Ian Callum says Jaguar is ready to "explore all avenues", including a smaller SUV

Jaguar’s head of design says his team is “ready to launch any kind of car” in the future, but he emphasises this doesn’t necessarily mean the firm will launch any follow-up SUV products as part of a family of SUVs to sit alongside the new Jaguar F-Pace.

It’s been speculated that Jaguar is investigating smaller and larger SUVs as it expands the F-Pace family, possibly creating a car as small as the Audi Q3 and one as large as the Audi Q7.

“As designers, our job is to have ideas and represent them, either as sketches, or models, or as more advanced designs, but whether these ever see the light of day is down to other people in the business,” said design boss Ian Callum. “We will explore all sorts of avenues, sometimes because we’re asked to, sometimes because we see opportunities ourselves, but we aren’t the ones making the business case for the cars.”

However, Callum ruled out making a coupé, drop-top or long-wheelbase version of the F-Pace, arguing that the derivatives were neither necessary nor necessarily underpinned by a robust enough business case.

“The cleverest part of our design philosophy at the moment is that we create cars that cover as wide an area of the segment as possible without diluting their purpose in any way,” said Callum.

“We won’t do a coupé, because F-Pace is our coupé, we won’t do a drop-top because F-Pace is a four-door and I can’t see that happening, and we won’t do an extended-wheelbase F-Pace because it would ruin the proportions. If we wanted a larger car, then I’d rather design a larger car.”

Despite Callum’s comments, sources suggest that a smaller SUV is likely to come before a larger one. There had been speculation that a seven-seat, long-wheelbase SUV was in the pipeline, but company insiders have indicated that the performance intentions of the Jaguar SUVs, plus the success of the Range Rover, have made smaller models more appealing.