Julian Thomson Steps Down As Jaguar’s Director Of Design

Julian Thomson, Design Director at Jaguar, has resigned and will be leaving the company at the end of this month. An internal memo revealed that he will leave Jaguar for exploring other exciting opportunities. He took over the reins at Jaguar Design after Ian Callum’s departure in 2019 and was tasked with establishing the future strategic design direction for the brand. He worked on production models, updated models and concepts cars as well. He was responsible for the design of various cars from Jaguar such as XK, XF, XJ, F-TYPE, XE, F-Pace, E-Pace, and Jaguar’s first-ever electric vehicle – the I-Pace as well. We have reached out to Jaguar Land Rover for a comment on the same, and the company is yet to respond.

Thomson also served as the head of design at Lotus and was the brains behind the design of the famous Lotus Elise. He was appointed as Chief of Exteriors at the Volkswagen Group’s Concept Design Centre in Barcelona in 1998 and worked on production and concept vehicle design for various brands under the Volkswagen umbrella such as Audi, Bentley, Seat, and VW itself. Julian joined Jaguar in 2000 as Advanced Design Director and also served as Advanced Design Director for Land Rover between 2006 and 2008.

Thomson studied Mechanical Engineering at Hatfield University before completing an MA in Automotive Design at the Royal College of Art. He began his automotive industry career in 1984 as a designer at Ford in Dunton, England, before moving to Lotus Design in Norwich in 1986. In the recent past, Former JLR CEO, Professor Ralf Speth moved to TVS Motor Company as the chairman while Wayne Burgess, yet another designer who had worked with Jaguar before was appointed as the Head of Vehicle Design at Ola Electric.