Jaguar is entering a new era under design director and self-professed maverick Julian Thomson. What will it be like? Steve Cropley asks him. Like all great car designers, and quite a few who aren't, Julian Thomson drew cars constantly when he was young. But instead of drawing other people's designs - Ferraris and Porsches, like the other kids - he always drew his own. "My father, who worked in the National Gallery, wasn't especially into cars but he loved the creative process," says 58-year-old Thomson, who succeeded Ian Callum last July as Jaguar's design director after 20 action-packed years as his closest associate. "He always encouraged us kids to do our own thing. If we made an Airfix kit, we'd immediately cut it up and make it into something of our own. I suppose I was designing from the very beginning without realising it."
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