My first copy of Automobile Year was the 1968 edition, which I received when I was just seven years old; after that my father used to present them to me every year. I loved it because I was already into car design and Automobile Year was the only book that covered not only new cars, but more importantly had a fantastic review of all of the year’s concept cars. Here in one hit were 20 or 30 cars, be it from Tokyo, Turin or Detroit, the likes of which I had never seen before.

I still have all of my original copies but I have to admit that my first one has several pages missing. Half of the missing pages went on my bedroom wall and the others were lent to a student art teacher at my Primary School. She offered to do some drawings of sports cars for me but needed the reference material. I expect this schoolboy crush also acted as encouragement for me to start drawing and designing cars. So, although I now have a tatty copy of Automobile Year number 16, I can console myself that those missing pictures were instrumental into pushing me into the career I enjoy so much today. I had to wait until the 1999/2000 edition until I actually made the cover of an Automobile Year with one of my own concepts, the Seat Formula Geneva Show car (above), finally fulfilling a schoolboy dream.

Born in Surrey, England, in 1961, Julian Thomson grew up with a love of drawing cars and analyzing their shapes. He studied Mechanical Engineering at Hatfield University and then went on to a post-graduate course at the Royal College of Art in London, where he gained a Masters Degree in Automotive Design. He joined the Ford Motor Company’s design department in 1984 and moved to Lotus in 1986.

During his time at Lotus he was responsible for the design of the Elise, before joining VW as Chief Designer at the VAG group Design Centre in Barcelona. In January 2000 he moved to Jaguar, taking over the newly-created post of Chief Designer of the company’s Advanced Design Studio. This studio has the task of looking at the design of the Jaguars not of tomorrow, but of the day after tomorrow.

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