JLR Design

[Insanity Magnet]

Here's an interesting video for the DesignHeads out there. Wasn't sure if I should place this in the Jaguar or even Land Rover forums but decided it might appeal to a wider audience.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/10/28/jaguars-julian-...

As per the link, it is a video of a presentation given by Julian Thompson covering Jaguar's design ethos, history and process. Quite amusing at times as Thompson doesn't seem to be particularly PC...

[tbc]

The problem I have with Jaguar, and a few other car makers is

they put up a concept for the next model, the XF for example

two years later they release the actually car, which is a dumbed down version of the concept

and it looks as old as the hills

[anonymous-user]

tbc said:

The problem I have with Jaguar, and a few other car makers is

they put up a concept for the next model, the XF for example

two years later they release the actually car, which is a dumbed down version of the concept

and it looks as old as the hills

Cost.

[Insanity Magnet]

RenOHH said:

Cost.

I guess (I'm not involved in auto design). Creations such as the Evoque and some of Citroen's recent concepts have hit production without too much obvious (detrimental) fiddling. I wonder if this is because the designers are being more realistic, the engineers are getting better at staying true to the concept when converting the concept into a manufacturable item, or if production process costs are reducing to allow more complex designs to be manufactured.

[davepoth]

Cost was the issue with the XF - Tata weren't sure if it would work. Luckily they've done good business, and LR have done extremely well. So they're now able to productionise things much more readily (as mentioned, the Evoque came out pretty much identical to the concept)

[Chapppers]

davepoth said:

Cost was the issue with the XF - Tata weren't sure if it would work. Luckily they've done good business, and LR have done extremely well. So they're now able to productionise things much more readily (as mentioned, the Evoque came out pretty much identical to the concept)

Indeed, not sure how true it is but I heard the headlights were simply too expensive to put into production at that point and so they ended up with bigger units that put a hump in the bonnet. To be fair, current XF looks at lot closer to the CX-F concept than the pre-facelift did. XF was very much Ford era though, Dave.

Edited by Chapppers on Monday 29th October 23:41

[JonnyVTEC]

davepoth said:

Cost was the issue with the XF - Tata weren't sure if it would work. Luckily they've done good business, and LR have done extremely well. So they're now able to productionise things much more readily (as mentioned, the Evoque came out pretty much identical to the concept)

Tata didn't own JLR when the XF was launched.

[davepoth]

JonnyVTEC said:

Tata didn't own JLR when the XF was launched.

Ah well, I was half right.

[monthefish]

davepoth said:

Cost was the issue with the XF

It wasn't as simple as cost, although that was a factor.


For example, I, personally, would have been happy to have had to go to a main dealer to change a headlight bulb if the XF had looked exactly like the concept.

Of course, the (mass) market completely disagrees, and considerations like this have an influence on the design, usually a negative one.