All Entries Tagged With: "ian callum"
How To Be The Next Harley Earl or How To Design Cars Like A Pro
by Gunnar Heinrich ::: How To Design Cars Like A Pro
READING How to Design Cars Like A Pro. The title of this book is somewhat misleading. It isn’t so much a “how-to” as it is an overarching study on car design. It’s also written by two automotive scribes, Tony Lewin and Ryan Borroff who, according to the inside leaflet, have never actually penned a car.
So what makes How To Design Cars Like A Pro worth reading if it’s title is slightly misleading and its authors critique cars rather than create them? In a word: insight.
Scrapping the comical notion that in order to communicate a concept you have to be employed in the same field (how else would the world’s news get about?) the authors do a good job of giving us an almost up-to-the-minute account of the present industry and introduce us to the people, the process, and the art of conceptualization.
We also get an analytical look of history’s good and great – from icons in design like Harley Earl, Bruno Sacco, and, gulp, Chris Bangle to the legendary cars themselves – the Eldorado Biarritz, Ferrari 250 GTO, and Audi TT, to name a few.
There is one chapter titled, “Tutorials” that does go into the mechanics of actually, you know, drawing an automobile. But text is like reality, where 95% of the work is conceptual, the rest is CAD, clay models, and where humble pen meets paper.
Jaguar Design Director Ian Callum writes an optimistic forward that encapsulates the book’s bright tone about the future of automotive design.
“I really can’t imagine a more exciting time to become a car designer. New challenges and demands on the motor car are going to change the comfortable assumptions we have had for many years. “
On an interesting and aspirational note, Mr. Callum writes that Jaguar design in the 60s inspired him as a young boy and that at the tender age of 14 he sent his first application to the same car maker he would eventually lead.
Fuel for thought.
MotorBooks furnished ADLXa copy of How To Design Cars Like A Pro.
Jaguar Design: C-X75
by Gunnar Heinrich ::: img Jaguar ::: Jaguar C-X75
“JAGUAR’S always been about elegant engineering,” Jaguar Head of Advance Design Julian Thompson says about the C-X75, “and you can’t get much more elegant than a micro-turbine [engine].”
The ultra-modern C-X75 celebrate Jaguar’s 75 years and fills a 20 year halo void with an array of hyper technological, if not purely original, ideas about automotive propulsion.
To wit: electric motors at each wheel would be powered centrally by a mid-engine gas fed twin turbine engine that produces 708 hp and would propel the C-X75 to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and from 50-90 mph in a scant 2.3 seconds. On paper, this represents an exciting prospect.
But Jaguar whose history is linked more to the organic passion of performance and sex appeal is, right or wrong, pitching technology and engineering as its platform for the future. A stretch considering that rival Mercedes-Benz has a $4 Billion annual R&D budget.
The design team supports this premise by penning sleek, sterile, curved metal forms accented with cool, cobalt blue lighting. We’ve seen this with the C-XF right on through to the C-X75. And there is a great sense of theater and drama and movement to their work.
In its time, the XJ220 wasn’t a beautiful car, per se, but it was as Jaguar’s Design Chief Ian Callum might say, “evocative.” The C-X75 for all its “muscled” arches and “crisp” lines is evocative. It’s striking even, though, a touch more reserved than Lamborghini’s latest works.
But the C-X75 is not beautiful. Not really. At least not as it appears in highly photo-shopped pictures. Beauty requires an organic element that Jaguar – indeed – much of the auto industry seems all too ready to forget.
Mr. Callum is right when he says that the C-X75 is a design statement about the future for Jaguar. The C-X75 is also as much a statement about the way the world sees contemporary design – which is to say dynamic, interesting, futuristic, and alien.
What Makes a Jaguar, “A Jag-u-ar”?
- The essential elements of Jaguar design
- Ian Callum’s team should avoid Germanification
- Keep the sex please, Jaguar’s British
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Jaguar Cars
NO, seriously.
What makes a Jaguar a “Jag-wharr” “Jag-u-ar” or a “Shagwharr, baby, yeah!” ?
Coming down from the summer’s high of witnessing the troubled Brit car maker launch something – anything – that could be considered exciting, fresh, and new, yours is compelled to pick up a fresh blogger’s grenade, pull the pin and…
Can’t throw it. Won’t.
The world needs Jaguar now more than ever. We need a car company that promises to deliver what we’ll call the “everyday exotic”.
“Everyday” meaning a car that’s produced in some volume with a wide range of engine and trim options that inevitably includes a low-spec variant that has a euro-zone friendly diesel engine and an interior trimmed in velour.
