Julian Thomson, Design Director, Jaguar has decided to leave the British carmaker. His resignation comes a week after Pratap Bose, the erstwhile Vice President, Global Design at Tata Motors left the company.
This is an interesting development considering both Bose and Thomson contributed immensely to the group’s design philosophy and language in recent years.
Thomson was associated with Jaguar Land Rover for over 21 years, and had taken over the role of Design Director in mid-2019 from legendary British car designer, Ian Callum. Like Thomson, Bose too had a long stint of 14 years with the Indian automaker.
Bose played an instrumental role in changing the design language at Tata Motors, which was primarily responsible for the turnaround of the company.
Thomson was instrumental in some of Jaguar’s exquisite recent designs, including the XK, XF, XJ, F-TYPE, XE, F-PACE, E-PACE and its first electric vehicle – the I-PACE. Before Jaguar, he had a 12-years-long career with British carmaker Lotus, where he was Head of Design and was responsible for creating the Lotus Elise.
A mechanical engineering graduate from Hatfield University, Thomson went on to do his Masters in Automotive Design from 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 1998, he was appointed Chief of Exteriors at the Volkswagen Group’s Concept Design Centre in Barcelona and worked on both production and concept vehicles for SEAT, Volkswagen, Audi and Bentley.
He later joined Jaguar in 2000 as Advanced Design Director and was also Advanced Design Director for Land Rover between 2006 and 2008.
Meanwhile, Tata Motors continues to hunt for a new CEO to replace Guenter Butschek, whose tenure ends this June. The company had appointed Marc Llistosella, former President and CEO of Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation and Head of Daimler Trucks in Asia. However, it later withdrew the offer due to unknown reasons and had to reportedly compensate Llistosella.