Ian Callum formally introduces Jaguar's Lightweight Coupe Concept at Detroit........Photo L.Marvin 2005

 

After several years on the road, the XK8 and XKR are still sexy and visually exciting enough to sell – as Ian Callum, Jag’s design director, says – “The current XK – the styling of it is pretty good, i’n’t it? It’s accepted, people still say ‘wow.’ It ain’t broke, that car, so we’re not going to try and fix it.” But under the XK’s smooth skin lies an outdated frame. It’s time for a change underneath. While they’re at it, they might as well give it some facial work, let Ian show us his interpretation of the Jaguar sports car.

The Jaguar got instant rave reviews at Detroit......Photo L.Marvin

Mr. Callum oversaw the creation of this fantastic concept, the Advanced Lightweight Coupé. It features the same aluminum chassis and body technology Jaguar first unleashed in the XJ sedans. It has fantastic lines. It is the winning result of several different competing designs done by individual members of Ian’s team. And we are sure Jag will deliver on the performance end of things, with a stronger version of the AJ-V8 which currently powers Jaguar XJ’s and XK’s.

An excellent rear 3/4 view.........Photo by Jaguar Press

This concept coupé is clad in a body that is at once taught and relaxed. Not relaxed in the sense that it is floppy, but relaxed in the sense that it is graceful – that it is strong enough to move quickly with great ease. The Advanced Lightweight Coupé has the form of an athlete’s body in motion; while running, some muscles contract to pull a leg or an arm  forward, while the muscles responsible for pulling those same limbs back are relaxed. This coupé is powerful. It is elegant. It’s Jaguar – as Callum put it, “Jags should appear powerful as well as elegant…that’s what confident Jaguar is all about.”

photo by Andrew Gardner

Look at the rear fenders – the sharply sculpted shoulder line, which joins a shelf outside the rear cockpit to a smooth side section that tucks nicely into the rear – they have great tension and power. This is by Ian’s design. He explains that “what you have to do is emphasize the power over the back of the car. You’ve got to get that kind of tension. And you look at the back of the car, it’s powerful in the back, it is powerful in the back, there’s about 400 horsepower coming through that part of the car.” 400 horsepower is a pretty good number for Jag, seeing that the current XKR has 390 under the hood – we’d still like to see more, and we can see this car as having the looks to support such an upgrade.

This excellent angle helps you apperciate Ian's efforts...Photo by Jaguar

Up front, we see great presence with a large vertical section at the nose; there is much more substance up front than on the current XK’s. While Ian cites the E-Type as an inspiration in this concept, the XK does much more justice to the original E-Type design, a design marked by a series of joined ellipses. But that’s not what Ian was going for anyway.

Jaguar's future looks bright......Photo by Jaguar Press

The Advanced Lightweight Coupé is not just about refreshing the face of the Jaguar coupé, nor is it about making the latest – say, model year 2007 – version of the E-Type. It’s about, as Ian says, “my values and the design team’s values of what a Jaguar sports car should be.” Ian started to teach us the fundamentals of Jag design in Detroit last year, while he discussed the updated 2005 S-Type and his R-D6 concept. The R-D6, he reminds us, was “put in there deliberately to challenge people’s perception of what a Jaguar could be…the whole concept of, could we do a Jag like this? And people went, ‘Whoa-ho!’ But after a few months, people were going, ‘Yeah! Hmm, I like it.’ It worked…I was testing my own values of what a Jaguar should be. [The R-D6] is full of Jaguar values.” So the R-D6 was a concept in form, rather than style - an exercise in pushing the packaging envelope, while maintaining Jaguar form. Ian was happy with how it was received over time, so perhaps we can expect more than the standard coupé and “3-box” sedan cars coming from Jaguar in the next few years. But there is no question, it is no secret, that in 2006 we will see a new production Jaguar sports coupé revealed.

Ian's presentation defines many levels of design consideration in this concept program for Jaguar......Photo L.Marvin

So is the goal of showing this concept coupé just to see how people like the design? Not really. Ian tells us the production coupé’s design was finalized before the concept car was built – he signs off on Jaguar designs two years before they are built. Major feedback from the worldwide audience will not influence the design of the production coupé; only minor details may be tweaked.

So why bother showing it? Ian got Freudian on us: “It’s interesting, when you do cars, there’s a psychology involved; when people see a new car for the first time, it’s like a newborn child – they always try to identify that person or car with something else, its human nature. If you introduce them to the design before the actual reality of the car… they can understand where that car has come from, it has come from the showcar. Then they have the reaction – hopefully the [production] car’s not too far away – they have some positive feelings about it, because that’s what they had first for the showcar. So there is some psychological advantage as well. So when we release the real one, people will hopefully relate it to something we’ve seen before, like the concept car, instead of them saying ‘oh, it looks like this, it looks like that…’” It’s gonna look like this. Here’s your heritage, your reference point; Ian Callum is the father of the next Jag coupé (no that does not mean the car will bear a physical resemblance to him), and that’s good blood.

