Matt Becker: The man who makes Jaguars and Land Rovers drive like they do #275

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Welcome back to the Intercooler podcast, everybody.

The podcast powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital.

This is episode 275 with Dan Proser and Andrew Frankel, and we are delighted this week to

be joined by Matt Becker.

Hello, Matt.

Thanks for taking the time to join us on the Intercooler podcast.

Hi.

Thanks for inviting me.

Matt, rather than me butchering, can you explain who you work for and exactly

what you do, what your job title is as well?

Yeah, it's quite a long-winded job title.

Yeah, so I work for Jaguar Land Rover.

My job title is Director of Driven Attribute Integration.

That's catchy, isn't it?

We recently changed the name because I was Director of Vehicle Engineering, which

kind of made it, it wasn't focused enough in terms of what was the pure

role that me and the team do.

So we recently changed it to make it more specific.

Andrew, if you were describing the work that Matt Becker does, how would you do it?

How would you put it?

Well, I'd probably get it wrong because that's why we need Matt to come on ahead

and tell us exactly what he's doing.

But to me, you are the bloke who is responsible for making Jaguars and

Land Rovers behave the way that they do, which is quite an important role,

really.

Yeah.

Is that sort of roughly getting it somewhere near the ballpark?

Yeah, I think it is.

It is to create a cohesive driven experience across all of the models,

not just Rangeovers, Defenders, but actually the whole lot Jaguars included.

So if you think about the team that reported to me, so I've got Vehicle

Dynamics.

We've got the MVH, Vehicle MVH team.

We have Vehicle Capability and Dependability, which is fundamentally

durability, robustness, Dependability Fleet, which has circled

all around the world doing specific kind of road mileage testing.

And on top of that, the all-terrain capability, so the off-road team

work within that team as well.

On top of that, I've also got the SV Vehicle Engineering team

that do all the specials like Rangeover Sport SV and most recently

the Defender Octa.

And then the final department, which was kind of the way Mike Cross had it

set up when he was in charge, he had a vehicle evaluation team,

which we've rebranded to product, character and performance.

So they're trying to basically take the inputs from the marketing team

and the brand teams to understand what character we need to generate.

And then with the population of the other teams and disciplines,

we basically engineer the cars to create that experience.

So roughly speaking, if you took all those departments together

who are reporting into you, how many people are we talking about?

It's about 450 people.

So it's it's barely sizeable team and vehicle dynamics,

NBH and vehicle capability dependability.

There are about 120 people each.

The SV team is around 70 people and the product character

and performance team, which includes all the benchmarking team

as well as around 30 people.

Matt, it strikes me that your job, your working life,

has changed a lot over the years because there'll be people listening

to this who still associate you with a certain British sports car

manufacturer in Norfolk Lotus.

I mean, goodness me, all those people reporting into you,

all those different structures, layers of management, very complex cars.

Is there a little bit of you that still wants to be hurling

a little light aluminium sports car around Hethel

and toying with dampers and spring rates and anti-robots?

I think there is. They're quite.

I mean, if I reflect back on to what my job was when I was at Lotus

or when I was originally sort of became a test driver

and a vehicle dynamics engineer, life was quite simple

because in reality, the Elise and the Aurora suspension system

is a passive system.

You've got passive anti-roll bars, passive dampers,

passive geometry.

There isn't really any active systems on there.

And there were a conventional E-pass system, hydraulic,

sorry, hydraulic and power assisted steering system as well.

So you didn't even have E-pass on the car to kind of fiddle with.

So you had to be very focused on what you want the car to be and not to be.

But, yeah, I do reflect on on those days

and at times miss the simplicity of cars like that.

Do you do you remember?

There's no reason why you should.

But do you remember the first time we met?

I do. What was the date?

Oh, I can't remember the date.

Can you do the year?

Yeah, it was it was almost 30 years ago to the date

because it was it was a drive.

It was either 2,000 or.

No, it's earlier than that.

95 wasn't it?

Was it 95?

Yeah, so it was almost 30.

It was pretty much bang on 30 years ago.

Because you were the first journalist I ever was interviewed by.

And I must admit, I was pretty nervous at the time

because we met at Millbrook and you weren't allowed to drive the release.

But what I was there to do was to give you a I think

I don't actually know we went on the track.

I think we just know we didn't we just we just went out on the roads in it.

And you were you had to sort of like who knit round around about for us.

And yeah, that was 30 years ago.

And that would have been presumably a pretty early prototype of these.

It was. Yeah, because I mean, I started my when I started my career

at Lotus when I was 16 years old, I started as an apprentice.

So I was on the tools I did, you know, I learnt at college.

I learnt to machine weld all of the kind of practical

fabrication skills as well as spanner in.

So I actually started off in the workshops.

And then eventually when I finished my apprenticeship,

they put me into powertrain for I think it was three years

where I was building prototype engines, dyno testing prototype engines.

Then eventually the Elise project was coming along

and I saw a job on the on the board.

It wasn't I don't even think there was the internet at the time.

And it was a job for a junior engineer to go on to the series

one at least as a brakes engineer.

So so applied to the aluminium brakes, the aluminium brakes.

Yeah, so I'm sure I'm sure in the background,

my father had gently helped or nudged.

I can never confirm or deny that.

But but anyway, I'd like to think I got it on my own merits.

So sorry. So now you've mentioned your father.

I think we better just cover that base as well, because, you know,

yes, your father, Roger, was was to us.

I know he was to you as well.

A bit of a legend, particularly down down Lotus way.

So could you just tell us who he was?

I mean, we know what he was most famous for and we'll get to that as well.

But but who he was and what he did.

And and I guess the influence he had on you, which which I know was profound.

Yeah, I mean, he I mean, effectively the job when I left Lotus,

the job I was doing when I left, which effectively was

chief engineer of vehicle development, was the job he did when he left.

So throughout his career, I mean, my father started off on the production line.

I think putting Europa interiors in into the car.

So that would be what's in mid 1960s.

Yeah, so effectively started the original site.

He started there.

So he was commuting for a bit and then he moved back to Norfolk

where he started at Hethel.

So he was there almost from day one within reason.

