News: Galway native running Peugeot's design studio

Galway man, Cathal Loughnane, has been appointed Manager of the new Peugeot Design Laboratory in Paris. Reporting to Gilles Vidal, Director of Style at Automobiles Peugeot's Design Centre, Cathal takes control of the newly formed studio. Fuelled by enquiries from outside companies, the studio has been launched by Peugeot to offer a team of design specialists to external clients from sectors outside the automotive world.

Cathal, 34, qualified as an engineer at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street before joining PSA Peugeot Citroen in 1999, initially as an intern. His internship came about when he came first place in a design competition for Irish design students, organised by Irish company, Gowan Group: his young talent was recognised by the PSA Group in Paris. He then spent 12 years working on vehicle interior design and on the design of concept cars at the company's creative centre, before being approached by Gilles Vidal to head up the new venture.

Peugeot has a wealth of knowledge that comes from 200 years of industrial heritage and 120 years of automobile creation. The new Design Lab draws on the vast skills, experience and facilities of Peugeot Design Centres in Paris, Shanghai and Sao Paolo. For its launch and to demonstrate its design capabilities outside the automotive arena, the Peugeot Design Lab devised a portfolio presenting visions of various products: a yacht, powerboat, an aeroplane and a watch. At the Paris Motor Show in September, Peugeot presented their exquisite piano on the Peugeot stand.

Features: The man who puts the Jaaaaag in Jaguar

This is the man who finally got Jaguar design right, after it had languised for years, unable to break away from a slavish devotion to a classic sixties look that just didn’t work in a modern context. Ian Callum is an astonishingly talented man, with stints at Aston Martin and Ford behind him, he swept away the retro look at Jaguar and ushered in a clean, modern style, beginning with the XK and XF and onto the sometimes controversial XJ. But was that binning of retro the key to Jaguar’s recent renaissance?


“Well, it depends what you mean by retro. I think if it means deliberately copying the past in order to try and capture something from that past, it’s the wrong thing to do. I’m afraid Jaguar had fallen into that trap, a little bit. Not overtly, or even consciously, but just by not moving on quickly enough. From my point of view, it didn’t work very well."

The 2008 XF was the final nail in the coffin that Callum had prepared for Jaguar’s dark days of producing photocopies of the 1968 XJ. Out wen the sixties, in came the 21st century with a car of near perfect proportions and gorgeous detailing. Even without the retro style of the old XJ and S-Type, there was no mistaking the XF for anything other than a Jaguar. But now Callum has another tough assignment on his hands. Styling never stands still and Jaguar has to move on again. Where now?

“I’m going through that very issue at the moment, with the design team, how we go about moving on, having established the foundations. I think the key to this is not copying the past, but what we’ve tried to do with the current lineup of cars is understand the values of what Jaguar stood for in the fifties and sixties, and that’s certainly when I admired them the most, and pin down these values about modernity, about beauty of line, about purity of surface. We’ll continue with those same values; we haven’t changed those, but very much in a 21st century way. I think that this is where we wanted to get to with XF and XJ.

“Where we go to now is probably a continuation of that, we’ve made a big leap into the future, we’re now in the right place, and I think the challenge is now to move on from that in a very positive and hopefully very successful way. It’s very difficult to know how much further to take it. As a designer I perhaps always want to take it a little further than other people feel comfortable with. But we need to find that balance.”

A big move, recently, was the launch of the high performance XKR-S model, which delved into Porsche 911 GT3 territory, with an in-your-face bodykit and aerodynamic performance given preference over Jag’s traditonal GT comfort.

“I have to admit that that car is quite aggressive, although I like to use the word ‘assertive’ more. That car is overt, because it has been designed in the wind tunnel, all these appendages you see are there for a very good reason. It’s to keep the car on the road at 300kmh. Therefore they have a function and so I’m very comfortable with they way they’ve evolved. We wouldn’t do that on a less powerful car,  but you’ll certainly see our cars becoming more assertive, and the simple reason for that is that the visual geography out there in the car world is very aggressive. If you go to America, people out there drive around in great big pickups and you need your cars to have a presence on the road and I think the idea of the cars becoming more subdued and a little more gentle in their attitude and their presence are probably over.”

Certainly, Callum’s latest creation, the F-Type, as fully revealed this week at the Paris Motor Show, follows these cues. Classically Jaguar proportions (long bonnet, short rear) but with aggressive (sorry, assertive) details like the deep side vents and the gaping grille. It’s a looker, that’s for sure.

“Even if a car is fairly ordinary, they need to shout a bit louder these days, and Jaguars certainly will be shouting.”

