During a visit to Ford HQ in Dearborn in March
1992, my friend Jack Telnack, head of global design for Ford, had invited me to
his ‘skunkworks’ studio to look at the Jaguar coupe design concept he and his
team of young design students had created. This was the property Telnak planned
to submit to the ‘Ford-Jaguar Clinic’ to be held at Dunton.
I had to tell him that, in my humble
opinion, it was terrible. The team had gathered together every Jaguar design
cue they could identify and grafted them all onto the concept model. The car
was a mish-mash of themes, and there was no cohesive spirit in the design. It might
have been confused with a Porsche 928, it certainly didn’t look like
a Jaguar!
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Geoff Lawson |
A week later I got a call in my office in
New Jersey from Jaguar’s chief designer, Geoff Lawson, who relayed the results
from the Dunton clinic.
He said he had the impression the Ford Board would
continue to push for the Ghia property ("The Hoover"). He said the
Ghia model was pretty horrible, but despite X100 getting enthusiastic support
from William Clay Ford Sr., Geoff Lawson was worried the preferred Jaguar
concept might just disappear off the radar.
We needed a strategy, and a set of tactics
which would influence the Ford decision in favor of X100, created at Whitley by
Geoff Lawson, and the design team led by Fergus Pollock, and designer Gary Doy.
Following the challenging confrontation at
the Ford Board review meeting at Dunton, a cadre of key Jaguar executives on
both sides of the Atlantic had determined that trying to provoke a positive emotional
response (and final approval) to X100 would clearly fail.
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Ford Board of Directors Styling Sign-off |
The Ford Board would only be influenced by
unarguable statistical data, which would have to come from a focus group, or
‘clinic’, because that was what the Board members were used to when approving
new Ford models.
The Jaguar Cars North American management team figured on a belt-and-braces approach, and was tasked to come
up with a strategy to build additional, and unequivocal support for X100.
It was decided the program would be in
three parts. First, the JCNA President would take the 10 members of the American
Jaguar Dealer Council to Whitley for a focus group and viewing.
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American media Group visit to Jaguar |
Then, as PR Director, I would take a group
of six key American automotive writers to Whitley, all of whom I selected
because of their enthusiasm for classic Jaguars.
Thirdly, we would conduct a
‘clinic’ in New York, showing photographs of the concepts to a focus group of a select group of
existing Jaguar owners.
The media focus group and viewing took
place in Whitley on June 1, 1992.
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Jaguar's Design & Engineering Centre, Whitley |
However, it was how the viewings were
staged in the Whitley design centre which was to be crucial to the outcome. Geoff
Lawson and I discussed a number of tactics.
He managed to convince the Ford USA executives that all the concepts to be judged would not fit in the smaller Whitley studio at the same time, so we would have to ‘move’ the cars around, and in fact at some point, perhaps remove one concept and replace it with another.
He managed to convince the Ford USA executives that all the concepts to be judged would not fit in the smaller Whitley studio at the same time, so we would have to ‘move’ the cars around, and in fact at some point, perhaps remove one concept and replace it with another.
We planned to always present the Jaguar
X100 concept last, so every time we opened the studio’s huge sliding doors, to
‘move’ a concept model, there would always be an opportunity for the focus
group participants to ‘accidentally’ see X100 in the staging area.
We did this with both the American dealer
and media groups, with some subtle changes in how the ‘reveal’ of the Jaguar
concept should take place.
During the dealer group viewing the sheet
covering X100 accidentally slipped off, during a ‘move’, and they spied the
Jaguar model only briefly, which only heightened their sense of anticipation.
With the media group we ensured that the
competing models were only glimpsed at first from front-on, and the Jaguar
model would be in full profile, favoring the three-quarter rear view.
Suffice to say, it was a successful
strategy. All of the focus groups overwhelmingly voted the Jaguar X100 model the
outright winner, statistically head and shoulders above the competing concepts.
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Jaguar X100 production model |
The Ghia property, apparently the strongest competitor, came in for particularly
disparaging comments from the American focus groups.
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William Clay Ford, Sr - Detroit Lions owner |
When the Ford Board met in Dearborn to
consider the outcome of the Dunton review meeting, and the later focus groups, it was clear Jaguar’s X100 was far and away the clear favorite, so William Clay Ford, Sr. moved quickly to get final approval for
the Jaguar concept.
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Jaguar X100 convertible design concept |
The X100 convertible was designed at the
same time as the coupe, but lack of funding from Ford meant it had to ‘get on
line’ to be produced.
However, as Ford Motor Company had ‘loaded’
the Jaguar Cars Balance Sheet with the debts stemming from the (USD$2.4
billion) acquisition costs, it resulted in Jaguar Cars never making a profit
under Ford ownership.
That pleasure had to wait until Jaguar was eventually
acquired by Tata Group.
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