Ian Callum Designer and car collector

YOU KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO GET ON well with Ian Callum, designer of the Aston Martin DB7, Vanquish and DB9, and for 20 years design boss at Jaguar, when he tells you he once had a Sierra RS Cosworth as a company car while simultaneously owning a Citroën 2CV. ‘I loved that Cosworth, oh my goodness,’ enthuses Callum.

There was a certain amount of envy from the softly spoken Scot’s fellow managers at Ford, he recalls. ‘A lot of the guys asked: “How have you got that?” So I said that I’d just filled in some forms and ordered it and they could do the same. They said: “But we can’t afford it.” I replied: “I can’t afford it either!”

‘But I was a genuine car guy and I simply had to have that Cosworth. I had it for about a year and a half and went everywhere in it. It was just amazing. You were supposed to return it after six or nine months with no more than 10,000 miles on them. I kept getting letters from the company car guys saying that I had to return it – this went on for ages and I eventually handed it back with