Ian Callum was born in Dumfries in 1954 and, aged 14, sent a car design to Jaguar hoping for a job. He studied at Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry, Aberdeen Art College and the Glasgow School of Art, then took a master’s in vehicle design at the Royal College of Art. From 1979 to 1990 he designed for Ford, on cars from the Fiesta and Mondeo to the RS200 and Escort RS Cosworth, and ended as design manager of the Ghia studio in Turin.
In 1990 he left Ford to join Peter Stevens and Tom Walkinshaw in forming TWR Design in a small unit at Kidlington. As chief designer from 1991 he was partly responsible for the Aston Martin DB7, for which he won the Jim Clark Memorial Award in 1995, and designed the Vanquish, the Volvo C70 and the Nissan R390.
In 1999 he succeeded Geoff Lawson as director of design at Jaguar and at Aston Martin for a short time; he claims most of the DB9 and V8 Vantage. At Jaguar he took the marque from retro styling towards a new look with the XK, XF, XJ, C-X75, F-Type, XE, F-Pace and I-Pace. He stepped down in 2019 and founded Callum, whose first car was the Aston Martin Callum Vanquish 25.