Road Test: Chyrsler Delta 1.6 M-Jet 120

Price as tested: TBA

+ Different, nice styling, spacious, good quality, refined
– Middling chassis, unknown value for money, brand image needs work
= Affordable luxury? Almost, but needs a dynamic shake-up

So, after all the political wrangling, the financial back and forthing and the foaming at the mouth by aggrieved Lancia fans, the Chrysler Delta is here. A product of Fiat’s buy-out of bankrupt Chrysler and Jeep in 2010, combined with Fiat overlord Sergio Marchionne’s insistence that Chrysler will be kept to US shores and Lancia will take Europe. Except in right hand drive markets, where the old Lancia rust and unreliability rep was deemed to be too big a mountain for the marketing department to scale.

What we’ve got is a Lancia Delta (more or less unchanged from its continental launch in 2008) with Chrysler badges, and that is both a good and bad thing.

Good? Well, yes. Much though us car nuts would like to see the return of a brand a revered as Lancia to our shores, the simple fact is that far too many people will still regard a Lancia as a rust and parts nightmare and would walk, swiftly, away. Chrysler, in spite of such horrors as the old Sebring, has little or no backstory in the compact car market, and a lot of general goodwill thanks to nice cars like the Voyager and 300C. So in that sense, Marchionne’s decision was a no-brainer.

Bad? Well, yes. You see, and I don’t think this is just a car nut thing, but you expect a Chrylser to be big. To have a V8. To be a sofa on wheels, which chrome. And the Delta is none of those things.

It’s a Focus-sized hatchback, with a few twists. Twists like that long, long wheelbase which means you get a whopping amount of legroom in the back. It’s not quite limo-spec, but it’s not far off it.

Up front, you start to see the real, hard evidence of Chrysler’s assertion that the Delta is an affordable luxury car. There is a lot of leather, much of it with nice contrast stitching, quite a lot of chrome and some very high quality plastics. Some poor quality plastics too, sadly, and that does undermine the luxury case somewhat, as do switches and dials just lifted wholesale from the Fiat Bravo, with which the Delta shares its mechanical package.

And again, that sharing is some good, some bad. The good is largely in the engine, a 120bhp, 300Nm 1.6-litre diesel that’s well ahead of most of the competition in the power and torque stakes (so it IS a bit American then). It’s a well sorted unit, and sounds much quieter and more subdued here than it does in the too-noisy Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Chrysler claims 4.9-litres per 100km fuel consumption, which we’d believe as we managed a decent 5.5 average, but its Co2 emissions are just too high. 130g/km means it’s a band above its rivals from Ford, Citroen and Volkswagen.

What about the chassis? Hmmmm. There are some good things here. The steering and turn in are both sharper than we were expecting and the ride is mostly fine. It deals very well with big bumps and lumps, but suffers when the road is covered in small, short-wave stuff. Handling wise it is nicer to chuck through a corner than you’d think, but still well and truly short of the Focus and Golf in dynamic terms. It does have a better combination of ride and handling than the too-stiff Citroen DS4 though.

Ultimately, you can really feel that this is actually already a three year old car. It just doesn’t feel as dynamically well sorted nor as cleverly designed inside as it should be. Take the seats for instance. They look great (leather, again with contrast stitching) but when you actually sit on them, you feel too perched up and unsupported. They should, and could, be much comfier and if you’re selling your car as an affordable luxury carriage, they really ought to be.

The other issue is price. We don’t yet know how much the Delta is going to cost and that’s a fairly critical issue. OK, so Chrysler isn’t stupid and will no doubt have noticed that all of the Delta’s major rivals are in the €20-22k price range, so so will be the Delta. But its potential success or otherwise will depend on whether it’s at the top or bottom end of that range. If it’s a bargain, then it’s got a chance. If not, then probably not.

It’s not a bad car, the Delta, and in Chrysler terms, it’s a good introduction to a marketplace it’s never really dipped a toe in before. But you just can’t help feel that there is more, and better, to come from the Fiat-Chrysler tie-up. A more sophisticated chassis, more attention to detail in the cabin, a clearer sense of what it means to be a Chrysler; all these things would help.

In fairness, that does look as if it’s going to happen. Fiat has given long-serving stylist Lorenzo Ramiciotti the job of coming up with a styling language that works for both Lancia and Chrysler, on both sides of the Atlantic. If he can do that, and if the engineers can come up with a dynamic setup that can pay homage to the marketing bumph of affordable luxury, then this whole Italian-American deal could work out OK.


Facts & Figures

Chrysler Delta 1.6 M-Jet 120
Price as tested: TBA
Range price: TBA
Capacity: 1,598cc
Power: 120bhp
Torque: 300Nm
Top speed: 193kmh
0-100kmh: 10.7sec
Economy: 4.9l-100km (57.6mpg)
CO2 emissions: 130g/km
VRT Band: B. €156 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star adult, 3-star children, 2-star pedestrian