Ian steps out of the concept coupe all smiles. photo by Andrew Gardner

There is no revolution in style planned for this new coupe. The design team is just sticking to those values of Jaguar sports car style. “Well, people say, ‘it’s not radical enough.’” Ian recalls. “Well, there’s not need to be radical; it’s a 2+2 sports coupé. It doesn’t have to be radical; it just has to be right.” Jag sits on a fabulous heritage of 2-door sports cars, from the XK120 and the sexy Le Mans-winning C-Type through the current XK. There is great style in that Jag lineage, but there’s always the question of how to define that sense of style. Callum wonders “what Jaguar style should be. I mean, what is it? People have got very strong opinions of these things. When you challenge them at all, they will get quite upset. You then have to say to them, ‘Look, I’ve made these decisions that, in time, you will understand. Trust me, I’m a designer.’”

A sexy Jaguar "Coke bottle profile" photo by Andrew Gardner

How, though, could anyone complain about Ian’s decisions in this car’s design? At first glance, it has that “Coke bottle profile,” as Ian calls it, and familiar Jag sports coupé proportions. It’s sexy like a cat should be. A harder look may lead you to think those muscular rear fenders, and the front of the car, hint at Ian Callum designs – rather like the Vanquish, one of Ian’s Aston Martin designs.

Ian Callum's magic at Jaguar follows his great success at Aston Martin..........Photo L.Marvin 2005

Ian supports this notion that this concept coupé is full of his own design values; he laid it all out for us:

“I think you have to look at the other ones that I’ve done to see [his design values]. I’m obsessed with the stance of the car, I’m obsessed with – and these things fall, evidently, into the criteria of British sports car design traits as well - I’m obsessed with proportion. I’ve worked very hard on the coupé profile to be a real coupé and not just a nominal sloping back windscreen. That back windscreen, it’s got a real coupé feeling to it. I’m drawn to get the wheel relationship to the cabin as extreme as you can get it. My previous cars have done this, you can see. There are rules by which I live, with either sports cars or saloon cars alike; I’m not going to go away from them, I believe them to be correct.

“And these rules I think were set up when I first looked at an XJ6. That’s what set up these rules for me, that’s when I realized what car design is all about, in 1968. I learned to love that car. I’m not going into detail, but if you look at that car, that is full of the set of rules by which I work. I’m sure if you look through the car you’ll see them. The short front overhangs are fantastic; we can’t have them these days - we’ve got crash implications, we’ve got pedestrian safety implications. But for goodness sake, get rid of the corners so that at least from some angles it looks like it’s got a short overhang. Tapered tails – all cars have got tapered tails, Jaguars have got to have more tapered tails, because that’s what Jaguars do, the way they teardrop.

Ian begins chatting with Bob Gardner & Andrew Gardner.............Photo L.Marvin 2005

“So, you know, the wheels being right at the corners, the wheels being right at the sheetmetal, and very pure graphics – that’s a Jaguar trait, that’s also a British sports car trait; simplicity, honesty, integrity. So yeah, there’s a lot of things in that car that have probably a lot to do with me, and  a lot to do with Jaguar, but you wrap that up in a Jaguar ethos. You’ve got to get the character of a Jaguar into that. And I think once people see this car on the road, the see it the first, the second, the third time, they will recognize it as a Jag, there will be no ambiguity as to what it is.”

As for E-Type inspiration, Ian can sum up how he let that affect the Advanced Lightweight Coupé’s design in one word: drama. “You couldn’t build an E-Type today, it would be illegal,” Callum explains. “There is a challenge to get this much drama. You’ve seen [the advanced coupé] parked there, and you can say if it’s dramatic enough, but you can never replicate the E-Type. You can replicate the idea of something that, when you see it on the street, it makes your jaw drop, it really makes you think. And that’s important, that’s a value that Jaguar should have. And it should make you smile, that’s absolutely important. The E-Type always made me smile.” We at MSC are certainly smiling. And we are sure any line of people on a street will do a form of “the wave,” but executed with dropping jaws rather than rising arms, when they first see the production version of this sexy cat blow by…

How closely will that sexy street machine resemble this concept cat’s appearance? Jag’s official statement is that this coupé shows the new design direction Jaguar is taking, and that this is gives at least a rough sketch of the final version. Ian says the Advanced Lightweight Coupé is “about 80 percent” of where he wants the production coupé to be. “Put it this way,” he summarizes, “you’ll recognize the two cars, there’ll be no ambiguity.”

