Return to retro?
OK, SO I’ll answer the obvious question first. Why does the photo accompanying this month’s column feature a Renault 5, which is the most un-Jaguar-like car you can possibly imagine?
The answer? Because the 5 – or more specifically, the R5 e-Tech concept car (the yellow one in the photos) is an example of what’s possible when car designers aren’t hampered by complicated vehicle architecture. If Jaguar plays its cards right, it could be the future of the brand. If you don’t understand, you’ll have to hear me out on this. Ask most car designers of the current era and they’ll tell you that today’s cars aren’t the most handsome ever made. Each will have an all-time classic that is their favourite. They’ll also tell you that ugly cars are not their fault – and they’re correct.
Indeed, one of the reasons that car design has become so much wider, taller and clunkier over the past decade or so is because of safety-led mandates focused on passenger and pedestrian protection, including much larger gaps between bonnets and engine blocks, softer, more easily deformable front body panels and large tubular internal panel structures.
But times are changing, and whilst a shift towards more and more electric powertrains does mean the inevitable demise of the internal combustion engine that so many of us love, myself very much included, the more positive flip-side is that smaller and lower vehicle architecture gives designers a much freer hand to be creative higher up.
It’s something that JLR’s Chief Creative Officer, Gerry McGovern, has already touched upon. Three years ago, he was quoted in an Autocar interview as saying that a move towards electric vehicles was one of the most exciting things that had happened to car design in decades.
The Jaguar I-Pace – at least in part - demonstrated this. It represented a complete change in Jaguar’s styling language and brought in a look that had never before been seen on the company’s cars.
THEY’LL ALSO TELL YOU THAT UGLY CARS ARE NOT THEIR FAULT – AND THEY’RE CORRECT
But since then, the car industry has changed even further and there is an increasing trend towards looking at the past to move forwards, with more and more retro-styled cars appearing on hightech, modern, electric platforms.
The Renault R5 e-Tech is one such design, but there are others too. The Honda-e, which echoes the look of the original Civic, the new Volkswagen ID-Buzz that shamelessly steals styling cues from the iconic Type 2 Microbus, the Fiat 500e, true to the lineage of the orig
