Title: Desire & Design
Author: Keith Helfet
Publisher: Porter Press
Binding: Hard cover
Pages: 138
Price: $52 – here.
Review by Wallace Wyss –
There are many books on car design but this one is a new approach–one designer’s career from scratch, mostly with Jaguar.
One unusual thing about this designer, Keith Helfet of South Africa, is that right from the get-go he admits he was terrible at drawing. But what got him into the Royal College of Art–Britain’s equivalent of Art Center–was that as a lad he had created a life size car concept using foam and some sort of cement atop an old Spitfire.
When he applied at the School they asked where his drawings were and he said he didn’t have any. They gave him some other student drawings and told him to make some on his own and he came back with those but it was his pictures of his life size car sculpture that got him accepted. The school was impressed that he had built a life size clay model.
He was hired at Jaguar when the original founder–Sir William Lyons–was still there and Helfet was involved in the design of several production and concept cars, mostly the sports cars, not the sedans. One of the most beautiful cars he designed was the XJ-220 coupe, which was a midship engine car. There was a racing version built by Walkinshaw Racing. He doesn’t mention the lawsuits from those who ordered a production version thinking they would get a V12 like the Concept but instead got a lesser engine. A bait-and-switch as it were.
But by far the most beautiful car in the book is a two door roadster that was only a concept car but is every bit the equal of the first D-type and E-type. Helfet had the chance to ride around in the one off show car as it was the star of several vintage events. Not many designers of concepts get to revisit their concepts and ride around in them at car events. Usually it’s only the top execs who get the privilege like when Bill Mitchell took me out on a racetrack in the original Stingray race car designed by Larry Shinoda.
Helfert describes one of the downsides of being a car designer–your employer can be sold out from under you as happened to him when Ford bought Jaguar. In another case Ford bought Aston Martin and one of his Jaguar designs was whisked over to Aston where he was afraid he wouldn’t get credit for it.
I would say the chief contribution of his book is to reassure beginning car design students who feel their drawing talents aren’t competitive that you can still get into the game if you make it up by showing talent in three dimensional sculptures. After all cars are 100% three dimensional so the school officials who admitted him realized he had talents the industry needed.
Helfet also delves into non-automotive industrial design, a side gig as it were, some type of medical device, similar to an X-ray machine. He took what was a boxy machine look and made it so curvy and inviting that his own daughters are shown playing on it.
The book’s pictures include his first never-finished life-size car, and many clay model shots of Jaguars–the best the pictures of the finished one off roadster show car known as the XK180.
Don’t let the dark moody slip cover throw you off. There’s high quality well-lit pictures inside (I wrote them a memo suggesting they brighten up the slip cover).
I would hope other car designers get the opportunity to do similar books though it’s rare one designer gets credit for a design, though in recent times Camilo Pardo makes sure no one forgets he did he ’05-06 Ford GT. Ford deviated from the usual no one gets credit for a car design other than the VP in charge of design.
I congratulate Porter Press for seeing a book as possible after meeting this designer. I hope they do more in the same vein though it will be difficult to find a car more beautiful than the XK180 concept car. This book is especially educational because it shows how a designer can work on wild concepts and production cars both.
Near the end of the book they show a car design done in South Africa, a more mundane car, but that in effect brings the reader back to the reality that not every designer gets to work only on concept cars where there are no holds barred.
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
THE CRITIC Wallace Wyss is a former car book writer and publisher. He is now a fine artist, specializing in exotic car portraiture. He can be reached at Phoojournalistpro2@gmail.com
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