[Jaguar News] You’ve already seen Murray Sharp’s winning submission in the CAR magazine Design-A-Car competition introduced last year, and now the brilliant Luma Animation Studios in Johannesburg has revealed these renders of ex-editor Hannes Oosthuizen’s design, dubbed the Luma XJS Concept. Sharp and Oosthuizen’s designs will soon be seen together in an animated video produced by Luma.
“I chose to design a car that could actually turn out to be quite relevant,” says Oosthuizen of the Luma XJS. “Jaguar is currently believed to be working on an X-type successor, and this is where I pitched the Luma XJS.”
The Luma XJS is targeted at the segment currently almost solely occupied by the Audi A5 Sportback. It is has similar dimensions to the Audi but has a slightly wider stance. It features several design elements inspired by Jaguars of the past and present. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the old XJS of the ‘80s, particularly its flying-buttress rear pillars, so I’ve incorporated that. This makes the Luma XJS look sleek from the side, but also very distinctive from the rear three-quarter. The rear light units are, in turn, inspired by those on the new F-type.”
“What you see here is the result of a collaboration, a fusion of emotion and intellect, art and science, dream and reality,” says Luma’s MD (and petrolhead), Paul Meyer. On Luma’s side the hard work and resultant many hours in front of computer screens fell on the shoulders of the extremely talented Athanase Georgellis.
The collaboration with CAR magazine was first proposed by Meyer early last year and could result in an annual design competition, if there’s sufficient interest. Paul Meyer: “What’s in it for us? Well, Luma gets to show off its creative prowess in realising world-class photorealistic automotive content, on a very high-profile platform and at the same time give the CAR readers added value.
“And most of the guys at Luma are real petrolheads anyway, and all of us have designed multiple fantasy cars throughout our lives, but perhaps never seen them brought to full realisation, so this gives us a chance to combine two passions into an inspiring end product.”
Hannes submitted two design sketches, some written details on the car’s more unique features and also the dimensions before Georgellis started putting it all together.
“Obviously we looked at all the Jaguar vehicles through the ages to be true to the Jaguar design DNA,” explains Meyer. We also looked at current and future trends as well as what Jaguar is doing at the moment in their production and concept cars. We are very happy with the results and hope everyone shares our enthusiasm.
“We love Hannes’ design and we thoroughly enjoyed interpreting it and also breathing our own ideas into it – it’s actually a real creative dialogue between creator and creation. You see something develop and then you ask yourself, is this more of a cruiser or more of a muscle car? Do those alloys fit? Is it missing something in the mid-section? And so it goes on until it reaches a point where it just all feels like a finished work of art, and you don’t want to mess with it any more, not add anything and not remove anything,” Meyer concluded.
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