Ian Callum on Last Blast

This country has arguably never produced a finer car designer than Ian Callum. He learned his craft at Ford, made his name at Tom Walkinshaw Racing by creating the Aston Martin DB7 and reinvented Jaguar with modern, forward-facing designs such as the 2010 XJ saloon.

His greatest hits include the original Aston Martin Vanquish and DB9, plus the Jaguar F-Type, I-PACE and C-X75 concept. For more than 40 years, Scotsman Callum has been advocating contemporary design, understated beauty, clean lines and restrained detailing. Little wonder so many of his cars are recognised as being among the most beautiful ever designed. He is modest too – he puts his glittering career down to ‘good luck’ and is quick to recognise the enormous contributions of the brilliant people he has worked with.

Callum is a committed car enthusiast – in his first job straight out of college, he selected from the Ford company car list a Sierra Cosworth that he couldn’t afford. He is a lover of American hot rods and has in his collection a 993-era Porsche 911, among several other carefully selected modern and classic sports cars.

Let’s not forget, Ian Callum is a contributor to The Intercooler as well, writing about his life and work in the world of car design. He is, then, the perfect Last Blast guest, and he talks openly about feeling boxed-in at Ford, taking a gamble by joining TWR instead and being relieved to walk away from his Jaguar design chief role in 2019.

This is the final episode of series one of Last Blast – our subscriber-only podcast series – and you can listen to it here.