And yeah, he started off on the production line.

And then eventually he moved into vehicle engineering.

Because I can't remember how or why, whether Colin Chapman

and promoted him into that junior engineer role.

And effectively throughout his entire career, he was he was a vehicle engineer.

And then eventually he sort of specialized into vehicle dynamics.

And a lot of the I'd say the tools that we use today

were actually some of the concepts were created through him and his team.

And you had Alistair McQueen, who's quite a famous test driver

that taught myself and Gavin Kershaw taught us till he got to the point

where he's a bit scared and he's like, right, you're on your own.

And there was also John Miles, you know, who you knew.

You knew very well as well.

He was he was part of the kind of original vehicle dynamics team with my father.

And and and a few others, Damon, to to to name a few.

So I mean, if you if you look at the talent that was there, then

you think of your father and you think of of John Miles.

And it's not surprising, actually, when you think about it,

that the Lotus, particularly in terms of their ride and handling,

the cars that were produced then became absolute legends.

So I mean, cars like, I guess, the Esprit and the Elite in their club.

These would have and the land, you know, your father would

you know, his his sort of DNA would be on all those cars, wouldn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

He was he was basically responsible for all of them.

And on top of that, he he with others created

the engineering consultancy team, which then started to work with other

manufacturers, Toyota, a lot of Korean companies, a lot of Chinese companies

eventually. So basically, he's he's kind of his and his team's talent

filtered out across across the industry.

And I'd like to think that, you know, there's, you know, I can pretty much

there's people that multi-matically would have worked with my father.

There's people at Aston Martin that, I guess, through me would have worked

with my father or work with John Miles. Yeah.

There's people, yeah, there's people throughout the industry now.

There's there's kind of there's still individuals that were trained

and and and touched by talent in terms of what they they were taught

by by people. So cars like, you know, the original Aston Martin Vanquish

which was developed entirely by Lotus because Aston Martin didn't have

the in-house engineering resource at the time to do it.

That would I don't it was that would that have been before or after your time.

But even if it was after it would have been completely influenced

and would have used the principles that your father had established.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, John Miles was the lead on on the dynamics

development of the Vanquish. I was the young silly test

driver at times. I can remember being at Nardo with that car.

And we wanted to crack the 200 miles per hour on that car.

And we never quite got there.

But I was the young test driver that was doing the VMAX runs at Nardo.

And I remember one time we were

we were effectively we had to do an because you get you get slots

where you can run above one hundred and fifty miles per hour.

And one of the slots we did something broke.

So they said, would you would you drive at nighttime at VMAX?

And I was like, OK, yeah, if you put some lights on the car.

Now, I remember they put these spotlights on the bonnet

because we had to do this specific bonnet pool test where you had to be at VMAX.

And to check the bonnet wasn't to fly open, you had to pull the bonnet

and make sure it didn't fly open at VMAX.

So you had to pull the bonnet release catch basically at one hundred and

ninety something miles an hour.

Basically, they put these I can remember to this day,

they put some huge handbrake cables on there with massive washers.

So if it did go that it would have been caught.

But the biggest problem they did is is that the spotlights

that they're fitted to the bonnet, they hadn't made the brackets very strong.

And as the speed increased, I can just see these lights poking up in the air.

And I was like, really can't see where I'm going.

But I think I was I was 23 years old.

And I thought, you know, I'm not really scared of anything.

So I just can't go in.

I remember I remember that feeling.

It wouldn't have done the arrow much good either, would they?

Not really. Right.

So you I'm glad we mentioned your dad, Roger Becker.

So early. Now, your old mate, Gav Kershaw, a few years ago,

told me that when your old man passed away, I think eight or nine years ago,

he said that so much knowledge about vehicle dynamics was lost with your dad.

No doubt your dad's he shared a great deal of his wisdom

with all of you lot and a bunch of other people.

But do you think that was true?

Did your dad just have this sort of intuitive understanding

for the way cars drive that few people did?

I think he he did.

But I'd like to think that, you know, Gavin, being one of them,

there's there's several of us in the industry that that would talk that and have that.

I guess, you know, in build ability to to to assess things.

I think where dad was a real specialist was

Shock absorber tuning. He was he was, you know, the amount of

ride units and the amount of different valve codes

they would have gone through on the car would have been way beyond anyone.

And he was always with dad was really, really good.

And I like to think I was when I was doing day to day damper tune.

And he his notes were meticulous.

He used to have like a blue book in every every ride he would do.

And you'd always put what build number the front and rear dampers were,

you know, F1 or an R 33 or whatever.

And he would always write meticulous notes on every single evaluation

he'd done. And I guess the modern times, I don't think we're

quite as diligent as he was.

So but he he just had this ability to he was a real damper tune and specialist.

And he must have had, forgive me for saying this,

but an exceptionally sensitive backside for doing this sort of stuff.

Because I can't imagine it.

You know, I know the sort of number of damper iterations

that car manufacturers go through now before they've got what they think

is the best or whatever is right for that particular car.

But your father, this was his particular speciality, wasn't it?

So he must have been making the most minor changes,

changes that I think most people would never ever notice.

But he could just tell and detect and just finally hone the cars,

which I guess is why the lotuses of the era just felt so beautifully

tuned and in touch with their surroundings. Yeah, he did.

I mean, we when you do damper tune, we have what's called a force

velocity curve and you run at seven different speeds up to one and a

half meters per second.

Some of the cars we do now would go beyond that just because of some

of the things they have to do.

And on these curves, you would generally some of the damper tuning changes.

You would never even measure the change on a graph in force.

The velocity was always the same, but the force, you wouldn't see any different.

But actually you would feel the difference in the car.

And some would question when you got to productionise these,

how much of that real fidelity would you feel?

Because in production tolerance, some of that is lost anyway.

But, you know, that aside, he was incredibly meticulous at Raj.

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Andrew, it's now the time to cover off the Roger Becker story.

We need to have the James Bond conversation.

I mean, I'm sure that an awful lot of people have heard it,

but they may not have heard it coming from the son of the man who was there.

And I'm sure there's an awful lot of myth and mystery and nonsense

that's been spoken about it.