By “exotic”, I refer to an automobile that makes your hand stand on end or at least prompts a second, lasting glance.
Neither BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus are in the business of building everday head-turners.
The latest generation 5er, E-Class, and GS and their higher and lower stablemates are quite doomed to automotive anonymity thanks in large part to their ubiquity and that they share the same design elements from like-minded studios.
Jaguar’s team, led by the talented Ian Callum, is badly tempted to follow this terribly efficient Teutonic trend. They’re prepared to sacrifice the marque’s quintessentially British heritage by playing ze Germans’ game; borrowing heavily from Audi’s middle-of-the-road German aesthetic while pitching an emphasis on technology.
Technology isn’t sexy. Sleek, lean, power and grace is. Which brings us nicely back to our nugget: what makes a Jaguar, a Jaguar?
It’s sex appeal, ladies and gentlemen.
Time’s up. Throw the grenade!
Family Ties? Picture of XJ, XF, XK Boots Shows No Relation
- All three cars are Jaguars
- Could you tell?
- A call for some cross lineup continuity
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Jaguar Cars
ASIDE from all three Jaguars – XJ, XF, XK – sharing obvious features like, well, similar trim, LED tail lights, exhaust pipes, faux-chrome badging, and a gentle lip that acts as a spoiler to nature’s air currents, what common element(s) announce these three cars as Jaguars?
From this carefully composed shot: nothing.
The XJ’s lofty boot lid with vertically slatted LED lamps seems borrowed from the Lancia Delta. Likewise, the XF horizontally generic lamps with broad chrome strip seem to reveal a Brit interpretation of the cleaner Audi A6.
The XK, sadly, with its busy mishmash of fat and skinny lines, complicated rear lighting, and Aston-like shape is the closest to casting ties with Coventry’s past. But that, too, is approximate at best and features nothing that carries over to the newer saloons.
Not even the circular, quad-pipe exhausts enjoy cross-marque continuity. The XJ features the same dual, plastic, horizonal bumper vents that we find on the Lexus LS.
Allowing for continuity is key to crafting an image. That’s fairly basic. And, to be fair, we can see more of something akin to familial ties when these cats are positioned differently and from a frontal aspect.
Ian Callum’s team should consider further integration going forward as Jaguar seeks to remodel itself into a hell-with-tradtion modernist luxury car company.
2010 Jaguar XJ Unveiled!
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG from Jaguar Cars
JAGUAR has unveiled, at long last, the next XJ sedan.
Former Tonight Show host and car collector exemplar Jay Leno emceed the event gratis. Or at least that’s what he inferred when he joked that Jaguar was looking to him for money.
Tony O’Driscoll, Jaguar’s chief executive, provides proof to pudding that unless you’ve got the oratory skills of Ronald Reagan pitching GE Progress, corporate types should stay the hell off the stage lest you kill the carefully crafted buzz.
But it was Ian Callum, the soft spoken Scot who spoke of his Jaguar dreams as a youth – particularly his lust for the original ’68 XJ saloon – who hit the ball out of the park. The audience was practically spell bound as the director of Jaguar design mouthed the words sensual styling, curves, and “you won’t forget me” in describing XJ style.
Indeed few will forget the new car. It’s different yet manages to retain a feline elegance. And while this new XJ seems to take some cues from Audi, Citroen, Lancia, and even Nissan, it appears nonetheless a car cut from an original swath of whole cloth.
With style, that most critical aspect of Jaguar’s sensual essence, confirmed as standard equipment in XJ’s going forward, everything else – including the 1200 watt, 20 speaker sound system- seems ancillary.
Coventry just hit a home run in London tonight.
Design With A Capital “D”: 2010 Jaguar XJ
Pay every attention to the man and his car behind the curtain!
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMGs from Jaguar Cars
JAGUAR is still taunting us with the panoramic trickle-tease release of its next generation flagship: the XJ sedan. So far, we’ve only seen a wide shot looking down at the saloon from above. In this video “Icon Reimagined”, we get a better taste of how the new cat prowls as it moves gracefully behind the veil of a silky curtain.
The 2010 XJ is to carry on the sexiest lineage of executive saloons known to man and is – according to its designer Ian Callum – a “modern car”.
In the video, Mr. Callum believes that a Jaguar should be, “very beautiful, very clear in its intent, but relevant for its time.”
Possible interpretation: the current XJ’s looks have gone stale and I recognize that and we’re amending. Mea culpa.
We, the Jaguaristi, wait with baited breath to see Mr. Callum’s interpretation of “very modern”. Jaguar’s set to unveil the new XJ on July 9th, 2009.
[Linked: 2010 Jaguar XJ]
