Obituary: Geoff Lawson

YOU NEED only a passing interest in motor cars to know when a new Jaguar hits the streets. The new S-type, spiritual successor to the iconic 1959 Jaguar MkII - revered by getaway and racing drivers alike - is just appearing on British roads, and its distinctive nose and sensual curves are making people stare in admiration. Tragically, the man responsible for the shape of this new British car, Geoff Lawson, Jaguar's Director of Styling, won't be around to see his creation mature into a classic.

In a motor industry peopled by earnest engineers, grim-faced accountants and grey-suited executives, Lawson struck an unusually louche figure. A physically large man, with deep bags under his eyes, a hangdog expression and a cigarette almost constantly in his hand, Lawson represented car enthusiasm at its glorious, unapologetic, exuberant best.

His office at Jaguar was home to a collection of replica guns, models of dragsters, large pictures of American hot-rods and a Fender Stratocaster guitar which Lawson regularly pulled from its wall-mounting for a creative strum. Colleagues might have looked forward to getting the keys to a company car - probably a Ford, since it owns Jaguar - but Lawson preferred to rumble into work at Jaguar's Whitley design nerve-centre in his own, cherry- red Chevy Corvette convertible.

Despite his larger-than-life image, though, Lawson had an extraordinary grasp of what Jaguar customers, potential as well as existing ones, wanted in their cars. With each of Jaguar's recent new models - the XK8 sports car, the XJ6 and XJ8 executive saloons, and now the new, medium-sized S-type sports saloon - the company's sales increased dramatically. Famous though the Jaguar XK120, E-type and XJ-S were, the XK8 became Jaguar's fastest-selling sports car of all time after its unveiling in 1996.

Indeed, Lawson was only the second design chief in almost 65 years of Jaguar cars. The first was Sir William Lyons, the company's founder, who, while more entrepreneur than artist, had an uncanny instinct for car styling that looked just right. Lawson was a great admirer of "the old man".

William Lyons had come into the car industry by the unlikely route of making motorcycle sidecars; Lawson, similarly, eschewed a traditional path by enrolling in Leicester Art School at the age of 16, and being streamed into furniture design. This he continued to do at the Royal College of Art in London, gaining his master's degree in the discipline. "Sadly, when I left, I still didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Except I knew I didn't want to design furniture," he told Autocar magazine recently.

There was a clue in his RCA thesis, however: it was on American car culture - a lifelong passion. Shortly afterwards, in 1969, Lawson joined General Motors' British subsidiary, Vauxhall, as a designer. He was one of the "Bedford Boys", cutting his teeth on lorry design along with other car- design luminaries such as Ken Greenley, now the first Professor of Vehicle Design at the Royal College of Art, John Heffernan and Peter Birtwhistle.

Scheming cabs for bacon-sandwich-munching truckers might have seemed mundane. But it was a route to car- design stardom: Martin Smith, creator of the current high-gloss Audi look, and Peter Stevens, designer of the McLaren F1 - the world's fastest road car - were designing Leyland trucks at the same time.

The RCA started a car-design course itself in 1967. Its 30th anniversary is being celebrated by an exhibition in July called "Moving Objects", and the car featured on invitations and posters is a Jaguar S-type; lots of RCA graduates worked on the project, even though the course came a year too late for their leader.

Lawson was soon working all over the world for General Motors, on cars and trucks. But in 1984 he was offered the top design job at Jaguar, a position he held until his death last week after suffering a stroke at work.

Jaguar was one of the first Conservative privatisations (in the year Lawson joined), and its reputation, in tatters after years under British Leyland control, was largely rebuilt on the style of its cars. For this, Lawson could take the credit, creating such schoolboy favourites as, for instance, the XJ220 - by far the fastest road car the company ever made. He was also responsible for a massive increase in Jaguar design resources under its new owner Ford (which bought the Coventry company in 1989).

Jaguar's importance to the American giant was confirmed recently when it was announced that Britain would be the hub of all Ford's prestige car operations, which include Lincoln in the United States and Volvo in Sweden. A "baby" Jaguar, to be built on Merseyside and aimed directly at the BMW 3 Series, is currently on the drawing board, and should prove to be another Lawson masterstroke.

He was a delight to talk to, someone who made car design seem the most natural thing in the world as long as you, like him, loved cars. Yet he could be disarmingly frank: "Designing cars is like making a film," he told one interviewer recently. "Most of it ends up on the cutting-room floor."

Many car designers immerse themselves in the subject to the point that their whole world is one with four wheels and an engine. Not Lawson. He would be more likely to be found at a shooting range, mountain-biking, playing his guitar or looking at abstract art.

Finding people who, as Jaguar's executive director Mike Beasley points out, can "sustain Jaguar's renowned design heritage" as Geoff Lawson did is tough. Fortunately, because Lawson fostered an unprecedentedly professional design culture within the company, it's an ongoing process.

Geoffrey Lawson, car designer: born Leicester 5 November 1944; married (one son, one daughter); died Coventry 24 June 1999.