So how did your dad end up doing the stunt driving in The Spy Who Loved Me?

Because it was not what was planned at all, was it?

No, so he, again, he was earlier in his career.

He went out to Sardinia and actually I'm going there on a family holiday

and a couple of weeks I'm going to try and find the roads.

Oh, wow.

Because I've never done it, so I'm looking forward to that.

But fundamentally, he was out there to look after the car

because, you know, earlier...

And was there only one car?

Because, you know, I remember when Aston Martin supplied 10 DB 10s to

whichever, was it, I can't remember which, what was it, Spectre?

Yeah, I think so.

And they made 10 cars.

Was there like one S1 Esprit for The Spy Who Loved Me?

I think there was more than one, but I can't tell you how many there were

because there was one car that went into the sea,

which I actually did get to see that car because I went to

Pinewood Studios when I was very young with him to deliver a wheel and tire.

And I got to look around the studio set at the time.

But, yeah, I think there was at least two cars.

And fundamentally, he was there and that whoever the test driver or stunt

driver was drove the car up the hill and and the film director

just couldn't get what they wanted from from the scene.

So then so there must have been another car because then they said, oh,

can you bring the other car up and my dad drove up the hill, you know,

where the helicopter chase was, he drove up that road.

And and fundamentally, he got to the start.

He said, that's exactly what I want.

Now I want you to do it.

So that's fundamentally.

But your dad hadn't been intending to sort of show off or show what the car.

He was just to him.

He was just driving up the hill.

No, I'm sure he wasn't.

But that was a bit of a show off.

To show his skills and show him and demonstrate to people, you know,

because his car control was exceptional as well.

It wasn't just the dynamics.

He could he could pedal a car as well.

It's a cracking story.

So he then went on did all the driving of that car.

He basically did all the driving.

And he was in Sardinia because I can remember as I must have been five,

six years old, because I can remember him coming back.

I think he'd been out in Sardinia for like six or seven weeks.

And he came back and we got the most amazing gifts and presents

because I think he got ended up having to get paid a little bit of money

or a reasonable amount of money to to do what he was doing.

And and he came back.

Yeah, he was he's effectively staying out there for like six or seven weeks.

He had a time of his life and he was flying around in the helicopter.

He was on the wet bikes that, you know, they're early jet skis.

He's hanging out Barbara back and Roger Moore.

And I think at the end of it, I still remember.

It's a shame we don't think we've got the jacket.

They actually made him a jacket and it was double six and a half.

But I don't think we've still got the jacket.

I mean, it was a incredible thing.

And to be honest, he he dined out on that one his entire career.

So he should I can remember being at school

and there was quite a cool thing to be able to tell your friends that you know,

you know, that white spree that was my father driving.

But even now when I see it and it's one of the it's one of the actually

quite a few Roger Moore Bond movies.

One of the ones that I actually really, really like, I think it's the best

of the Roger Moore Bond movies.

And every time I see that, I just think myself thinking it does matter.

Dad in there.

And even I and the pilot who was in the film

because I recently did an article for a Lotus magazine.

And because he still get quite often asked about, you know, can he

tell us take take us through when your dad was in the Bond films?

And absolutely no problem.

And the pilot that flew the helicopter is still alive to this day.

Wow. That's great.

It's fantastic. There you go.

So you you spoke about your dad's driving ability there.

And I've seen you drive.

You're a hell of a driver.

And I just wonder where that comes from.

I mean, did either of you race when you were young or is it just on the job?

No, I think where we were all incredibly lucky.

And to be honest, when I left Lotus in the end of 2014,

I think the thing I missed the most was the test track.

Yeah, I think, you know, it's like any any sport or any game,

if you've got something on your doorstep and let's be frank,

driving the leases on or beyond the limit is quite a tricky thing

to do. Certainly the series one at least.

Yeah, we sort of have the ability to have this test track on our doorstep

that you could basically go out, you know, because the job was the job

and you could go out and and basically hone your skills on the on the track.

And then so some of the night, at least, which is a difficult thing

or car to slide, you then get into something like a BMW M3

or something that's got loads of power, limit slip, diff and loads of lock.

A car like that then becomes quite an easy car to slide around in.

So I think it was, you know, I remember when I was 17,

because I ended up I thought I was a massive driving hero.

When I was 17, I only passed my driving test for two months

and I borrowed my dad's company car and they nicknamed baby Becker Bend

because there was you leave Lotus.

So I went around and I thought I know how to do this.

I can do that.

So I did a massive clutch kick in this one point eight litre Carlton estate

and the thing went so sideways so quickly that I hit the wall

on the other side of the road and I was like, I'm not quite as good

as I thought I was at that stage.

But but then I got the opportunity to Alistair McQueen,

he was the chief desk driver.

I remember Alistair. Boat Eye.

Yeah, Boat Eye, the most gentle, calm, relaxed individual you would ever meet

and certainly behind a wheel. Awesome car control.

Yeah, awesome car control.

And he basically was 17.

They they got me a left hand drive, blow to sex cell

and he took me on the track and spent some time with me just basically

to basically pull some of the bad habits down, make me realize

I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was when I was 17.

But at that point, I think he actually said to my father,

he said, I think Matt's got some some natural ability that we can hone

and and advance if you give me time to work with him.

And that's what we did. Wow.

And I know I have a specific reason for that.

I know you didn't race when you were young because I can remember

bumping into you in a scrutinering line at Snetterton.

For some, God knows what I was racing there.

But we're in and I can remember coming up to you and saying,

what are you racing?

And I'm in a Ford Fiesta.

I think it's a bit sort of I would have thought you might be

something a bit more senior than that.

And he said, I've never raced a car before.

We were in your first race.

I was in too.

Yeah. And how that came about.

I was having a night out with a friend in Norwich

and his friend that was racing at Snetterton the next day phoned up.

And I think it was about 10 or 11 o'clock at night and said,

I've been let down for this race.

Have you got a race license and a racing zero?

Well, yeah, I've got that.

So I got me, you know, right.

We better stop drinking next morning.

I was at Snetterton.

So it was a completely by surprise and I didn't have a clue what to do.

Honestly, it was just like, there's a car.

