John Heffernan

The designer best-known for his work with Bentley and Aston Martin sets the record straight

- Richard Heseltine

IF THERE'S A theme to the conversation, it's this: all the received narratives have been handed down and recycled. Spend five minutes in the company of John Heffernan and it soon becomes clear that he isn't one to crow. He doesn't do 'the big I am' but he cares about accuracy. 'I've read a lot about cars that I was involved in designing,' he says, musingly.

'I don't expect everyone to get everything right. It isn't as though they were there when we were doing stuff. Even so, I don't understand why those writing books or whatever don't contact me first for a fact check.

Warming to the theme, he continues: 'I've seen loads of times that the Bentley Continental we did started out as a sketch done internally at the factory in Crewe. If it did, I never saw it.

I still haven't. They did the interior, and they did a nice job.' Pause. Smile. Anyway, I am doing a book of my own so I can put the record straight. It's my memoirs. And with this he produces this work in progress: ring-bound volumes filled with the written word and lots of photos. It isn't all cars, either. 'I did lots of buses. It's funny, nobody ever asks about those.

This is understandable given that this likable artist's CV includes luxury GTs for blue-chip brands, Heffernan and his collaborator and foil Ken Greenley having been responsible for several stars of automotive design during the 1980s and '90s. All of which must have seemed a world away as he studied design at Leicester College during the mid-to-late-1960s.

'I remember the first car that really amazed me when I was a boy was the "bullet nose" Studebaker Commander. I thought that American cars looked extraordinary. I suppose that got me interested. My course was in industrial design, though, which I loved.