We recently had the opportunity to talk shop with Gerry McGovern, Land Rover’s design director and chief creative officer.
First introduced to the design director of Chrysler while still in high school, he was later sponsored by the brand at Lanchester Polytechnic, where he received a degree in industrial design. Following that, he attended the Royal College of Art in London, specializing in automotive design. Bouncing around through the years to various marques, which included a stint with Rover in the early 1980s, he returned to that nameplate in 2004.
Since then, he has been the visual architect of the brand, helping to move it from its standard leanings of the past to its newfound style and identity for the future. Recent Land Rover designs like the Range Rover Evoque are unmistakably different than before.
There have been comparisons between the DC100 concept we saw in Frankfurt and the Ford Bronco. Do you have any thoughts on that?
McGovern: People are always going to make comparisons because vehicles are vehicles. They will always find visual cues that they think are similar. There’s a level of subjectivity in everything. The reality is the Defender is such an iconic vehicle that there is enough inspiration to take from right there. While we recognize our past, we mustn’t be harnessed by it. We have to create vehicles that are thoroughly modern and contemporary. Soon the Defender we have now will not be legal for so many reasons in terms of being compliant with regulations. The DC100 that we will also be showing at the Los Angeles Auto Show is just one of several designs under consideration.
It will do all the things you expect a modern day Defender to do, but in design terms it will be forward looking.
The company itself has stated Defender will hit the market in 2015. What else might we see along the way?
McGovern: Next year we will launch the new Range Rover. We are developing a whole new generation of vehicles, both Range Rover and Land Rover.
From the view of the North American market, the Jeep Wrangler has a monopoly on the entry-level priced off-road market. Would Land Rover be willing to place a new Defender in this realm?
McGovern: What we are looking at is a whole proliferation of new Land Rover vehicles. I think we have got to build a Land Rover vehicle at an affordable, lower price, with the ability to walk it up to a higher price point. That’s something we are studying at the moment, so the answer to that question is that it’s possible, yes.
Looking back at the LRX concept that previewed the Evoque, how far can you travel with this design language?
McGovern: If you look at the LRX concept, which did inspire the Evoque, and compare it with the DC100 concept, it’s a different tonality. It will have to be incredibly capable. Evoque is capable in different ways. The Evoque is a Range Rover, DC100 is a Land Rover. So in terms of design cues from the Evoque on the DC100, no, they are two different styles of vehicles. There will be tiny elements that will tie the vehicles together within the range.
Does the Evoque platform borrow anything from the new Ford Explorer? We see how Ford has “borrowed” your terrain management system. What type of technology exchange still exists between the two companies?
McGovern: Well this does come from the Ford EUCD (European D-Class) platform, but 90 percent of that was changed from the original platform, so that [sharing] is actually quite minimal. We still have partnerships on engines. If you look at the whole automotive business there are lots of exchanges going on. I think the important thing is that consumers experience the way the car is designed, the way it feels, the way it drives and the way it’s put together. Anything the customer can see, I think that’s where the brand needs to be unique.
What is your favorite part of the new Evoque?
McGovern: Two things, actually: my most favorite is the overall essence of it. The incredibly dramatic profile, with the falling roof and the rising beltline, and secondly, a specific detail–the panoramic roof, because of how it connects the outside with the inside of the vehicle. This plays to my modernist leanings of how the division of inside and outside [of the greenhouse] almost goes away.
Evoque has been called by some a distant relative to the Land Rover brand. Your comments?
McGovern: No, not distant. What the Evoque will do is stretch the brand. It will resonate with many new consumers who have not considered the brand before. It’s still unmistakably a Range Rover but it will be relevant to a different set of consumers in a different context. So in the history of Land Rover and Range Rovers, they have never been ordinary vehicles, so from that point of view, it is absolutely a Land Rover and can do what it is expected to. I think some will say it is so obviously designed with a lot of emphasis on design and image. Land Rover has its roots in functionalism. What I say is this one can do both and that’s how you stretch the brand.
Will Land Rover vehicles maintain their off-road capabilities in new designs? Range Rover seems to be losing its approach angle with each refresh, and the Defender seems to be in the discard bin.
McGovern: Let me answer that! It sounds like it came from a traditionalist! See, that’s the perception. All our vehicles have to be capable off-road and the Defender must have the ultimate off-road capability. Incidentally the approach and departure angles on the DC 100 concept are better than they are on the current Defender, so the perceptions are actually wrong. Break over angle is actually higher. The car will be as capable if not more so. Again, if you look at the approach and departure angles of the Evoque, we know that it sits lower and we also know this vehicle will be used a lot more in the city on roads. So it’s about relevance.