Can you go and qualify?

I can't remember what it was.

Was it just some little club meeting we were doing?

It was some little club meeting.

It was a Ford Fiesta thing.

And it was a friend of a friend that kind of paid for this to race it

and then couldn't turn up.

So I got kind of lobbed into this car

and I had no idea what I was doing, apart from driving it.

How did you get on?

I can't know.

It was so long ago.

I mean, we're talking a long time.

Yeah, it would have been in the end.

It would have been the end of the 90s.

So how long were you at Lotus in all?

So I started there in 88 and I left there the end of 2014.

So it was 26 years.

Good shift.

How did the place change during that time?

Oh, Christ.

I mean, Lotus is always through a cycle.

It was constant.

I mean, I have to thank Lotus and the opportunity

because it made me the person I am and it made my career.

As I said, I worked with some absolute legends.

We were taught, you know, how to get shit done

because you didn't have a massive scale of an operation.

You were always, everything was always a panic.

How do you get the next car out to get more money in?

And that's where certainly the consultancy projects,

although I didn't always like the place

as I was getting sent around the world

and always liked the projects I was working on.

But that also really shaped you as an individual as well

because you have to work with the engineers

that had hired you to do the projects for them

and work with them and teach them your skills as well.

Yeah.

And it was crucial for the business, wasn't it?

It was, yeah.

So when the car side wasn't doing very well,

the consultancy side was supporting it.

And then when the car side would do better

than the consultancy side

because you had an amount of people.

Of course.

And then you had to kind of displace those

or put those people on to the different

or the most important projects at the time,

either being Lotus cars projects

or Lotus engineering projects.

I don't know if you're allowed to talk

about any of this stuff at all,

but do you have any favourite Lotus consultancy projects

that you worked on?

I guess one of the cream ones was actually the XKRS Jaguar.

Oh.

Yeah, so because it was interesting I ended up

because I knew Mike a bit anyway

because actually Mike had tried to hire me many, many years ago.

So this is for people who don't know.

This is Mike Cross who is an equally legendary

sort of chassis engineer and the man

who I guess you ended up replacing when he retired.

Yeah, basically, yeah.

So he basically, we'd met and he said,

I want to do this XKRS project.

We don't have the capacity

within the vehicle dynamics team.

Also, I was told, can you do this project for us?

So yeah, so I think it was 2007

because it was just before I started on Evora.

I spent a year or 18 months doing this XKRS project,

which was, it was a really enjoyable project

because I got to see how a company like JLR at that time

was working and yeah, it was a fun project.

And you got to smoke about in five litres

to which are jaguars.

And is it? Yeah, basically, I had one.

I had a blue one for almost 18 months

and I thought this is incredible.

So I'm really interested to know how

you've honed your skills and your engineering capabilities

on little, often, mid-engine sports cars.

Now you're presented with a 500 horsepower heavy saloon.

Does it just translate

or do you really have to rewire your brain

to do what you need to do?

No, I don't think it does translate.

I mean, and if you talk about the types of cars

I'm working on today as well,

it's really, if you've got a brief in your head

or working with a marketing team as we do

and or product owners,

you've got a brief of what you want to do.

And it really is, it's a balance of the direction

you take the car.

If you want something more sporty,

you go this direction, more comfortable,

you go this direction.

But so it really is, you just have to have a strong brief.

And the way I always worked,

not generally on consultancy projects,

but certainly at Lotus,

Sander, Aston, a little bit of JLR

is I would always go into the design studio

and work with the lead designers

and visually see the car and think,

okay, well, what is the core benchmark car

we're going to go up against?

What are their qualities

and what they're not so good qualities?

But also the visual look of a car

and how do you turn that into a feeling

of a dynamic feeling when you drive the car?

Well, so a car should always behave

as you would expect it to behave

given its appearance.

Exactly, yeah, exactly.

So no car should ever write a check visually

which is unable to cash dynamically.

Exactly, so if you look at a pure GT car

but it drives like a very stiff race car,

well, that doesn't work, does it?

Yeah, sure.

And working with,

I've always had this strong relationship

with the lead designers

and I think that really helps

because they're a very creative bunch

and they can articulate in words

what the car visually is trying to do

and then we can articulate in words

and engineering terms

what you're actually trying to get the car

to feel like when you drive it.

Wow.

God, I never thought that that would be

on your radar at all

but when you talk about it, it makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

So you mentioned Aston Martin there

and now between Lotus and JLR

there was a stint at Aston Martin.

Presumably another huge learning experience.

Yeah, it was, I mean, I started there

at the start of 2015.

It was Andy Palmer who was a CEO.

He'd actually, to be honest,

he'd actually tried to get me to go to Nissan

to go and work for me at Nissan.

For him at Nissan.

The odd thing, and I probably should have,

I'm gonna say anyway,

but the odd thing during the interviews,

he was interviewing me

because we'd met at Lotus a few years before.

He said, I've actually been interviewed

for the CEO job at Aston.

And I thought, hang on,

you're interviewing me for a job at Nissan.

In Japan.

It was basically the job as chief marketability officer

which was basically, it was a huge responsibility,

global responsibility for the way

all Nissan products globally drive and feel.

So it was a huge part.

But I was like, why is Andy Palmer telling me

that he's actually been interviewed

for the CEO role for Aston?

But long story short, I didn't go to Nissan.

And then as soon as Andy was on his way to Aston,

he was straight on the phone

and said, do you fancy doing this?

Which I do.

And which cars were you responsible for?

Oh, Christ.

So I started there,

I think it was the second of January, 2015

and I was there for seven years.

So I worked on GT12, GT8, obviously DB11

and all the variants being V12, V8, AMR,

the convertibles, the Valenti,

worked on the previous Vantage,

the Vantage and Vantage Roadster,

worked on repeat, AMR, and we did that.

And obviously the biggest one,

which is the biggest job, was DBX.

And fundamentally that was,

you know, they already had the concept

of what they want the car to look like,

but actually in terms of the architecture

and the concept underneath the visual

was not started until I got there.

So I think any engineer in their career

is blessed to do one platform,

one complete new platform.

And I would say I've done two

because Aurora was one of them

and DBX was the other one.

