You meet people on the Mille Miglia, amid the entrants chowing down on seconds of fennel pesto pasta, the children in tiny little villages begging for burnouts, and pretty underwear models like David Gandy preening in million-dollar roadsters. Jaguar chief designer Ian Callum, part of Jaguar’s nine-car factory heritage team, is not an English underwear model. He’s a Scot whose pen strokes—the F-type, XJ, and all modern Jags since he joined Coventry in 1999—are the very definition of rolling sex. While Gandy, Top Gear maybe-hostess Jodie Kidd, and other U.K. somebodies were omnipresent as we joined Jaguar on the four-day, 1000-mile rally through northern and central Italy, we only wanted to talk to Ian.
We caught up with him after his jaunt in a 1956 D-type, and learned a few things about Jaguar’s product plans, his take on outlandish concept cars, safety mandates, and even the Aston Martin Cygnet. Have a read, then immerse yourself in our magnifico Mille Miglia photo gallery.
Car and Driver: With R-S changing to SVR, what top-end Jags should we expect to see?
Ian Callum: It’s quite interesting to see what’s happening in terms of engines, V-8s, V-6s, or straight-sixes, or four-cylinders, and hybrids, using hybrids as a performance tool. We’re investigating all that stuff. I don’t want to say much about what’s happening in terms of performance, but we are a performance company, that’s our mission, so clearly we’ll have to work a few things in over the next few years. The F-pace clearly has got an opportunity to be a performance vehicle, there’s no doubt about that. Engineering wise, what we can do to Land Rover in terms of the ability to be driven fast we can certainly do to Jaguar as well.
C/D: Is design too limited by safety mandates and other regulations?
IC: I think we’re more expressive than other people are. I think we’ve still managed to bend the rules in our favor in a way that perhaps other car companies don’t have the urge in them to do it, even the willpower to do it. You look at the car—the XE—to get it into that shape, something that’s remotely exciting for a car of that type, takes a lot of effort. Anybody can do it. But we did do it. The thing about design is, it’s not about looking at the regulations and the expectations of what can and can’t be done, it’s about taking all the facts and dealing with them.
C/D: Do you think Jaguar could go further down market?
IC: No. Where we are at the moment, with a medium-sized car, the new XF, we’re working on the next-generation XJ, that will continue, the sports cars—I’m already thinking about what we might do for the F-type replacement—all that stuff is ongoing. We’re not really in a place to expand any more. I think a smaller car is something really we haven’t considered. But you know, a smaller car is a great [problem] for a business plan, actually, because people expect to pay less for them. I don’t understand that.
C/D: How about what Aston Martin did with the Cygnet?
IC: I’m sorry, I say quite honestly I can’t take that seriously. That was a very strange thing to do. That’s certainly not something that we would consider doing. There’d be no advantage in it.
C/D: What can we expect from the next XK?
IC: There’s some rumors, but the truth is we’re still investigating. Should it be a full four-seater coupe? Should it be a 2+2 derivative of F-type or should it be something different? We’ve got a few ideas. It’s not a priority. We’ve got other things which I can’t say anything about which are priority and we’re moving on into other areas.
C/D: Are you working on any concepts?
IC: All the time.
C/D: Like C-X75, James Bond Spectre-type cars?
IC: Well, the C-X75 was initially a design, yeah, we’re looking at things like that as well.
C/D: Nowadays, instead of outlandish dream cars, we’re seeing concepts that are far closer to production vehicles. Is that your intent at Jaguar?
IC: Yeah, because we do stuff that is just so ludicrous, it’s so difficult to make it happen that you just overpromise. I’ve been guilty of that in the past. The C-XF overpromised, and I said to my team, either we do a car which is completely new and fresh, we present a concept with the hope or the desire we can turn it into [production]. The C-X75 nearly made it [read our prototype drive from 2013 -- Ed.]. Or, we do limitations of what’s up and coming, change it a little bit, but don’t overpromise. You know it’s coming up and you give them a teaser.
With XF, I probably shortsighted it a bit by bringing out the C-XF, because it’s such an extreme version of it that the real car came and people were disappointed, which is ridiculous, because it replaced the S-type! You know? It was a radical change, but it seemed to be a step backwards from the concept car.
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