Steve Cropley: Jaguar's new design direction will be worth waiting for
Our columnist resurrects a dormant car brand, says goodbye to his lockdown motor, and talks design with Jaguar this week
In this week's automotive adventures, Steve thinks about what is to come from Jaguar, chats with an F1 commentator, bids goodbye to his lockdown motor, and more.
*MONDAY: *Our interview with Jaguar’s new(ish) design director, Julian Thomson, makes me impatient to see the new direction he’s promising for the marque’s future cars. Outgoing boss Ian Callum put Jag Design back on the rails; Thomson wants even more Jaguarness, more richness, more beauty. He’d also like to create some smaller cars, he says, although that road is paved with difficulty because they cost as much as big ones but are less profitable. Still, Thomson led the team that created Land Rover’s LRX concept that led to the Range Rover Evoque, Jaguar Land Rover’s last real rule breaker, a good omen.
Thomson talked affectionately about Jaguar’s 2003 R-D6 concept (“we all still love that car”), which was proposed as a kind of grown-up Mini Cooper, but Jaguar’s (Ford) management didn’t like it. To me, that car did two precious things: used the ‘shield’ grille better than anything before or since, and utilised the D-Type’s wonderful curves in a modern way. More, please.
*TUESDAY: *Reckon you could change the automotive world? If you’ve had a great idea, now’s the time to reveal it – and enter our Drivers of Change competition. With the help of key sponsors, we’re offering generous cash prizes to innovators in the industry’s most important fields. Three of our writers have even come up with entry examples to get you started. Please give it a go.
*WEDNESDAY: *Good fun talking to Martin Brundle, former Formula 1 star and Sky F1 commentator, for a motorsport feature further inside. I’ve known him a long time – since the days when he was Michael Schumacher’s team-mate at Benetton – and I’ve always found him thoughtful, helpful, lucid and thoroughly normal. Which is exactly as he comes across on the Haunted Fishtank.
Whenever we talk, I’m reminded of stuff he told me years ago about the unseen challenges of driving: what F1’s cornering, braking and acceleration forces do to the long-suffering body. In high-downforce braking, the retardation can be so huge that moisture from your tear ducts gets thrown forward onto your visor, and you can have trouble lifting your foot off the brake pedal.
And after just a couple of laps, the forces can make a tightly adjusted harness feel amazingly loose. The only solution is an extreme tightness. “I used to get my mechanic to pull down on the straps until they passed the threshold of pain,” he told me, “then give ’em one more.”
*THURSDAY: *A nice bloke called Derek came this morning to collect the lockdown Bentley Flying Spur after eight weeks. I’ve only driven 150 miles in that time, but I’m still missing it. Guess that’s the test: how you know a car’s truly desirable.
*FRIDAY: *Doubt I’ll ever buy another old car (new ones are too appealing), but if I did, one candidate would be an early Bristol. Because of that, I particularly enjoyed working with our resident car designer, Ben Summerell-Youde, to propose an all-new model for this issue. It’s apparent (and our expert, David Brown, confirmed it) that to do anything decent nowadays, you need a modern donor car that can contribute its interlinked powertrain, fuelling system, clean air gadgetry, instrumentation and more. With DB’s help, we alighted on the Ford Mustang.
Must say I find Ben’s sketches amazingly convincing – imagine driving that through London – and I can’t believe someone, somewhere won’t acquire the name and breathe low-volume life into it again. I showed our proposal to Bristol expert Richard Hackett (sljhackett.co.uk), who proved instantly willing to get involved in selling a car like ours, even at £295k a throw.
*AND ANOTHER THING: *Had a tough lockdown? Imagine how it’s been forreader Paul Fasey, whohad his family’s two carsflattened by this mightytree in a recent overnightstorm. In a letter wrylyheadlined ‘It neverrains….’ he says that atleast the insurers, LVand Admiral, areplaying ball.
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