A new design house means Ian Callum is not stopping yet
At an age when most people are thinking about retirement, Jaguar design director Ian Callum just got his second wind.
The superstar car designer has unplugged from Jaguar, but only to shift into top gear at an all-new design and engineering firm, announced less than a month after he left the British car-maker after two decades.
In case there are any questions, the name over the front door provides the answers. It is CALLUM.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Callum says defensively, talking exclusively to carsales.com.au while sitting on a beach in the south of England.
“But it’s a good name. A strong name. The team wanted to use it. And it’s known in the design world.”
Right now, Callum could easily be settling into retirement, but he is happy as he talks through the reasons why 65 is far too early for him to give up on his passion.
“I see far too many people fading into the background. I had no intention of retiring,” he laughs.
“I had no intention of retiring after Jaguar. I’m one of those creative people that wants to keep going.
The rock god of design, whose work includes everything from HSV Holdens to the Jaguar C-X75 concept car, sees a musical parallel to his latest move in the design world.
“It’s time to go back to acoustic guitars. Go back to basics. And, you know what, I think I can still do it,” he says.
‘It’, for Callum, is the plain-and-simple business of design. And not just cars.
“There are things I want to do. I want to design things.
“We’re doing some other stuff. I’m doing some luggage for somebody, which was quite a bit of fun.
“And I’d like to get into furniture. I might even do a helicopter.
“When you become a director you tend to direct, not put pen on paper. You don’t have that direct creative stuff.”
Callum the man now admits that CALLUM the company was on his radar a long time before he gave his notice at Jaguar.
“My mind was made up a while ago, a number of years ago, but it was how it was going to formulate. I might have stayed until the end of the year, but things started to accelerate. I had to give them six months notice.
“I have to dip my toe in the water and see what happens.”
He has the advantage of a healthy pension and lifetime access to a cheap car from Jaguar, but Callum is as pumped as ever for the new challenge.
“I am going to push myself. I want to step over the line. I’m not an outrageous designer, but I still think I can do good work.
“You know what. The best answer to what I bring is that I’ve got experience.
“If I watch people working on a clay model I can cut through to the end. So part of my job is to say if it’s not going to work.
“It’s important to say ‘I have got the T-shirts, I have done that’. That’s what I bring. It’s a sense of getting to the right answer, or a better answer, than most people can.”
CALLUM will offer design, engineering, prototyping, machining and trim services, and will be able to create bespoke products including high-end limited-edition vehicles in-house.
Based in a 1858-square-metre facility at Warwick in the British midlands, the consultancy is close to Jaguar but also in a region with all the resources of the motor industry. It’s well equipped with everything from CAD computers to surface plates and a paint booth, but the key is the people.
Callum is one of four founding members of the company that bears his name, and all of them are ex-Jaguar Land Rover executives, including program director David Fairbairn, engineering director Adam Donfrancesco and commercial director Tom Bird.
Fairburn is an 18-year JLR veteran who most recently was head of bespoke and special projects (including the reincarnated Jaguar Lightweight E-Type), while Donfrancesco was his engineering manager at JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) and helped create Jaguar’s F-TYPE GT4, and Bird worked on JLR’s global business expansion and projects like the Jaguar C-X75.
Another dozen employees so far bring experience from not only the automotive and motorsport sectors, but art, audio, fashion and lifestyle, allowing the British firm to cover many bases.
“We’ve got about 16 people at the moment. We’re growing bit by bit. A lot of the jobs are fairly mundane engineering jobs, but they are not the ones we talk about.
“If you go into the midlands you can get anything done. There are people who can build everything from engine blocks to full metal bodies. And at reasonable rates.”
It’s too early for Callum to go into detail on individual projects, the first of which will be announced in coming weeks, but he talks through everything from the Singer work on born-again Porsches to his time with the late Tom Walkinshaw, when TWR did behind-the-scenes design and development work for a huge range of companies including Aston Martin and Volvo.
“We will be doing a lot of speculative work in order to get people involved. That was very much Tom’s way; he would create ideas to seduce people into the business and it worked.”
Callum even did the design work on a series of HSV Holdens and was a regular visitor to the Tom’s Cafe coffee spot at Clayton.
“I’ve never really thought about going back to that. I would like to do something, but Julian Quincy is there now.”
He’s happy to sketch the broad landscape for CALLUM but happier to talk about no-go areas with major car-makers.
“I won’t be working directly for any OEMs. If they want a clay model or a design proposal, I’m not interested. I don’t want to do that any more.
“If I do something, it will be because I want to do it, not because someone else does.
“I’m not interested in what other people are doing. It’s great for them, but I don’t want to compete with anybody, or make a noise about being better than so-and-so.
“And, to be blunt, I’m not too worried about whether I have to make a living. I’ve been fortunate. I have a small pension…”
Callum also has a 12-car personal car collection that includes everything from a couple of vintage Volkswagen Beetles and a 993-series Porsche 911, plus a Jaguar XJ coupe and a Mini. And there is the F-TYPE SVR, his ‘company’ car.
He only plans to work for three days a week, leaving the heavy lifting to his team, but has very strong ideas about the work that will be done at CALLUM.
“Anything I do has to add value. I don’t want to just churn out a bunch of watch faces for someone. It’s got to have a value, or I’m not interested.
“We still have to make a living out of this, but what I bring is a genuine desire to better myself each time.
“What I’m finding is that all that stuff is rushing back to me. It’s a different culture, but all that stuff is coming back into my memory.
“I originally thought ‘crikey, here we go again’, but it’s different this time because my name is on the door.
“It’s my personal journey. I’m not looking for that recognition, certainly not any more, or that endorsement from someone else.
“It’s my determination. And, hopefully, out of that will come stuff that people enjoy.”
Keyword: Jaguar style king is going again