And DBX, I mean, goodness,

I mean, we've often talked on this podcast

about what an ambitious program that was.

You know, an all new car on an all new platform

in an all new factory of a kind

that manufacturer had never made before.

I mean, it was unbelievably ambitious,

but I think, you know, straight out of the box,

and I promise you, I'm not just saying this

because you're here, because I've written it

many, many times.

It was absolutely from the outset

the best ride and handling SUV of its type

that there had ever been.

And frankly, I think it retains

that crown to this day.

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So how do you, I mean, how do you do that?

Do you just look at it and go,

oh my goodness, what am I taking on here?

I mean, first of all, you have to hire the right team.

And basically we have an exceptional team around us

that are hired in some ex Lotus, I would say.

And we basically, we are a member

because we, Andy's brief to me

is you need to make the best-handing SUV in the world.

That is your brief.

And to be honest, I use that quite often

when I needed extra technology

or extra budget for the car.

Because if I didn't get what I wanted

through the typical, the normal routes

of kind of vehicle line directors,

I'd go to Andy and say,

if you want me to make this the best

or the team to make this

the best-handing SUV in the world,

you need to give me these components.

The E-ARC, so Electronic ARC,

Active Roll Control was one of them.

It was a huge investment.

But we needed that on the car

to be able to have the roll stiffness distribution

but also the roll gradient and change it via modes.

Another one is we needed a unique steering ratio.

We couldn't use an off-the-shelf steering ratio

because that wouldn't have given us everything we needed.

Do you need something quicker than was available?

Yeah, it was generally quicker.

And to be honest, I remember at the start of the project

we were a bit nervous

because the ratio actually we'd chosen was faster

than we ended up with

and we kind of lost our bottle a bit

because and we backed it off slightly

by doing some different steering geometry.

But fundamentally, yeah, we and he basically gave us

all the tools we needed on the car to basically

and underneath as well, the architecture,

the concept, the hard point stiffness

and we'd done tons of benchmark.

Now remember we bought a Range Rover Sport SV,

we bought a Porsche Cayenne Turbo,

we bought a BMW X6M,

we bought a Mercedes GLE 63.

And basically we benchmarked these cars to death

at the time and be an on-road and off-road.

And it was still a tiny team.

It was a really, really small team.

But it was a tough project.

But we kind of, when we,

I remember the first prototypes we had,

we had to wear ear defenders

because they were like,

they sounded like NASCARs.

And so we couldn't really get any fidelity

into the cars at that time.

And it was quite late before we got the proper cars.

But we knew with all the concept decisions we've made

in terms of suspension geometry,

suspension, hard point stiffness,

bush selection, the technology

in terms of damper technology

we had on active roll control technology.

We forced to have an active center diff

rather than a torsion type

because we want to push the torque around.

Et cetera, et cetera.

There was so many things.

The project manager probably hated us for us

because I'm not sure the material cost

was ever hit the targets which they wanted.

But 100% the car hit the brief of,

and I think it is still is to this day

one of the best handling SUVs in the world.

So what I found, it's very interesting,

the best handling SUV in the world.

But I mean, you could probably have kind of done that

much more easily than you did.

And the only price we paid was that the car

would have a terrible ride quality

because what's always struck me about

as being so difficult with a car like that

is you're not just dealing with a lot of mass,

you're dealing with where that mass is.

And you'd think in my very sort of binary brain,

you think, well, the only way you can control it

is to tie the whole thing down.

But if you tie the whole thing down,

then what you have is a family car

which doesn't ride, which therefore fails

in its fundamental job of being a family car.

So how do you make a car with that much weight

and where given how high that weight tends to be?

How do you make it handle that well

while at the same time still seem to ride brilliantly?

Is that all about the active roll control?

Well, the active roll control is what gives you the ability

to change how much roll stiffness

you have according to different modes.

And you'll see, so in comfort mode,

the car would roll more obviously

than if you're in Sport Plus,

if I remember my modes correctly from that car.

So the active roll control is very powerful

for how much roll stiffness you get,

but it's also powerful for with active roll control

because you've got an active bar at the front

and active bar at the rear.

And it's how you can move roll stiffness

up and down the car according to what mode you're in

or what steering input you put into the car.

So it really makes, can take the car from something

that's very benign to something that's more playful

because it's just like, imagine driving

an old race car you've driven

and you just stick a really stiff anti-roll bar

on the back, you can then make the car

oversteer more than it would have done.

And a lot of the adaptive systems,

and you talk about my kind of simplistic early days

at Lotus where everything was passive.

Now most systems on nearly all cars

now are adaptive systems.

So your passive damper setting you put into the damper

is your starting point.

Then you have many adaptions you can make

and parameter change you can make according

to reactive inputs from what they see on the road

and or steering rate and or many different things.

So, and then it really is down to how you tune the car.

I mean, it really is.

I had some great people that were working for me

on that car and we worked very closely together

again as a small team to make sure that we created

what we wanted.

We'll talk in a moment about the work

that you're doing now at JLR.

I just want to talk about the job more generally.

What's the best most enjoyable part

of any sort of vehicle program?

It generally is.

I mean, I still to this day I'm okay

or my job has changed a lot since the early Lotus days

but I still like going on the test trips for the team

because I still, and it's not to micromanage the team.

It's just to kind of almost rubber stamp the direction

we're going when we're tuning the cars.

And there's a bit, you know, there's fun

with all the engineers, female and male

that we go on these test trips with.

And so I think that the test trips for me

are the most fun and my boss often says to me,

you smile the most when you're off doing test trips

but I really do need you in the office a little bit as well.

So how much time do you spend on the road

or on the track now compared to what it would have been

presumably in your early days of 30 years ago

you would have been out there driving cars all the time.

Now, is it now a sort of a minority components

of your job?

It's about, I'd say I do it monthly

but we will cycle through because obviously you know

when you think about the scale of JLR

and the scale of everything we're developing

I will generally spend a day, a month in a different car.

