Major Tom

My first job was to finish a car that was very personal to Tom and ultimately quite controversial. Peter had designed the TWR R9R which was eventually renamed XJR-15, and it was almost ready for production. But the front end had too much lift, so I was asked to redesign it and also to ‘make sure it looks better.’ Eventually the new front was ready to show to Tom who, that week, was at Le Mans with his Group C Jaguar XJR-12s. He flew back on the Friday before that race just to see the finished model and, I hoped, give his approval. Having looked for a few minutes, he eyeballed me again and asked, ‘you happy with it?

‘Yes of course,’ I replied. He smiled. ‘Good. Job done!’ Then he went back to his aircraft. The team grinned. A man of few words but always looking for belief and commitment.

Tom introduced me to Ross Brawn and although our worlds were very different, Walkinshaw intuitively knew there were synergies to be found between them. I was invited to look at drawings of the XJR-14 race car and to my surprise they were being drawn up on a board with straight lines and radius guides. No wonder race cars looked so wooden. I suggested to Ross we make a scale model from which we could digitise the form. This gave me the chance to create something with subtle changes that added sophistication to the form without any detriment to the packaging or aero, and the result was satisfyingly beautiful.

Tom always saw opportunity in collaboration within his teams no matter how far apart our disciplines may have seemed. In this case he wanted his XJR-14 to not only work well but also to look beautiful. The car went on to win the 1991 World Sportscar Championship Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles.

The Aston Martin DB7 project, for which Tom is perhaps most famed in the road car world, was down to his determination to have a brand he could own and manage on his own terms. Simply put, he was constantly frustrated with the clumsy, protracted culture of larger corporations and felt he could do it better. Having worked on both sides of the fence, I am sure he could.

Tom would think things through very thoroughly. He was hugely creative and a great strategist, always one step ahead. He’d have been great at chess. His decision-making was precise, his command was concise, but he’d always listen to input from his team before making a decision. An attribute at times so lacking, even at the highest level of industry. I am sure his plan was ultimately to own Aston Martin, plotting a way forward to independence for what was a very unloved brand at the time.

To secure the deal, he came up with an absolutely blinding move. The first time he ever showed the car to the Ford board, instead of just whipping the covers off a model, he drove up in a fully designed and running car. This level of completeness was unheard of in the Ford corporate process. It certainly impressed the board, enough to gain the necessary funding. Whatever else Tom may or may not have been, he was always a showman.

I flew with Tom many times. I’d get a call – ‘I’ll meet you at the airport in an hour, bring a bag’ – and I’d go to Kidlington Airport and be ushered onto his Lear. He was usually on the way to a race, where I needed to keep an eye on him to make sure I got a lift home too. He loved that plane, often asking the pilot to give it full boost. We’d take off near to vertical, watching the earth disappear below. An astounding experience. Once in the air, Tom would take charge of hospitality and the serving of food and drink. He was very hospitable.

One such journey was to Gothenburg to meet Volvo top brass, which I’d set up with my good friend and then chief designer, Peter Horbury. Tom saw an opportunity to take Volvo into the BTCC. We returned having secured a three-year deal and were celebrating with a glass of champagne. It was a chirpy journey as he excitedly chatted about what we could do with the 850. ‘Are estate cars more aerodynamically efficient than saloons?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘the drag coefficients are lower.’

‘Right!’ He replied. ‘We’ll race estates then!’ Decision made. No nonsense. Typical Tom. But it wasn’t so much the notion of aerodynamic optimisation that was going through Tom’s head as the thought of the disruption it would cause and that was pretty typical too. I immediately thought there must be a rule against it but there wasn’t; at least until the BTCC decided otherwise. Two years later we were racing saloons.

Of course Tom’s ambitions for Volvo went far beyond the BTCC from the very start. TWR had the idea of creating a sports coupé based on the 850 platform and I was tasked with designing it, working alongside Horbury. It was a challenging task as Peter and I both wanted to break the decades-old square box image of the brand.

While driving with Tom to a Volvo meeting in his E36 M3, I happened to mention how much I admired the BMW. He knew my passion for cars was genuine so offered an M3 for a year if we pulled off the Volvo deal.

He also understood the power of design, as the DB7 project had shown so clearly. Our success or otherwise would be determined by a full presentation of the car’s new shape at his headquarters at Broadstone, with the board of Volvo directors.

The presentation went well as we wowed Volvo brass more used to seeing straight lines than curves. The programme was approved for TWR to develop and manufacture the car for Volvo and so the C70 was born. Tom and the TWR team went off to Uddevalla in Sweden and re-built an entire factory for C70 production. Later the mid-engined Renault Clio V6 was built there too.

But what about that M3? At the Christmas party not long after (Tom liked a party), he announced me as ‘manager of the year’. Lights suddenly lit up the car park outside and there was a bright red M3…and it was indeed mine for a year. I was delighted but the moment caused a small ripple of disconcerted surprise to spread through the audience with Tom enjoying the mild disruption. That same month he had heard my young son was in hospital and sent him a huge box of Lego Technic. Tom could be very generous.

