Rules are ruining car design, says Callum

Restrictive rules and regulations are ruining car style in the 21st century, according to one of the leading designers of his generation.

Ian Callum says there are too many limitations on designers and the result is a generation of cookie-cutter cars that can only be identified by their over-sized and over-styled grilles.

Callum has just finished an award-winning stint as the design director at Jaguar, where he created a string of hits from the F-TYPE sports car and landmark I-PACE electric car to the F-PACE SUV and C-X75 concept car, and is going into private practice in the UK.

He believes everything from NCAP safety regulations to limitations on heights and weights, as well as company targets for visibility and even boot capacity, are locking designers into identical packaging problems.

“I think designers in the car world these days are getting pushed further and further into a corner. And it’s not their fault,” Callum says, speaking exclusively to carsales from England.

“It’s safety, it’s costs, it’s numbers.

“I understand what’s making cars so generic is a set of numbers. All the inputs are exactly the same, and so what you get out the other end is the same result.”

Callum says he did all he could to break those bonds during his time at Jaguar, although he once admitted that the back-end of the company’s XJ flagship had been dictated by the need for a certain amount of luggage space in the boot.

Now he is calling on fellow designers to break away from the restrictions and try to do something different.

“I think there is still room for breaking some of these rules. If I ran a car company I would break all these rules to make something truly beautiful.

“It might not be perfect for everybody, but that's what I would do.”

Callum says he tried to break the mould with Jaguar’s all-electric I-PACE, which was the design winner — as well as overall champion — in last year’s World Car of the Year awards.

“Look at the I-PACE. It has a sense of elegance. Is it an SUV, is it a hatchback? No-one can tell.”

He is also calling for more design and less functionality in a world that is dominated by SUVs.

“I think what’s missing is a sense of elegance. I think cars still need an element of beauty.”