Ian Cameron, Rolls' renaissance man, remembered

Steve Cropley remembers Ian Cameron – the man who led the Rolls-Royce design renaissance that created the seminal Phantom

Ian Cameron, the former Rolls-Royce design chief who, to the horror of the entire car world, died aged 74 on Friday in a knife attack and apparent robbery at his home in Bavaria, will always be remembered with respect and admiration for the way he led the Rolls-Royce design renaissance that created the seminal Phantom limousine in 2003.

That car, which initially shocked luxury car aficionados with its sheer size and the boldness of its angular lines, soon came to occupy the position its creators intended at the very peak of the automotive pinnacle. 

Both its non-conformist design cues and its new interpretation of what Rolls-Royce means in the modern era have guided the company’s designers ever since. 

Small wonder Cameron’s influence was prominent in every new Rolls model launched until he retired in 2014, as well as the years since.     

British-born Cameron, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1975, designed the Lancia Monte Carlo during his early career at Pininfarina in Turin. 

He spent much of his design life at BMW, taking charge of 3 Series and Z8 exterior design before being chosen by BMW styling supremo Chris Bangle to recruit a 20-strong Phantom design team – a task that began within hours of the agreement between automotive moguls in July 1998 that BMW would take ownership of Rolls-Royce and VW would acquire Bentley.

Ian Cameron was the ideal man for the job. As a designer, he repeatedly proved both his creativity and his strength of will, but was also an affable leader who could command respect. 

He was helpful and friendly to journalists too, though he preferred to deal with people who “knew stuff” because he knew so much stuff himself.

His retirement was regarded by colleagues as a serious loss to the design business, but it was always clear he’d find ways to keep his hand in. Which he did on his own terms with lecturing and consultancy jobs.   

To create the Phantom, Cameron drew design talent not only from BMW’s Munich and Californian studios, but also from the Rover and Land Rover teams who were on BMW’s books at the time. 

Well known for bold thinking but a stickler for authenticity who swotted up on Rolls history, Cameron based his core team for five months in a former Barclay’s bank building overlooking London’s Hyde Park, the sort of territory already inhabited by Rolls-Royces. 

Three teams produced two exterior proposals each. Then two finalists were chosen to be modelled in full size, whereupon the project moved to Munich for completion.

Cameron, along with his equally famous fellow BMW lifer, the late Karl-Heinz Kabfell, made it possible under extraordinary circumstances for Autocar’s to report on Phantom progress at least a year ahead of the horde.

One evening at the end of 2000, when Rolls-Royce had been a BMW-owned business for 18 months, I was contacted quietly by Kalbfell, who suggested out of the blue that I might like to see the prototype, provided I attended alone, based any resulting sketch entirely on my own recollections, and avoided specifics about the design and timetable, which wouldn’t be provided anyway.

Kalbfell gave me an employee pass and smuggled me past flint-eyed security staff and through a turnstile into BMW’s famously super-secret design HQ (called Forschungs- und Innovationszentrum of FIZ for short). 

We walked into a big design studio, where Cameron, all smiles, was waiting. 

We even had to leave the usually ever-present communications bloke behind, lest the guys on the gate twig that a journalist was in the party.      

Cameron’s and Kalbfell’s idea, I surmised, was to bring the wider car world at least a little up to speed with the sheer boldness of what they were proposing – they knew it would shock many – and to hear one interested outsider’s opinion. 

Also to provide, in my subsequent story, a fragment of guidance to those in the media who were drawing far-fetched interpretations of the new Roller, with nothing official to go on. 

Providing images would have been a sackable offence. Come to think of it, this exploit was probably a sackable offence too. 

My notebook sketches turned out to be pretty terrible but they did provide a bit of guidance for a professional illustrator in a story published on 4 April 2001.

I’ll never forget Cameron’s beguiling humour and candour that night, and the extent of his trust, given the potential risk involved. 

I'll also always remember his passionate but entirely plausible explanation of the need for a radical design approach to the headline aspects of the new Rolls. 

The rear 'coach' doors, then jaw-dropping rule-breakers, are nowadays bringers of comfort and a special aura to rear passengers as they step in or alight. 

Cameron had absolutely nothing against unimaginative models like the then-current Seraph, produced by the company’s previous owners on excruciatingly low budgets, but he knew the world now needed something much better.

When Rolls decided to take a new path, BMW arch-rival Mercedes-Benz hurriedly revived Maybach, the super-luxury marque from its own past. Always outspoken among friends, Cameron gave his opinion of that idea.

“The big difference” he told us, “is that the Maybach is still a Mercedes. 

"The Phantom, whatever you think of it, is certainly not a BMW. If you want a kitchen – think of those super-technical German kitchen suppliers – buy a Maybach. 

"But if you want a car you can enjoy every day, and drive flat out to Monte Carlo, buy a Phantom.” 

Cameron’s pride in the rightness of Rolls-Royce’s radical design approach, and his passion for the car it produced, was obvious. It makes a fitting epitaph.