Ian Callum

Ian Callum is a British car designer who currently serves as Design Director for Jaguar and is older brother to fellow car designer Moray Callum. He is married, has two sons and currently resides in Oxfordshire, England.

Background

Callum was born in Dumfries, Scotland, in 1955. In 1968 (at the age of 13) he submitted a car design to Jaguar in the hope of landing a job. Callum studied at Lanchester Polytechnic's (now Coventry University) School of Transportation Design in Coventry, Aberdeen Art College and the Glasgow School of Art, where he graduated with a degree in Industrial Design. He subsequently graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a post-graduate Masters degree in Vehicle Design.

Career

Ford

From 1979 to 1990 he worked at Ford working between Dunton, Japan, Italy and Australia, mainly working on ‘bits of cars, mostly steering wheels’. [ ‘Ian Callum’s Day Off…’ by Jon Smith (pp98-104), CAR Magazine, February 2007, p104 ] As well as working on bread-and-butter Fiestas and Mondeos, he contributed to image builders such as the RS200 and Escort RS Cosworth, the last of which he is especially proud of and with which he collaborated with fellow RCA graduate Peter Horbury. [ Ibid. ] He was then appointed Design Manager responsible for the Ghia Design Studio in Turin and worked on the Via, Zig and Zag show car concepts.

TWR

After eleven years in a corporate environment, Callum left Ford in 1990 to join Peter Stevens and Tom Walkinshaw to form TWR Design. He said,

In 1991, he was appointed Chief Designer and General Manager of TWR Design. During this period he was responsible for designing the Aston Martin DB7, which is probably the design he is currently most famous for. He also designed the Aston Martin Vanquish, the V12-powered DB7 Vantage and Aston Martin's Project Vantage concept car as well as taking responsibility for a wide range of design programs for other TWR clients, including Volvo and Mazda. He was awarded the Jim Clark Memorial Award in 1995 in recognition of his styling work on the DB7. In 1998, he designed the Nissan R390 [ [http://www.supercars.net/cars/1391.html Nissan R390 GT1 - Supercars.net ] ] .

Jaguar

In 1999, Callum was appointed to succeed the late Geoff Lawson as Design Director at Jaguar, which had become a Ford Motor Company subsidiary in 1990. For a short stint, Callum directed design at both Jaguar and Aston Martin and it is claimed that he laid the foundations for the DB9 which was later finished by Henrik Fisker, [ ‘Ian Callum’s Day Off…’, CAR Magazine, February 2007, p104 ] though the extent of his contribution remains unclear. At Jaguar, since the Lawson designed 2001 X-Type and 2002 XJ were well advanced his influence was initially felt through a series of concepts, the 2001 R-Coupe and 2003 R-D6. The first production Jaguar to bear his influence was the 2004 facelift of the S-Type followed by the 2004 X-Type Estate, of which he was responsible for the tailgate design.

With the next generation of Jaguar models Callum hopes to take Jaguar away from the Lawson-era retroism, which produced the slow-selling X-Type, S-Type, and XJ towards a language that is more dynamic and modern. This coincides with a change of strategy for Jaguar, which will see them becoming a more exclusive and low-volume manufacturer. According to Callum, ‘Jaguars should be perceived as cool cars and cool cars attract interesting, edgy people.’ [ ‘The cat gets some cool claws’ by Andrew Frankel, The Sunday Times 07/01/07 [http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12929-2532535,00.html] , accessed 30 Jan 2007 ] The first next-generation model which reflects this ethos is his first complete production Jaguar, the 2006 XK, which bears striking similarity to the Aston Martin DB9, which Callum describes as being a result of modern safety legislation. [ Ian Callum interview by Andrew Noakes [http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=52&i=10823] , accessed 30 Jan 2007 ] This new direction is continued with the 2008 XF as previewed by the concept C-XF, which Callum describes as the ‘next significant step forward’ in Jaguar's design direction. [ ‘Jaguar XF’ by Gavin Green (pp44-55), CAR Magazine, February 2007, p48 ]

References

External links

* [http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=11879 Ian Callum Ford Biography]
* [http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=52&i=10823 Ian Callum interview in Pistonheads]