MATT WEAVER

Two of Britain's most popular cars were designed on these shores by one of our own. Felix Page meets Nissan's modest visionary

- Felix Page

Trace the history of the building that houses Nissan's European design studio and it's pleasing to learn that its raison d'être has always related to the concept of mass mobilisation.

Unmistakably of the 1960s, this brutalist concrete complex, tucked down the side of the Great Western mainline out of Paddington, was originally a maintenance depot for British Rail's road vehicles and thus played a key backstage role in keeping the country moving. And for the past 20 years, it has led a more front-of-house existence, enabling the conception of some of Britain's - if not the world's - most popular and recognisable cars.

Heading the operation is Matt Weaver, whose two-decade tenure at Nissan aligns neatly with the history of the Nissan Design Europe division, and during which he has conceptualised some of the company's best-sellers (among them the Qashqai and Juke), helped shape the brand-defining GT-R supercar and led global design for Nissan's luxury offshoot Infiniti.

Although he's unwilling to take sole credit for his achievements, because "every designer and design lead is part of a bigger team", his influence on modern motoring is as tangible and prevalent as that of any of his contemporaries.

Weaver's career trajectory was not, he suggests, an inevitability from a young age. He grew up in the Brecon Beacons ("not a design-orientated area...") and has no "lineage of design as such" in his family tree. "But I was always fascinated by cars firstly and then design. I started to develop an interest in that."