How our coupes were envisioned...

A study in design. A study in beauty.

Sketches by Matthew Beaven.

 

these are great sketches and do show Callum's eye for a beautiful line. Of course (he writes at the risk of opening up the dreaded debate) these came after the convertible was already being prototyped and built!

 

I don't know one way or the other... are you sure these renderings - and/or the coupe in general - was not already designed, even though the vert was put into production first?

 

Who cares...Are we going to play a game of which came first the chicken or the egg or...Appreciate the artwork?

 

This is a very interesting walk-through of an F-type design sketch by the head of Jaguar's production studio:

 

Just awesome. Thanks for sharing!
I may dig his rendering even more than Beavens'

As a guy with no artistic skills, to watch the car evolve on paper just amazes me. What talent. I would have bought a matt and frame for what he tore up.

 

Note the ride height and the fender clearance on these original sketches. This car was originally conceived to be on a lower suspension.

 

Appreciate your thoughtful response. I was asking a perfectly sensible question.

 

I recall an interview with Ian Calllum where he said the coupe was designed first (he very much likes the couple roofline), but the convertible was produced first because of the additional complexity of the folding roof: they decided to solve the most constrained engineering problem first.

 

Ahh, a worthwhile contribution to the thread! Thank You kindly.
As I suspected, assuming your recollection is correct, makes far more sense that the stunning lines of the coupe were the pioneering concept, rather than an evolution from the Vert.

Also as I suspected, it was an engineering issue that dictated the order of production, though for a different reason. I expected to hear it was the structural rigidity of the roof panel and/or the tedious form of the all aluminum rear quarter panel which extends all the way forward to the A pillar that delayed production of the coupe. Interesting to learn they wanted to ensure the successful engineering/availability of the vert first...

 

I have the convertible version of these hung on my office wall.

 

Considering that front clearance is already painful, I don't see it as being practical for anywhere warm and with perfect roads.

 

Living in something resembling that place, I still scrape the nose if I'm not careful and take the Volt to unknown driveways. Almost all vehicles are drawn/rendered with the wheels filing up the arches.

 

Great post true talent. I was just tweaking you all a bit on the who came firat debate. It really doesn't matter a rats a&@ which came first as both are breathtaking.

What I find fascinating is the impact that Star Wars design has had on society, not unlike the way Star Trek has influenced Technology. Science fiction allows us to imagine like little else and that imagination is the fuel for what we see here. Even decades later.

 

Does anybody have these in actual hi-res suitable for blowup printing? The files linked are only ~2MP which will not yield anything framable.

 

I remember reading an article where I *thought* Ian was trashing the convertible because the coupe is the only proper sports car, etc. I think I was wrong, and this clears it up:

Ian Callum on Jaguar | Autoweek

"Unlike Jaguars past, the F-Type was conceived as convertible first -- but there was always a plan for a coupe. Callum has always been smitten by coupes. It's much harder to design a convertible than a coupe, even though his team -- and remember, anyone at Jaguar is a team player by default -- relished the challenge. With a convertible, it's very easy to make it look quite ordinary, he explained; you get a good convertible, and the coupe falls perfectly into place. It's never the other way around."

 

Thanks for posting this!
I stand corrected.

I remember Callum saying that he started with the coupe in mind, but I must have conflated his strong personal design preference for the coupe with the order of the design.

Here's a very interesting interview that covers the relationship between the coupe and the convertible design and some other design related topics including the heritage.

Designing the Jaguar F-Type Coupé: "Ultimately, you need to be bold" | Stuff

He notes that there was an overlap between the two designs, but makes it clear that the vert came first.

 

Its quite frankly one of the few cars I've seen that manage to pull off stunning looks in both versions. Most manufacturers cars that try to pull it off widely diverge in beauty between coup and vert and inevitably one suffers. Give me a coup any day, and a vert with the top down and I'm a happy man.

 

The convertible

 

Another good argument for why it "must" be this way, is that if the coupe had been conceived first, it would have been lighter than the convertible.


They kept the rigid and sturdy frame from the convertible and "just" added a roof for the coupe - which made it even stiffer than it actually had to be. But I guess they could not justify the extra cost of developing, testing and producing a frame for the coupe that differed too much from the convertible.


So I think that is one of the reasons the coupe is as heavy as it actually is.