I.e. so if we're developing any Range Rover for instance

once a month I will spend a day with the team

evaluating locally but then I will

it's kind of slowed down a little bit at the moment

because it was going to be crazy at the start of the year

but generally I will try and go on a test trip

with them either to Idiada, Nürburgring, Nardo, Sweden

wherever at least for a week out of the kind of the block test

that they're doing on the tuning of the car.

So I try and get in as much as I can

but when you've got a team this size

you know and at the end of the day

you hire good people because they're good at what they do.

So I'd say once a month I will try and get in the cars

of the individuals at different locations.

Have you done much of the sort of destructive hot weather testing?

Throughout my career, yeah.

I've always tested in Nardo and certainly when I was

I haven't done it at JLR yet

because there's a big team that go and do that

but generally I've always spent time

in either Idiada or Nardo

up into Death Valley and done the American trips as well

to see how extreme they are.

So yeah, I've kind of,

I don't think there's many test sites

or places I haven't been to.

I've been very fortunate throughout my career

to go to these different locations.

So when you're in Death Valley and it's 50 odd degrees

how extreme does it get?

I mean, are the cars just crying out for mercy

or are they even in the modern-ish era?

Are they built for it?

Yeah, they are built for it.

I mean, you have what we call safe ambient temperatures

or SATs is basically the cars

and each company has different safe ambient temperatures

that the cars are designed and developed to work in.

I think, to be honest, I think the most extreme

I've seen is in Dubai

because obviously JLR products,

certainly Range Rover, Range Rover Sport

and Defender has to be,

they do get used as part of,

in Dubai as part of their hobby

is to go out and out in the sand dunes

and imagine there's a big hill out there

called Big Red you may have been to.

I know it, I've been up it.

And you've got, it's 50 degrees

and I was warned actually before I went there

the first time I went with JLR,

they said, don't wear trainers

because it will melt the glue

and your trainers, and I was like,

they're talking rubbish,

they're talking about the correct

because I wore trainers and it melted the glue.

And you think, the car is revving very high.

It's got a lot of slip

but there's not much airflow through the car.

And the airflow that is coming through the car

is the ambient temperature of 50 plus degrees.

So that, you sort of think,

well, I word poor car

and when you stop, you get out of the car

and stand next to the door,

you can actually physically feel your legs burning

because the heat coming off the car

and the heat that's radiated from the sand

is got to be the most extreme of,

I've ever witnessed it really is punishing.

Bloody hell.

And the car has to be able to do that

again and again and again.

Oh, it's brutal, isn't it?

Yeah, it's really extreme, it's really extreme.

Honestly, I was thinking when I first went to the sand dunes,

oh, I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy this

and it's almost like driving on snow but not snow,

it's obviously sand

but the kind of the same sensation you get

of sliding a car around and doing jumps

and crossing the desert

is a pretty extreme and fun thing to do.

Yeah, that's mega.

And do you think it was the work that you did with DBX

that caused JLR to come knocking

or had they been sort of sniffing around anyway?

I don't know, I guess I've got a reasonable reputation

in the industry, so for what I've done before.

The very, very, very good reputation, yes.

My capabilities.

And I think it was at the point that Mike was retiring

and they thought, who could we go and talk to?

And I think, according to what I'm told,

I was the only person they were talking to,

I may be wrong.

But obviously the job I'm doing is slightly different

and I think because I've come from smaller companies

and I've always had this ownership thing

where I want to own the team that develops a solution

rather than passing the, should I say, the problem

or the criticism to the other team

is I set it up slightly differently

where Mike Cross didn't have responsibility for.

He had overall responsibility for the character

and performance of the feel of the car.

He wasn't owning the teams

that actually developed the solution.

So I've done it slightly differently.

I'm not saying his was wrong

and mine is right,

it's just a different way of doing things.

So are you, is the new electric Jaguar one of yours?

Yeah, basically I cover everything.

So anything that comes out of JLR

comes under me and my team's responsibility

for the way it drives and feels.

So how does technology,

and I'm not talking about the tech that you put on the car,

I'm actually talking about the tech

that gets applied to the design

before the car gets built,

has the development process been abbreviated

because of how much can be done in the virtual world

before ever get, and do you get involved with that?

Do you, are you constantly coming up with theories

that work on a computer

and then putting them on the car to see how they work

and has it actually made it quicker to develop a car

with all that technology

or is it still because you have to go out

and prove everything on the road anyway?

It still takes about the same amount of time.

But I think, yeah, because we have,

we have one massive driving simulator

which maybe I'll show you one day it's huge

and the investment is massive.

So we do have one big one, a smaller driving simulator.

We have a four-poster rolling road

which means rather than just vertically moving the car

we actually rotate the wheels at the same time.

We have a kinematics and compliance rig

which K&T rigs we call it

where we can get all the suspension characteristics.

We have lots of ride measurements

and steering and ride DNA and handling DNA what we do.

So basically, yeah, I think to answer your question

we do do a lot more virtual work

than I ever would have done in my early Lotus days.

So I would say that you get to the answer sooner

but then it, because we're engineers

we still like to polish and add the character into the car

which in the virtual world adds some character

the real polishing character comes from the bum on the seat

basically doing the tuning work.

And do you spend time in the sim yourself?

I've done a little bit, yeah, when they let me in.

They, I don't get sick by it now

because I think I've always kind of driven

kind of driving simulators or race games at home

and we just set up a new one with my son

and it's got a three-screen thing, eye racing.

I can't get anywhere near here in terms of lap times

which is quite frustrating, but so I've always done it.

I've always sort of driven on sins and they are useful.

I mean, you can do an element of tire development

on simulators now when we work with the different tire suppliers

they can, so basically you will chunk blocks

of development into the virtual world

but then the real, as I said, the real character

and the real glue that comes together at the end

I think is still comes down to the human interface.

Can you just talk a little bit about tire development?

How different is it if you have a manufacturer

that you're working with and they produce a tire

which is specific to that car

and has been tuned around that car?

Despite the fact that it may have the same name

as something you can buy off the shelf

and have the same dimensions.

Would that be a very different sort of tire

and how does that process work

and how much better would it be

than just off the peg item?

Yeah, I mean throughout my entire career

all the different tire suppliers I've worked with

and we've generally always had bespoke tires

for the cars and that hasn't changed

since I've gone to JLR as well.

