‘Hotting up saloon cars was quite an exciting thing to do’

He was restyling hot saloons before manufacturers dared to do so in-house. Now Peter Stevens – designer of the Mclaren F1, Jaguar XJR-15 and MG X-power SV – lifts the lid on hot tin-top design

Having served as chief designer at the likes of Lotus, Mclaren and Lamborghini, Peter Stevens now lectures internationally, teaches at the Royal College of Art and runs a design consultancy that is currently working on electric cable-cars and funicular railways – oh and naturally, a 2021 Le Mans project.

‘It’s funny because at the time these were all in production, hotting-up saloon cars was quite an exciting thing to do. It can seem a bit silly now, when you can buy properly hot things for around the same money.

‘I can remember thinking the Alfa Giulia was a bit pointless, because it was staid and upright. Surely if you wanted to go fast, you’d have a prettier Giulietta? But now I look at them with more fondness than I did then,’ he says.

‘It is a nice piece of work and a very simple design. Alfa knew not to hide the wheels too far inside the body, so they’re in the right place. In a way the front is similar to the BMW’S, the lines across the front and headlights alike, but look close and all the shapings are different – you could never mistake the two.

‘The BMW still looks a knockout and that’s because it’s such a straightforward design. From that little group that had the Chevrolet Corvair and NSU Prinz, with a definite line between upper and lower body. They’ve aged very elegantly.

‘I was particularly thinking of the 2002’s grill shape, and how refined it was, when designing the 1999 BMW Le Mans car. These days they’ve gone a bit sharp and jaggy, but that was a good period.’

‘The Saab’s funny isn’t it,’ he states. ‘Today, the quirky bits are still quirky. I never understood those wheels – technically, with more metal than holes, they’ve got to be heavy. It took aero very seriously; others did it in side view, but Saab did it in plan view. That’s why the rear tapers and the doors are tucked under the car, but the designers never resolved what to do with the grill – a bit like the Bugatti EB110 – and it went very weedy.’ Stevens recalls being in a 309GTI piloted by racing driver John Watson. ‘He loved it and drove it fiercely fast. It’s a nicely proportioned car for what it is; it sits just right, with a slight rake down at the nose and up at the tail. The wheels were much more dramatic-looking on it because it had low-profile tyres. In this company it’d probably be number three for me.

‘You can’t put a date on the Merc – it could be eight years old. The standard 190 was a bit dull, but I thought this looked pretty good. I’d been doing a few bodykits for TWR and here was a kind of production bodykit. I said to Tom Walkinshaw, “if they all start doing this, you won’t have a business.” He replied, “No, they won’t have the balls.”

‘People chuckle about bodykits now, but at the time they’d moved beyond where most manufacturers would go for fear of frightening off customers. This car’s was very well done, the panels fit well and it served an aerodynamic purpose.

‘All these cars make you realise what a muddle designers have got into today. If I had a favourite though, it’d have to be the BMW 2002tii. It’s a simple, handsome car.’