JLR is a mainstay of modern motoring luxury, but do car brands need creative figureheads?

What does it mean when a design figurehead leaves the company they’ve been associated with for over two decades? Leaving aside rumours of a rather unceremonious dismissal for Professor Gerry McCovern, OBE, from his role as chief creative officer at Jaguar Land Rover, there’s no denying that such actions leave a void that’s begging to be filled. With a company as large and complex as JLR, that void takes on astronomical proportions.

So what is McGovern’s legacy and what next for JLR? At 69, McGovern is a senior figure in the world of car design. His career has taken him around the world working for brands like Chrysler, Peugeot, Lincoln-Mercury and Austin Rover (as was). It was here that McGovern first made a mark, leading the team that created the MGF sports car (as well as working on the MG EX-E concept that preceded it), and also the Land Rover Freelander.

After a spell in the US, where he oversaw a series of influential concept cars for Lincoln, including the 2001 MK 9 and 2002 Continental, he returned to the UK and headed up Ford’s short-lived Ingeni creative studio in London. A showcase space within a Rogers Stirk Harbour building in Soho, Ingeni promoted the work of Ford’s Premium Automotive Group (a bundle of brands that included Land Rover, Lincoln, Volvo, Jaguar and Aston Martin). It lasted barely 18 months before Ford switched tactics and divested its premium portfolio.

In early 2004, McGovern rejoined Land Rover as director of advanced design, ultimately rising up the ranks to join the executive committee of Jaguar Land Rover in 2013, when the companies came together. In 2020, he took on the CCO role with a responsibility for both brands and joined the JLR board the following year.

Now that era is over. McGovern’s creative stewardship of Range Rover, Land Rover and subsequently Jaguar played to his strengths but ultimately laid bare the fundamental weakness in the figurehead theory of design management. Strongly influenced by modernist design, architecture and art, as well as the autocratic status of automotive design legends like Harley Earl, McGovern could be outspoken and confrontational.

Not one for suffering fools, he shepherded designs from concept to production with a strong sense of self-belief. His approach was reminiscent of modernism at its most dogmatic, not least in his forthright and oft-reiterated commitment to proportion, minimalism and material simplicity.

And it worked, at least for a while, with lauded designs that forged a new and highly profitable path for Range Rover. After nearly two decades of number-one hits, with Range Rover riding high in the luxury brand stratosphere and Defender seemingly proving McGovern’s ineffable ability to give customers what they want, McGovern might have believed himself to be untouchable.

However, the 2020s are proving to be a difficult decade for JLR. For a start, there’s Jaguar. Always the underperforming part of the partnership, Jaguar has for decades suffered from an image problem. The decision to rejig the brand, embrace electrification and haul it upmarket was McGovern’s. On the strength of past achievements, it seemed not impossible that he could pull it off.

The change of course was not without its casualties. McGovern’s figurehead status cost Jaguar not one but two design directors, firstly Ian Callum (who left to set up his own consultancy) and then Julian Thomson, now heading up GM’s UK Advanced Design Studio. It also saw the unceremonious cancellation of Jaguar’s flagship XF in 2021, just months away from production (a half billion-pound write-off).

The pandemic that followed, along with a general paucity of new JLR models and then a ruinously expensive and disruptive cyber attack this summer (with some estimates citing a ‘cost to the economy’ of £1.9bn), have all conspired to blunt JLR’s image as a razor-sharp organisation on the cutting edge of fashion – and not just automotive style.

For many, the first time the lustre started to peel off that shiny reputation was when McGovern stepped forward to reveal the Jaguar Type 00 concept in November 2024. We liked the Type 00 – we even gave it a Wallpaper* Design Award – but appreciation was by no means universal. In suggesting that Jaguar discard an evocative, history-stuffed heritage (along with its coterie of increasingly conservative, history-stuffed customers) in favour of a future-facing image that was beholden to nothing and no one, McGovern caused a substantial stir.

Sure, no publicity is bad publicity, but even the most cocksure of creatives would have felt a puncturing of pride and bruising of ego given the criticism the Type 00 received. All credit to Jaguar and JLR for not changing course – yet – with the actual production car still set for release next year. Perhaps in sticking our neck out and giving the Wallpaper* seal of approval to the Jaguar project, we proved to be part of the problem.

Was the ‘house of brands’ approach McGovern ended up initiating at JLR too blind to the gritty realities of manufacturing, economics, supply, demand and transport infrastructure? Car companies are not fashion houses, however much they aspire to be.

There’s also the issue of credit and attribution. It takes an army of designers of all stripes to take a brief from sketch to clay to concept. It takes an even larger army to translate concept into production reality. McGovern’s approach to design was very much of the hierarchical old-school way of thinking, where a head of design tended to take the lion’s share of the credit.

Never unafraid to talk the talk and walk the walk and always happy to stand in front of the world’s media, McGovern often gave the impression that it was he and he alone that gracefully carried the can for JLR’s triumphs, from Evoque to Velar to Defender.

Although this approach softened in recent years, an auto industry CCO is not the same as the creative director of a fashion brand. Who knows how many talented designers felt thwarted and discouraged by McGovern’s status, salary package, OBE and media profile?

The exterior of the original Land Rover LRX concept, the blueprint for the highly successful Evoque – oft held up as the foundational product of the McGovern era – was designed largely by Julian Thomson. Much of the modern Range Rover exterior design language was overseen by Massimo Frascella, who also shaped the Defender (and is now chief creative officer at Audi). These were never widely disseminated facts.

In the winner-takes-all, sole genius-driven world of modernist design, the nuances and push and pull of creative partnerships were often (deliberately) overlooked. The role of an all-seeing, all-approving top-of-the-tree creative becomes increasingly problematic when attribution is so lop-sided.

Whatever the reason for McGovern’s departure, the many achievements he initiated and oversaw might yet be further overshadowed by what happens next with Jaguar. Forums are already filling up with obituaries for the much-loved brand – celebrating its 90th year this month – as naysayers predict a sticky end for the McGovern-driven strategy. But even Range Rover, Land Rover and Defender have been light on innovation lately – the most recent all-new product was 2023’s Range Rover Sport.

When a creative guru starts catching brickbats not bouquets, not even the most spotless track record can survive a crisis. A serious change in strategy might also necessitate a change of personality – as many have noted, McGovern’s departure comes just a week after the arrival of new JLR CEO PB Balaji. Balajii previously held the purse strings for JLR’s parent company Tata Motors, so it could just be that the ambitious but expensive future plans of the McGovern era are being redrawn as we speak. Whoever takes the helm at JLR will have a tricky ship to sail in the next few years.

JLR.com, RangeRover.com, LandRover.co.uk, Jaguar.co.uk