It really is down to, you know,

we've got a tire test team, tire development team

which are basically because the scale of what we do

we actually have to have a separate tire team

that understand from the vehicle dynamics integration team

what characteristics they want

but this tire team is off working with the tire suppliers

evaluating different constructions,

different compounds, working together with them

and generally with tire development

you'll have probably full submissions of tires

and the process is about 18 months,

to do it quickly is 18 months

and each of those submissions you will get

a range of different tires

with different constructions, different compounds.

Compounds you normally fix quite early on

in your development

because there's many different compounds

but you have to, now with EU7

and the regulations coming towards us

makes it even more challenging.

His roller resistance is a big thing

for range and efficiency

and also noise is a big factor as well.

So the compounds you end up fixing quite early

the construction is something that you keep iterating

and generally like any development you start off here

and then you slowly come in

into the conopinical of what you want

and then you go through a production phase

where there's no point in development a tire

that works just as a development tire

they need to productionise it as well

to make sure that solution you've got is productionable

within the tolerances that they can produce it to.

And you also presumably,

you know, particularly with a company like Landry

which has cars selling at a wide range

of different price points

you have to make sure the car is still safe

and will still behave as it should

when an owner wears out its tires

and just goes down to quick things

and sticks the cheapest things

it possibly can on them.

Yeah, you do and stability systems

have a bandwidth of what they can

because obviously all the stability control systems

that we develop as well

working mainly with Bosch

is basically they do have a bandwidth

of what they can cope with

but generally why we always recommend

you buy the manufacturers for any car

for any company you always buy the manufacturer

recommended tire is for a reason

is because we've spent, you know, 18 months, two years

if not longer developing these tires

specifically for your car

and you have to think with JLR as well

because in my lotus days

and to some extent the Aston not DVX

the car was just on about, you know

on road, on track

at different new levels or surfaces

we didn't really worry so much about winter

because if you wanted to drive an Elise in the winter

there's a winter tires you can put on it

but basically with all the JLR products

generally projects and products

they have to be able to go to Dubai

they have to be able to go

to on road, wet, mud and ruts

rock crawl, I think I've mentioned the sand, snow

they have to be able to do all these different things

so you can imagine the test team

the integration team are here, there and everywhere

making sure the integrated performance of the car

works on every surface possible

Yeah, it's complicated isn't it?

Now I'm fascinated by the change of technology

that is applied to the car

so you spoke about the days at Lotus

with passive systems, springs, dampers, anti-roll bars

moving through to adaptive dampers

rear wheel steering, multi-chamber air springs

active anti-roll bars

now we're into a new generation

with the systems fitted to the OCTA

and I think the Range Rover Sport SV

very, very trick hydraulic

interconnected suspension systems

Which work, I mean I drove the OCTA

I was lucky enough to go to South Africa

at the beginning of the year

and spend a couple of days

properly mucking about in it

It's unbelievable, the bandwidth

the breadth of ability

that that has brought

I completely interrupted you, I'm sorry

No, I'm glad you made the point

because it's fascinating to see how the technology evolves

and do you welcome it, do you love it

when someone proposes an entirely new way

of doing things to you?

I do, as long as we choose the right technology

for the right

What's the right output for the car?

