Fergus Pollock

Fergus enjoyed a long and illustrious career in jaguar’s studio, designing some of the company’s most popular models. Now retired, he talks to us about his time at jaguar and the cars he created.

- Paul Walton

FERGUS POLLOCK had no passion for Jaguar growing up, despite being a Birmingham boy mad on cars. “If I’m honest,” he tells me in the living room of his pretty cottage near Rugby, “I was more interested in Ferrari.”

Even after Fergus became a designer in the mid-Seventies, the British company wasn’t on his radar. It was only after he’d started work there in 1982 that he began to understand what makes Jaguar special.

“You soon get sucked into the culture,” he says. “After a year there, you’re immersed in it, and live and breathe the company and its cars.”

It was no surprise to anyone who knew him that Fergus became a car designer. His father, Dennis Pollock, was an engineer and the head of Accles & Pollock in Oldbury, Birmingham, a company that made steel tubes for bicycles, while his mother was an artist. His two older brothers were both equally crazy about cars and would rebuild engines on the kitchen table. “I absorbed it all,” says Fergus, “including stuff from my Dad’s side and from my Mum’s because her paintings were all over the house.”

As Fergus grew older, he knew he wanted to be involved with cars, but he didn’t know how. “Like every kid, I used to sketch cars in a book so I wanted to combine art and cars. But, despite looking for a route to get there, there was nothing in place.”

Fergus did have a one-to-one with Chrysler’s then head of design, Roy Axe, at its UK design studio at Whitley a few miles from Coventry. “He said I’d never get into car design because I needed a degree. He did offer me a modelling job, but I turned it down.”