I would travel to Australia on many occasions. Tom had developed Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) with Holden, as well as the Holden Racing Team (HRT). This happened as a direct result of that Bathurst win, and he convinced GM Australia he could do wonders for the Aussie brand. And so it proved. This included modifying saloon cars, turning them into proper muscle cars, some even being described as ‘iconic’. We set up a small design studio at HSV in Melbourne, to which I travelled two or three times a year. One Thursday he called to tell me they had an issue with one of the designs. ‘Get your arse over there now and sort it!’ So I flew to Melbourne for the weekend. ‘Fix it now.’ Uncompromising and clear command was always Tom’s way.

Once the relationship with Jaguar (and Ford) was waning, Tom turned to Nissan to woo them into entering Le Mans again. The spirit of the rules was to create a road legal race car: a race car that could be legally driven on the road, much in the spirit of the cars that raced in the Fifties. Tony Southgate was tasked to design it, as he had TWR’s successful Group C cars. Tom took a keen interest in the design, also ensuring it achieved that road car spirit.

During one review with Tony, I was summoned and told to ‘sort this out’. The car that Tony was creating, in model form at this time, was not going to impress either the ACO or Nissan. That ‘road car’ spirit simply wasn’t there. Tom needed to impress the ACO, having fallen out with them over the disqualification of the Jaguar XJ220 in 1993, but that’s another story. Respecting Tony’s chassis design and aero requirements, we set about the design of the car that would become known as the R390. Fifteen weeks later it was complete and being tested with its new form.

We then went testing at Le Mans and I was privileged to join the team and watch proceedings only for a driver called Sébastien Enjolras to lose his life when he crashed his Welter Racing Peugeot. As we watched the smoke rise over the horizon from somewhere in the forest, the chief mechanic whispered into Tom’s ear, and he walked away.

The driver was the young man from the pit next to us and we’d all seen him just minutes before as he left the garage. ‘He really hates this place,’ Tom’s manager told me. He’s seen too much carnage over the years. ‘So why does he continue?’ I asked. ‘Because he just has to. He just has to.’ Tom could be a very emotional man, which perhaps explains why I didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

We sent three Nissans into the race. After a while it became obvious the gearboxes were overheating because the inflatable ‘luggage box’ TWR had designed to meet the regulations for such an item to be carried was thrown out by the scrutineers, who insisted on a rigid structure. This in turn required re-routing the exhausts too close to the transmission, which meant it was only ever going to be a matter of time before the gearboxes overheated. Tom had promised Nissan he would finish the race so he worked out how long each gearbox would last. He retired two cars and sent his plane back to the UK to collect all the spare gearboxes they had. So, one car ran that race with six different transmissions and finished. Tenacious to the end and a brilliant problem solver.

Tom finally got into Formula 1 with Benetton, which had always been one of his long-term goals. He’d recognised the talent of a certain Michael Schumacher when the young German was competing against Jaguar in Group C. Schumacher, however, had signed for Jordan, but Tom managed to re-negotiate him into his team. Tom would be ruthless to get what or who he needed: winning was everything.

The Benetton days passed and so he moved onto his own team, Arrows. An also-ran team, now owned by Walkinshaw, he was determined to make it successful. I remember it was getting close to the point where he needed to announce drivers for the 1997 season, but Arrows had no one in sight. Time was running out and many thought he’d end up driverless. I was convinced he would deliver as he always did and, taking it down to the wire, he announced Damon Hill. The world was astounded. Damon was the reigning World Champion and very much the hot ticket as a result, but Arrows had no track record of winning. Nevertheless, Tom managed to find not just a driver, but a champion. He could be very persuasive.

The Arrows years were not hugely successful, as much as Tom and the team tried. They had their moments that kept many holding on, and success was always just around the corner. I was involved in designing the graphics of the cars, which became a big part of chasing sponsorship. Arrows was taking more and more of Tom’s time. I left TWR in 1999 and Tom characteristically wished me well and thanked me for all my help.

I suspect Arrows ultimately broke Tom. He put everything into his F1 outfit. The cars, the engines, the team and the drivers. Relentlessly pursuing his ultimate goal. While TWR as an engineering entity was doing well, it needed focused leadership to continue and grow. But F1 is an unforgiving, ruthless game, as we all know. In 2002, TWR went into receivership.

I met Tom not long after at the British Motor Show and although he was still networking and talking about new plans, he was not the man I knew. His spirit seemed broken. However, a month later he called to discuss plans for a new road car he wanted to pursue. Despite everything, he had not given up. As I said, tenacious to the end. His energy had returned, and he was determined, and I was pleased to see the man I had admired for so many years coming back. He wanted advice and some direction so I helped where I could. Although I no longer worked for him, I was excited at the prospect of his new project.

We kept in touch over the months and years that followed. Then one day he called me from his car out of the blue, just for a chat. A couple of weeks later he died aged just 64. I knew Tom had been ill and recovered, but his illness had returned. That last, unexpected call was him saying goodbye.

These are just a fraction of the stories I could tell you, and maybe one day I’ll tell some more. Tom was a man both liked and disliked. He could be ruthless and kind. He could be gruff and yet so polite. He was tenacious and like any great racing driver, he would never lift off the pedal, regardless. To my mind he should have been honoured at the highest level. He achieved so much, in particular for the motor industry and especially for Jaguar, a brand he loved. Sadly I don’t feel that love or appreciation has ever been fully reciprocated. Maybe one day it will.

I like to think I had a special relationship with this man. It may have been because we were both Scottish. Or maybe because he loved design and the power of creativity, but I think it was more that he recognised a determination in me to make a difference. That was something Tom certainly did.