A very aggressive basic posture.....Photo by Jaguar Press

So it’s full of Ian’s design values, values which he promises not to stray from. Can we gather, then, that he himself likes it? Initially he responded with “Yeah, I like it. It’s not perfect, but I like it.” Without intent to dig up secrets about the production car we weren’t supposed to know, we asked Ian later what he did and didn’t like about the Advanced Lightweight Coupé’s design, and what he would like to change about it, to which we got an excited “A-ha! A-ha-ha!” He knows better than to get tricked into spilling the beans; fortunately, there were things he could discuss that wouldn’t ruin the surprise of what’s coming next year:

Photo by Jaguar Press

“I love the way we managed to get the sculpture in the car as we have done. It’s a very subtle car, this: you can stare at it for ages and discover new things; that’s exactly what I wanted. And yet it’s very simple. It’s not complicated like some other cars right now, which rely on entertainment value….it’ more like an opera than a rock concert. It’s more subtle, it’s more sophisticated. There’s a lot of form in the car, a lot more than today’s XK; that car seems quite simplistic. I love the rear haunches in the car. I pushed hard, really hard, to get [the C-pillars] as far inboard as possible to get those rear haunches. To me it’s that exaggeration that you can do in a sports car that can give it that character. You can’t do that in a saloon car, at least not in the same way. But in a sports car you can get away with it because you steal some of the space from inside - styling the car beautifully and giving it that excitement does steal from the space inside.

So I managed to get the shape to the extremity that I wanted.

Ian gestures while explaining his design to the Detroit show crowd, while keeping his injured left arm steady. photo by Andrew Gardner

“As a designer, you can do that more with each design. You look at what previous cars have done, all that stuff is there but it’s not to the same extremity. I think we pushed this car right to the limit of that, I’m gonna have to start thinking of something else.

“So I like that – the rear haunches, the sophistication of the shape of the car. The stance is important - we worked very hard to get the wheels in the right places. I’m still working on that, I’m still trying to gain an extra few millimeters here and there. Every day I’m pushing a bit harder to get a slightly wider track, you know, right out to the edge. I’m at the point I make people ill with it. I’m obsessed by it. There’s a purity in front – we were brave enough to do the lamps the way we did. People came up and said, ‘they’re not Jag lamps!’ They are now.

Again it's the details that complete the experience for consumers....Photo by Jaguar Press

“You’ve got to, sometimes – without offending people – you’ve got to challenge them, and do things which, initially, will surprise them. You do things that will irritate them but in time these things will become the character of the car, and people will recognize the car because of it, because of the shape of the lamps. As a matter of fact, that’s the way these things work.

“We have this rather ridiculous law that we have to abide to – a U.S. federal law – to protect unbelted occupants, and that determines the height of the windscreen. Every car has to go through this - it’s becoming more stringent every five years - we can’t have the header [top of the windscreen] any lower because that would fall into the trajectory of that unbelted occupant. My personal choice is to tuck the windscreen down another couple of inches to get the aesthetics of the screen, it’s just a little bit too tall. But that’s legal requirements, there’s nothing we can do about it, we’re going to have to live with it. In time that will evolve to establish something which is normal.

Photo by Jaguar Press

“But what else don’t I like about it, what else would I like to do differently? That car was designed three years ago. In many ways, it came out the way it did because that’s the way we as a team were thinking then. If we had to do the car now, we’d do something different. One thing that we would do in the next generation of this car is we would make it even more challenging in terms of design. But I’m happy with the balance it’s got at the moment, very happy.”

A distinctive interior adds another level of appeal...Photo by Jaguar Press

As for the interior, there is no surprise, pleasant or unpleasant. It is characterized by simple and luxurious elegance, leather coupled with metal accents. It is of the quality expected of a Jag. Ian said “there is an honesty about the interior which I really like. It’s not abundantly flamboyant. It’s about packaging the interior over the hardware as tightly as we could. There’s a temptation to get into swaddly, cuddly interiors, as I call them…where the interior should really shine through is in the quality of the materials, rather than be over stylized. So I like the honesty of that; I think all Jaguar interiors should look like that.” Indeed; perhaps more cars in general should look more like this.

This Jag is beautiful – not only visually but also structurally. The aluminum solution is marvelous, providing a frame forty percent lighter and sixty percent stiffer than a comparable steel unit. This fulfills the strength and agility promises made by the athletic lines of the concept coupé. The next Jag coupe is sure to make up for the current XK8’s handling shortcomings.

Ian sharing a toast to his new Jaguar's introduction........Photo L.Marvin 2005

So it is complete: an elegant interior; an exterior full of Ian’s and his design team’s and Jaguar’s and British sports cars’ values; an engine as yet not fully specified but certain to be powerful; and a light, strong frame, to hold it all together and handle the drive force. Ian is pushing the limits of Jaguar sports car design, but not so far in concept as the R-D6. As he said, “Well, people say, ‘it’s not radical enough.’ Well, there’s not need to be radical…it just has to be right.”