i.e. character bandwidth

for what the car needs to do

and the OCTA is a good example

of where this has really worked

I mean the bandwidth of what

those dampers on the 60 system

can deliver is huge

it's double what you can

on a conventional on the system

we use on Range Rover today

so and the reality of the reason

why you want that

certainly on an OCTA is when

and you got to drive

and you're on many different surfaces

but there's even more extreme surfaces

that the car

I mean we went to a place called La Stance

which is down in France

happens to be in the middle of a vineyard

which had nothing to do with it

and it's where Dakar

and World Rally cars test down there

and the extreme events that the car

was put through during its development

again by the great team

that were doing the development

was great because

you know the dampers had this bandwidth

so when the car

it would recognize when the car

was flying through the air

prepare the dampers

as the car was to land

yeah and that wasn't just marketing

speak it does actually do it

before anybody else

yeah so it basically

and again it really works on that car

and when you're smashing down

a fast gravel road

and we have some really good ones

actually at Gaydon

where there's some big single wheel inputs

again the reason why

you need all that damping force

available to you is as the wheel

gets smashed up into the wheel arch

that the damping force is there

to be able to control it

and grab it and not cause any issues

so yeah it's

so I do welcome technology

I mean there's one thing

I haven't really mentioned

which the game was new to me

going to JLR's rear steer

and the benefits of rear steer

not just the DBX didn't have it

did it? It doesn't have it

and again it was one of these choices

that to be honest

we at the time

we couldn't afford to have it

and the power of that system

is huge

and it's not just about

manoeuvrability and stability

it's how you add the agility as well

and again how you can do that

via different modes

so there's so many levers now

with adaptive systems

that we can pull

the difficult thing is

is you just you can take yourself

on the wrong path

and again that's where

the regular drives

that we do together as a team

is to make sure

we're taking the car down

the character or the path

we want to select

I mean I've got a Range Rover

as my current long term car

and the rear steer on that

is its ability

to turn an absolutely enormous car

to something which feels completely manageable

you don't have to worry about

where am I going to turn this around

or you know how am I going to manoeuvre this through town

or how am I going to park it or anything

it just does it for you

and to me as a sort of real world

kind of reality thing

which actually matters to people

so much more than

seeing that line of specification sheet

it's transformative for the car

Yeah it is

I mean you imagine going into

yeah you're manoeuvring around

in a multi-storey car park

I mean these are not small cars

and I must admit

I've got to have a Range Rover

as a company car luckily

and fortunately

and yeah the manoeuvrability

in the ability

because you do you think

well how am I going to turn this thing around

and then as soon as

once you get used to it

and you do

you don't need a three-point turn

it just turns around almost on itself

I mean the turn itself is

just over 10 meters

it's it's pretty

wow that's nuts

so this this technology

it continues to evolve

and these days

the likes of Porsche and Ferrari

are fitting dampers

that are active

so they actually apply a force

back into the wheel

have you had a look at these systems

yeah I mean active

suspension is the next

there's a few things

active suspension is the next

is the next big thing

and obviously

it would be foolish

not to be looking at it

or considering it

the other one is a thing

called holistic motion control

holistic motion control

is effectively a box

because you've got all of these

levers on the car

you can pull

and to decide which lever

you pull to to to mitigate

or change the character of the car

at the moment

stands all these different

separate systems in the future

they'll be a one box solution

which effectively is a

big computer

big brain

and some of the solving

of which lever you pull

on the car to to to mitigate

what situation will start

to be kind of solved

within within a

computer in the centre

of the car

I have to say

that some of that

does make me feel a bit nervous

because it's just like

well then

how do you add the character

to the car

and and it's very early stages

at the moment

of of holistic motion

control systems

of of of how we actually

how we actually

interact with those

and add the flavour

into the car

that there's so many different

things coming towards us

and I'm quite lucky

is winter every year

or the winter season

every year we go

and visit the different suppliers

up in the Arctic Circle

where they demo to us

their latest technology

that's coming towards us

and then we can sort of

either decide to do some

of ourself or to think

actually these systems

are really good

and be really powerful

in terms of what customer

experience you want to

want to generate

so the moment you mentioned

active my mind

suddenly flipped back

40 years to Sid

Sid, yeah

which was an active asprey

which I once saw

sort of languishing outside

around the back of

Hethel looking rather sad

for itself

are we still

are we effectively

talking about

a modern version of that

where the car takes

complete active control

over everything

and doesn't actually

react to anything

Yeah, yes, exactly

and I can I can remember

that car fondly

because it was Sid

was had a six hour four

engine in it

which actually

there was a guy that worked

in powertrain at the time

I think he's retired

and I got called Mike Bishop

he was he was an expert

in rebuilding that engine

because the engine

had to be rebuilt quite regularly

on that car

and and I think

that car was incredible

for its time 40 years ago

what that car could do

around I never got to drive it

because I think I was too early

in my career

to have the opportunity to

but certainly watching

George Howard Chapel

and John Miles work together

on another

famous name George Howard Chapel

work on that car together

and and it had

rear steer as well

it was it was full

active suspension

rear steer it was it was

a hydraulic

front rack

I can't remember

what the rear steer was

I assume it was hydraulic

I can't remember

and it never went any further

because it was too expensive

to develop and

to complex too heavy

I think too expensive

to develop further

and it was always there

as a demo vehicle

but it's just to me

like you've reflected on it

that was 40 years ago

I know

just on this

that's amazing

we were sorry

well as we were talking

down I was talking

on a previous podcast

I just remembered

there was a there was a system

on a Mercedes S class

which had a camera

which looked at the road

ahead of the car

and would then sort of

program the suspension

to react to whatever

was coming its way

and I don't know

whether they still use it

and they talk about it

whether it's gone away

is that these

are those sort of systems

are they are they happening

are they going to happen

is there anything to be said

about them

yeah I mean they do

still use it

because we actually recently

benchmarked one

so

so they are

yeah that

I can't remember

they call it

can't remember

the their

their name

they call that system

but yeah

fundamentally

you can imagine

now as we go forward

there's so many

cameras on the cars

yes

that you scan the road

and scan the information

and they can shoot

that information

either straight into the car

up to the cloud

that can then connect

connect with the car

that's behind you

to say

actually there's a pothole

there

or there's a speed hump

therefore prepare the car

in a different way

wow

the integration

of all these systems

is is

it's going to be hugely

challenging

but also hugely powerful

if you get it right

I am

now we're

quickly running out of time

but I just think

it's amazing

that

some

there was a 20 something

year old kid

hooning

series one of leases

around a little while ago

and now you're here

talking about all this stuff

and all the people

that report into you

it's quite something

but

just to finish off

I did mention the Jaguar

earlier

the new electric Jaguar

I know you're not going to spill

the beans on this car at all

and we wouldn't expect you to

but do you

is that car

going to surprise some people

I think it will

because it's

it's it's it's not a small car

obviously you've seen

the images of it

and the models

which

but the way it

drives is

is something that feels

a lot smaller than it looks

and again

that's the integration

of the systems

we're putting on the car

obviously I can't spill

the beans too much

but

I'm not concerned

about the way it drives

it is present state

of development

and in fact

I'm actually quite encouraged

by the way it drives

and what

what do you drive

when you're not doing your job

or or is the job

so all encompassing

is that you're always required

to be in something

or do you have something

sort of tucked away

which you can just go

and have a hooning

at the weekend

I don't in the moment

but I'm still

still trying to find

the perfect car

for me to

I want is the perfect car

by definition

or is the next car

yeah I think it is

but I think

you know good

when people ask me

what's the best car

you've ever developed

I always say the next one

yeah

or though

I think as

compliance

and regulations

are getting tougher

and tougher

I'm not sure

that's always going to be

the case now

obviously we will always

try our hardest

and do the best job

we can to create

the best experience

to an experience

for the customer

but as time moves on

with all the regulations

coming towards it

is getting more

and more challenging

to create

real character

and flavour

that is our job to do that

but

but yeah

so I mean basically

in terms of what do I drive

I'd generally have a

a Range Rover

I'm very lucky to have one

but we have tons

of benchmark cars at work

probably a fleet of

like 25 cars

so you've got to be driving

them all the time

haven't you

generally drive

all of the time

I haven't bought myself

my own

my own car yet

it will be something

which includes a manual

good

if they start with a nine

and end with a one

oh

but I haven't quite

I haven't quite

there's always

whatever

you know what life is like

that you think

well I've got the money

to go and do this

but there's always

something that comes along

just at the point

you think I'm going to go

and buy this

a kitchen

or extension or something

or an extension

or a new patio

or something

there's always

things like that

the other time

Matt

that was a really

really fun chat

we appreciate you

taking the time

really interesting

and insightful too

yeah

the time to come on

some cracking stories

to everyone watching

or listening

please just follow the show

if you're watching on YouTube

hit the subscribe button

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as a podcast

just follow the show

Matt

that was great fun

thank you

and we look forward

to catching you again soon

thank you

cheers Matt

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