The company behind “the worst car ad in history” is roving again that when it comes to public appeal, going woke is a non-starter.
Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury vehicle maker headquartered in Coventry, England, is slashing its management workforce in the U.K. by 500 jobs, according to a BBC report.
And for the liberals at the BBC, there’s only one obvious place to point the finger.
It’s not at the company’s disastrous decision to put out an ad that came across like an episode of the old “Teletubbies” series — updated with transgender models and a heavy dose of LSD.
It’s not at the marketing firm that decided there was no need for one single actual car in an advertisement for a car company.
As the social media reception showed, the ad was a disaster when it was produced. It’s a disaster now. If you’ve forgotten it, here’s a reminder, with some of the backlash it produced:
Copy nothing. #Jaguar pic.twitter.com/BfVhc3l09B
— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024
This will be a case study in future classes on how to destroy a brand. Just wow.
— Mr. Incredulous (@Mr__Incredulous) November 20, 2024
Are you trying to lose sales?
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) November 20, 2024
Nope, the fault, the BBC coverage implied, was solely with President Donald Trump and his tariff policies that are reframing international trade.
The article itself bore the noncommittal headline of “Jaguar Land Rover to cut up to 500 UK jobs.” But the word “tariffs” showed up right in the lede, giving readers an immediate hint on what conclusions they were supposed to draw.
Do you buy the BBC’s spin on Jaguar’s layoffs?
And since the BBC couldn’t mine the company’s statement for any hint that Trump is to blame for the company’s woes — in its entirety, as quoted by the British business news site Insidermedia, it didn’t mention tariffs at all — the BBC did manage to pad out its report by using quotes from a professor at the University of Birmingham’s Business School who said tariffs “play a big role” in the job losses.
That’s probably true. Any company that depends on exports like Jaguar is going to depend to some extent on international trade relations when it comes to making major decisions.
But the BBC report ignored the fact that Jaguar’s sales have been tanking since its “rebrand” launched in November, with the goal of switching to an entirely electric vehicle product. On July 1, the New York Post reported the company’s sales in Europe had experienced a 97.5 percent drop between June 2025 and July 2024.
Again, those are sales in Europe — where U.S. tariff policy is a non-issue.
Now, there’s no doubt that a number of factors go into decision-making by a company like Jaguar Land Rover, and there’s no doubt that Trump and his tariff plans are causing headaches for executives the world over, including the U.K.
In fact, Jaguar’s public statement, according to InsiderMedia, specifically thanked the U.K. government for “delivering at speed the new UK-US trade deal, which gives us the confidence to invest £3.5bn per annum to realise our strategy which is delivering.”
But there’s also no doubt that the company embarrassed itself on the international stage with a marketing decision that rivaled Bud Light’s disastrous misalliance with the transgender fruitcake Dylan Mulvaney.
That, however, did not fit the politics of the BBC — an outlet with a reliably leftward slant on any issue. It’s particularly noticeable when it comes to coverage of Israel and the BBC publishing terrorist propaganda, but pretty much any story that can make Trump look bad will be written to make Trump look bad. (The conservative U.K. Telegraph published a handy commentary piece on the subject in February. It still holds.)
So when a carmaker produces stirs considerable controversy with an advertisement that turns off virtually every normal person who sees it, that doesn’t even have the wit or courage to show a vehicle the company sells, and within a year announces substantial layoffs to its workforce, it’s logical for any honest coverage of the event to at least mention that controversy’s potential role.
But at the BBC, and far too many outlets on this side of the pond, it’s even more logical to just blame Donald Trump.
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