With some of our vehicles, we are deliberately making a move to more on-road orientations. Even some of our bigger vehicles like Range Rover and Range Rover Sport will always have that incredible off-road capability, but they will also have more on-road capability as well. It’s about relevance to the way people are using these vehicles.
What is the process by which you get your projects green-lighted? Do you need approval from Tata group or is there a board of directors?
McGovern: I’m an actual board member of Jaguar Land Rover. As a board, we look at the cycle plan as a team. Here, we decide against levels of investment, what type of vehicle we will be doing, whether they are Land Rovers, Range Rovers or Jaguars. In terms of getting the designs approved, the ultimate decision making process is the chairman’s design forum, which is Mr. Ratan Tata himself, his vice president, Ravi Kant, the CEO of Jaguar-Land Rover which is Ralf Speth, and me. That is the decision-making group on design, which is incredibly liberating.
Mr. Tata is highly design-literate. He trained as an architect. But he is a real gentleman, real humble, but incredibly shrewd. He will say, “this is just my view, but you are the expert, you make the decision.” He was with us last week for three days, and he’s 73 years old with an incredible amount of energy. He’d spend all day with us. We’ve developed a really good working relationship with him. In a way he’s been quite instrumental in making design and business have equality with the other disciplines that go into making automobiles. As an example, with other brands, design does not sit on the board. We used to, in the past, and that’s something that Mr. Tata has been instrumental in maintaining. He’s a fantastic guy and he’s a modernist. We’re on the same wavelength. Which is pretty useful, really.
I won’t criticize Ford, because without Ford, as a brand we wouldn’t be able to be where we are today, but having said that particularly in terms of the decision-making process, and being told about our own destiny, Tata has been a breath of fresh air because they’ve bought the business, they’ve invested in the business, and they’ve nurtured it, but they haven’t tried to impose their views. They expect results and they expect good performance but you are in charge of your business. You run it.
Outside of the auto industry, where do you draw your inspiration?
McGovern: I’m always looking at things. I take it from modernist architecture. Fashion; I am a massive fan of British tailoring. All along Savile Row, they will cut you a great suit. I’ve always been very visually aware. It can be the design of a chair, to the design of a watch. I’m constantly being visually stimulated by all sorts of things.
What’s the best part of your job?
McGovern: If you look at the process of creating a vehicle, from the beginning concept to sketches, to the full-size clay model to prototypes and finally to actual production, a lot of people have this view that you toss a sketch on a piece of paper, and then in three or four years you see the actual vehicle. Between those two points, there’s an incredibly complex process that it goes through. Design is very iterative. It is refinement upon refinement of the design and the engineering that goes into making it. It’s designing and building to meet regulations, and legislations, not to mention feasibilities. Ultimately when you see it coming down the assembly line and then finally driven on the street by a customer, that’s the best part of it.
We love the modernist style that you embrace from a personal standpoint. How do you manage to inject any of that into your automobile designs?
McGovern: Some of my heroes are the great modernist architects like Mies Van Der Rohe, with his pronouncement that “less is more,” which is something that I apply either consciously or subconsciously. There mustn’t be anything on a design that shouldn’t be there. Everything should be doing a job even if it’s just a line on a vehicle to break up a proportion so that it looks slimmer or to make it look more dramatic. It is this approach that makes it clean and modern and not over-ornamented. But then again it shouldn’t be so minimal that when you get in it, it’s so cold and sterile either. There has to be a balance there.
Outside of the automotive field, who is doing great design today?
McGovern: Tom Ford is one. He has taken Gucci from being a family leather business into a power brand. He has even taken British tailoring and made it incredibly glamorous. He is an incredible stylist. Sure, he has been gone from Gucci since 2004 but he has redesigned himself along the way, too. Others that I am inspired have done things in the mid-century that I don’t necessarily think have been bettered today. Modernist architect Richard Neutra is one. Sculptors and designers Harry Bertoia and George Nelson are a few of the people that continue to inspire me.
What do you do personally that you enjoy?
McGovern: I am a cyclist. I have a Bianchi Italian road bike. I read a lot, and love learning about the Roman Empire. I have always been into clothes and always have something new being made. I drive the tailors bloody crazy, but take a great deal of satisfaction out of that!
Photos by Mark Elias.
