“It needed to be something that was no shrinking violet"

Back in 2020, Avant Design started working on a concept for a new electric Jensen Interceptor. A full design study followed in 2022 and piqued the interest of Jensen’s leadership.

While it was first conceived with an electric powertrain, the team decided it needed an engine, specifically a supercharged 960bhp, 6.8-litre V8. What began as a passion project for the father and son duo, Jonathan and Chris Gould, managing director and design director, respectively, at Avant Design, turned into a relaunch of the Jensen brand, 60 years after the Interceptor’s debut. 

Car Design News: What was the original brief? 

Chris Gould: There were two briefs within the project. One was for us to design what a new Interceptor would be but then we were also designing a race car version of that which is not really what Jensen was known for. It was really important to revive the car for a modern era in a way that was sympathetic to the original but also allowed us the opportunity to elevate it more into this radical GTX race version. 

CDN: How did you find the right balance between honouring the original and moving the brand on? 

CG: Across 60 years of evolution, you’ve got to try and imagine what a new Interceptor would look like if Jensen had continued as a brand. You have to follow that same pathway like any other brand that has existed through that time period.

Aston Martin is quite key: if you look at what Aston Martin looked like in 1966 and what it looks like now, the evolution is completely radical. I think that’s what will be the hardest thing for people to get their heads around and was possibly the most difficult thing for us as designers to establish how far we go with it. 

The design had to be completely modern, it didn’t want to be borderline resto or retro mod, it had to be completely all new visually for the brand other than the key DNA. We had to determine the design qualities that were specific to the ‘60s and the design elements that were specific to the original Interceptor. 

CDN: Can you give us some examples of how you acknowledged the classic Interceptor in the new design? 

CG: From an initial view, it’s a fairly modern vehicle with a slight bit of Americana muscle attitude at the front, primarily because that’s where some of the inspiration for the original Interceptor came from. If you look more closely, you’ll see loads of little links to the original car. On the front, the angle of the grille is very sympathetic to the original, the vents on the sides are almost identical to the angle of the original as is some of the bonnet sculpting.  

Jonathan Gould: And there is a lot of drama about it, we wound it up as much as we could. It needed to be a showstopper. It needed to be something that was no shrinking violet. It's out there. It's mean and proud about it. If you look at the rear plan shape it’s like nothing else on the road but it needs to convey the design and the influences from the original car. We've got a floating C pillar that wraps around into the large glazed tailgate area, which is reminiscent of the original car.

Also, the long bonnet and the proportion is quite key and something that is not really seen when most cars these days are more cab forward. We wanted the elegance and the drama of having the long bonnet because it’s got a thumping great big engine in it. 

CDN: Walk us through the interior design… 

CG: The GTX is very much hardcore track orientated, so in terms of the styling input, the brief was to make sure it looks neat and tidy but there’s a rawness to it that is acceptable due to the nature of the vehicle. In terms of any influences from the original car, we haven’t brought that into the GTX but the GT has a bit more synchronicity with the original Interceptor. However we made sure that we’re keeping it for a market of today, so it’s a luxury four-door GT with suicide rear doors.  

CDN: What were the key challenges in reimagining the Interceptor as a race car? 

JG: Fundamentally it's 85% the production car in terms of design. If you take away the spoilers and the splitters and the aero kit on there, fundamentally, the body design is the same as the production car. We did the programme as a production programme, and then turned it into the GTX in effect, so that actually gives a bit more breadth to the project overall. 

CG: As designers, we’re always trying to chase beauty. As well as it being functional, you’ve got to design something that is pleasing to look at. One of the challenges for us was there is a very raw vulgarity to race cars and how they are executed. We needed to be the mediator trying to make sure, as a race car, it didn’t retain the rawness that you might typically find in those vehicles. 

CDN: Did any of your previous projects influence how you approached this one? 

CG: In some respects, Longbow was quite instrumental since the process we used for both projects was quite different to how we’ve done it before. It was less of a sketch programme and more of a quick iterative 3D modelling process. We design readily now in virtual reality for a few reasons. First, it allows designers to be more creative in 3D. 

Second, it enables the designer to craft and mature the idea in their head in 3D and that can be passed over to the alias guys and they can re-clothe it in A-class surfacing. That avoids any translation error between a designer and the alias modeller.  

Finally, being more 3D orientated at the early stages means we can design around packages which allows us to be more efficient with our time. There’s no point designing something unbelievably wacky that looks amazing on a piece of paper if it fundamentally doesn’t work once you wrap it around a package.