People

Moray Callum

Ford vice president of global design, 2014–21; led the team behind the 2016 GT

Born
Dumfries, 1958
Nationality
Scottish

The record

Scottish car designer who served as Ford's vice president of global design from 2014 until his May 2021 retirement. His career included Chrysler, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Ghia, Mazda and Ford; the 2016 GT was developed by a team led by Callum.

He was born in Dumfries in 1958 and studied industrial design at Napier Technical College in Edinburgh, graduating in 1980. He later completed a master's in transportation design at the Royal College of Art in London. His automotive-design career began in 1982 at Chrysler in the United Kingdom before work at PSA Peugeot Citroën in France.

In 1988 Callum moved to Turin, Italy, to work at Ford-owned Ghia. His work there included the 1989 Ghia Via, Ghia's Jaguar consultancy and the Aston Martin Lagonda Vignale. After seven years in Italy, he moved to Dearborn in 1995 as a design manager at Ford. In September 2001 Mazda appointed him head of design and he moved to Hiroshima.

Callum returned to Ford in 2006 as executive director of design for the Americas and became vice president of global design on 1 January 2014, succeeding J Mays. Ford unveiled the new GT at Detroit's 2015 North American International Auto Show. Top Gear described it as created by a team led by Callum and realised by design director Christopher Svensson. Garen Nicoghosian oversaw exterior design. Callum retired on 1 May 2021.

Ethos not pastiche

On the second-generation Ford GT he said the task was to design with the ethos of the GT40 rather than to redesign it, so that the car would not become a cartoon of what had gone before.

Design, model, negotiate

Of his years at Ghia he recalled a small studio in which the work was to design, model, persuade and negotiate at the same time.

The stations

  1. 1982–1988Chrysler UK and PSA Peugeot CitroënDesigner
  2. 1988–1995GhiaConsultant designer
  3. 2001–2006MazdaHead of design
  4. 2006–2013Ford Motor CompanyExecutive director, Design, The Americas
  5. 2014–2021Ford Motor CompanyVice president, Design

The house

Ford

Credited through Ford Motor Company.

In the register

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In their words

“If the GT40 emerged for the first time today, this is how it would look.”

Moray Callum · Top Gear, 2015