How British creativity and exuberance of proportions led to the Jaguar Type 01

After 27 years at JLR, Andrew Wheel knows a thing or two about keeping a design vision intact. For Jaguar’s new Type 01, that vision is rooted in the distinctly British ability to blend restraint with revolution and to follow fresh ideas without fear.

This revolution came after the brand spent years chasing its competitors, according to Wheel, and in the process, lost its mojo. So, the team decided to return to the qualities that made Jaguar distinctive in the first place.

At first glance in this writer’s eyes, the Jaguar Type 01 stands out for its architectural structure, a masterclass in proportions. For a full design breakdown read our design walkaround with head of exterior design, Alexey Andreev and chief interior designer Tom Holden here.

Ahead of the Jaguar Type 01 launch party in Knightsbridge, London, CDN’s Lucy Abbott caught up with Andrew Wheel (with that surname, his career was surely destiny) to delve into Jaguar’s design direction. 

Car Design News: Tell us about your role, how did you start out at JLR?

Andrew Wheel: My role is brand agnostic. I joined the Land Rover business and spent the majority of my time with Land Rover. In 2021, the two studios came together – we used to have Land Rover in Gaydon and Jaguar in Whitley in Coventry – so we mashed together to become one creative cohort.

Almost instantly after that was the Renaissance competition (an internal competition to rethink Jaguar’s aesthetic). I thought that no matter which team wins here, I’ve got a pretty good gig out of this because I get to make sure that the design vision gets to production without suffering death by a thousand cuts – which is my thing. You work out a way with the engineering teams to make sure that you preserve the vision.

CDN: With the evolution of the brand, how do you keep things feeling fresh while also maintaining its identity?

AW: Across all those brands, there’s a common thread: you look at the values that are still fresh, relevant and desirable. Make sure you play to those and do not be held back by things that are no longer relevant or desirable. And we’ve done that on car after car as a mantra. With the Type 01, it’s almost the most extreme example of where we were going – back to the roots of what the Jaguar values are. With this, we are really going to fast forward this thing into the future and be deliberately provocative. It’s not for everybody, but that’s fine.

What you’re drawing now can echo across decades. There's a responsibility to ensure you’re not being risk averse

CDN: So, what were those values?

AW: It’s proportions. Everything is about proportions. You get the macro right, and you’re not having to do any styling to manage crap proportions. Get the proportions right and then it entitles you to do those cleaner, more sculptural, architectural surfaces. As a creative cohort, we have a pretty good history of doing that now – finding that sweet spot.

CDN: How do you tackle having to design so far into the future?

AW: With the lead times for new cars, you’re drawing it in 2021, it comes into production in 2026, you’ll probably make it until the mid-late 2030s, those last cars will be active in the 2050s and then they’ll start to become classic cars in the 2060s.

Cars I’ve worked on, some of them are appearing in the scrapyard. Some of them are appearing in classic car magazines. It’s great, but they follow that general rule [of proportions]. The big thing to teach designers fresh into the industry is what you’re drawing now can echo across decades, you’ve got quite a responsibility there to make the right judgements of making sure you’re not being risk averse.

CDN: I can imagine as a designer working against so many constraints and competitors, it’s almost easy to fall into the habit of being risk averse

AW: Speaking honestly, Jaguar have gone into that for a couple of decades, the cars that were out there were trying to chase competition. They’d lost their mojo compared to what came beforehand. So, we just said – let’s go back to those cars and that exuberance of proportions.

The other thing is about British creativity. I’m really proud to be part of a team where we stick two fingers up to convention. You look at British creativity and it’s always that mix of restraint with revolution. Doing innovative things, but you package it up in a way that is fresh and new. It’s enabled something that’s got an element of restraint, culture and counterculture. Culture and counterculture – when it comes to British design, there are so many examples of how we blend those two things together. They feel like polarities, you shouldn’t be able to mix restraint with revolution, but we do it. The Type 01 is an example of that.

CDN: With the Type 01 being a five-year project in the making, what did the design process look like?

AW: The results of the design competition was a clear vote for a visual language which has bandwidth, so we could put it in a range of vehicles. This is just the first car. Because the Type 01 was treated as much more of an artistic exploration, that then gave us the challenge of proportions. That’s where all these cunning plans came out about splitting the battery pack. So part of the battery went rearward, a lot of it went forward. Normally the battery stays within the passenger cell, the structural cell. This allowed us to push the bonnet down even lower, which allowed us to push the roofline down even more which is great for frontal aero efficiency. Now we have a car that is unlike any other EV on the road – and it could only be an EV, you could not fit a conventional engine in there.

CDN: What about this co-called ‘impossible panel’?

AW: [laughs] According to the algorithms in the CAD world, this panel would tear all the time. It’s 0.9mm aluminium and you’re trying to force this flat sheet of ‘paper’ and every fold makes it stiffer, every clean bit of surface is inherently weak. "Computer says no" [elite reference]. So we (again) came up with a cunning plan, which involved one of the tooling suppliers. Their experts really know how to modify tools because the actual surface is nothing like the final surface because metal panels always have spring back, so you’ve got to guess how much spring back there is. We refined and refined and found a way to make that panel work. We then updated the algorithm, so we actually updated the laws of physics in the computer world – that’s a bit of a high point.

CDN: How did you decide what to prioritise?

AW: We had a lot of conversations about the hierarchy of needs. Cars of old, including some Jaguars, were trying to chase every single millimetre to be like a competitor vehicle and you end up with something that loses its character. We said the important things are the height, proportions, length of bonnet and things like the rearview mirror solutions. If we have to make those elements fit to a millimetre, then we will lose the spirit of the car. We decided we can’t treat a target as an absolute value – a target you don’t have to hit all the time. Let’s make sure we are hitting the right targets.

CDN: Where do you go from here? What can we expect?

AW: We’re saying it’s the start of a family of watches, ones that will have to be coherent in the showroom of the future. No matter what we do beyond that we will not lose the values. In 100 years’ time, I’d like one of these to be bought for millions and millions at an auction somewhere. Like an antique piece that’s still relevant and very desirable as an object.