The British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire hosted an evening with car designer extraordinaire Ian Callum CBE. His creations include the Jaguar C-X75, F-Type, F-PACE and I-PACE, the Aston Martin Vanquish & DB7, Ford Puma, Escort RS Cosworth and the RS-200 rally car.
He was joined on stage by Paul Cowland, presenter of TV’s Salvage Hunters: Classic Cars.
The evening supported two charities in the Teenage Cancer Trust and the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust and both Ian and Paul have donated their fees to these charities.
Ian has been in the design business for more than 50 years, with 20 of those as Design Director for Jaguar.
Ian then took the packed audience on a journey through his car design career, and additional projects, guided by probing questions from Paul.
As Ian explained the quote ‘Design creates order out of chaos! However, chaos is often required as a prerequisite to being creative’ is what he had lived and worked by.
As he explained to Paul he was brought into this design world from a very young age when he saw a Porsche 356 driving past (1957) which starting him drawing. This led him aged 5 to tell his teachers (in Dumfries where he was born) that he was going to be a car designer.
This led Ian to go through his car designed chronologically starting with the Ford RS-200 which he modelled and evolved into the group B rally car and was the start of designing rally cars for Ford. This led to his better understanding of aerodynamics, downforce and car efficiency. With the next car that this was applied to being the Ford Escort RS Cosworth.
Linking up with TWR’s Tom Walkinshaw (who masterminded Jaguar’s Le Mans 24 hour wins in 1988 & 1990) Ian started to design what would become the Aston Martin DB7 but started as a Jaguar project. He was given a very short timeline to get the project to board decision, so built an actual prototype rather than clay model. This led in 1991 to being approved by the board and saved Aston Martin as it sold over 4,000 units.
Ian showed the audience photos of clay models of both the Aston Martin Vanquish and the DB9. The DB9 showed its simple and effortless lines. As Ian said ‘Every line has a value to make the ideal whole’ to what he wanted but didn’t want others to ‘mess it up’.
Back in the Ford world his next project was the compact Ford Puma, which was based on the Fiesta platform and was extremely successful sales wise and was only closed down as Ford needed the Cologne plant space back for another project.
Again, with Tom Walkinshaw he got involved with the Nissan R390 which he only had a 15-week timeline for development, but was met. To be able to race at Le Mans needed to sell road cars first to get its homologation from the ASO, which it did and managed to finish the car. Though it needed its gear box unit replaced nine times in the race!
Back in the Jaguar world Ian was involved breaking the mould with the XF, which dropped the buying age by 10 years. The XJ with its updated profile and the sportscar the XK in both hard top and convertible with is references to the iconic E Type.
Jaguar wanted to celebrate its 75-year anniversary and so the C-X75 was designed but only a few versions were built, one of which appeared in the James Bond film ‘Spectre’.
After leaving Jaguar 5 years ago Ian has branched out in both bespoke cars but also in high end furniture, luggage (with Mulberry) and Callum Whisky prepared in Dumfries, Scotland.
After a break Ian walked the audience thru the design elements and styling of four of his cars, the Aston Martin DB7, Ford Puma racing version, Jaguar CXF with its lower roof, changed lamps and V8 engine & Jaguar F Type.
The evening finished with a Q&A led by Paul with lots of questions raised about favourite cars, car packaging and favourite car designers.
