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TMR Interview: Jaguar Design Boss Ian Callum On The F-Type’s F-factor

Jaguar’s sublime F-Type is one among a few leading stars of the Australian International Motor Show in Sydney. Just two seats, long, long bonnet and ‘crouching-cat’ lines, it claims direct succession from the fabulous E-Type,


Jaguar’s sublime F-Type is one among a few leading stars of the Australian International Motor Show in Sydney.

Just two seats, long, long bonnet and ‘crouching-cat’ lines, it claims direct succession from the fabulous E-Type, and has dropped jaws at every appearance.

We spoke to Ian Callum, Design Director at a resurgent Jaguar in Sydney.

TMR: You have made no secret that the F Type is the kind of project you have wanted to work on since joining Jaguar in 1999. What kind of pressure does that put you under when people immediately compare it to a 50 year-old sports car icon, the E-Type?

Callum: I don’t worry too much about it. The E-Type is a huge (act) to follow, because it was such a gorgeous car. But if I did a modern version of the E Type, you would not like it.

If I had to mould that car into the legislation we have to live with now, it would not be a pretty sight. Trust me, it would be like a gorgeous, sexy lady that has eaten far too much.

You have to start again from first principles, from the ground up.

But we saw a car back in 2000 at Detroit, a concept tagged the F-Type Concept Roadster…

This has no reference whatsoever to that car. That car was a concept created by my predecessors. It was nice car, but the first time I looked at it I realised it was not at all feasible, it would not meet any of the requirements that a car had to meet.

My fear with that car was that by the time you turned it into a reality it would look like a completely different car. We did try to go back and had a look at creating and evolving that car, and it looked nowhere near as exotic as the car we have created now.

Was this the reason why the project did not get off the ground during the Ford era?

We realised we had to fix the rest of the business, which included diesel engines – we didn’t have any, and the rest of the world did – so a lot of investment went into that, along with the next generation of XJ and S Type. Which evolved into the XF sedan.

These are volume cars; the luxury of having a two-seat sports car would come at the end of all that.

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