tweak 2035 EV Mandate To Include More Hybrids, Biofuels, Et Cetera
If you trust German financial newspaper Handelsblatt, then the EU is legit considering slowing its planned 2035 EV mandate.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz ( CDU ) had demanded in a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday that the EU should also take “highly efficient” combustion engines into account in its revision of fleet emission limits from 2035 onwards.
When asked whether the EU would allow not only hybrid cars but also conventional combustion engines, Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas told Handelsblatt: “We are open to all technologies.”
The Commissioner added: “Chancellor Merz’s letter was very well received.” The Commission will include “all technological developments” in the new regulation – “including the role of zero-emission and low-emission fuels and advanced biofuels.”
What this actually looks like on paper is hard to say. Frankly, I don’t know, and that’s ok. Not everyone has to know how to do everything. Though it’s becoming increasingly clear that EV mandates aren’t going to work for large chunks of the planet’s populations. [Ed Note: And, even though politics are hard to predict, this still should have been obvious from day 1. At least one company, Toyota, understood it, even in the face of heavy criticism (including from one of our own contributors). -DT].
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This one is straightforward. It’s the theme song from the criminally underrated sitcom “Detroiters.”
The Big Question
What’s the best JLR design that’s not the E-Type?
Top photo: Netflix, Jaguar
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