An evening with Ian Callum

Ian talked about his long and distinguished career, plus his ambitions for CALLUM, in the hour-long conversation. The full thing is available to listen to now as a podcast (search ‘The Intercooler’ wherever you get your podcasts or head to the Video & Podcast page on our app or website) and the audience Q&A session that followed will be released next week.

We wanted not only to hear about Ian’s time at Aston Martin, Jaguar and now CALLUM, but also learn what it takes to be a great car designer. Ian talks insightfully about the less obvious skills that are required to climb to the top of the car design world, like being an effective politician within an organisation, or dealing with junior designers with empathy so that they come around to your way of thinking.

In the Q&A that follows next week, Ian gives his opinion on BMW’s very contentious design direction and he reveals which cars he has in his own collection. In both discussions he was funny, honest and very forthcoming, which made our job on the other side of the stage as straightforward as it possibly could have been.

Our thanks go to Ian, to Autoglym for making the evening possible, to CALLUM for being so welcoming and, of course, to everybody who bought tickets and made the evening such a joy. I suppose we should start thinking about the next one…

Photography by Ed Datsun