The E-type? A rubbish design

Terence Conran is perhaps Britain’s best known designer. He is the man credited with dragging the country from the make-do-and-mend tattiness of the 1950s into the modern age of clean-lined furniture. Without Conran’s Habitat, it is doubtful there would be an Ikea.

So it comes as a surprise to find that he skewers our most celebrated car design: the Jaguar E-type. “The Jag was like driving with a boil on the end of your nose because you couldn’t quite see where the front of it was,” he says. Conran, it turns out, is more of a Porsche man. “I have had 13 Porsches, all 911s. I had my first one in about 1960. The one that I particularly remember was quite a bright green. In fact it inspired the colour scheme of my first warehouse, which subsequently became known as the ‘jolly green giant’.”

Today, with a house in the Berkshire countryside and a London pad in Butler’s Wharf near his Pont de la Tour eatery in Southwark, Conran drives a lot. As well as a Porsche 911 convertible, there is an Aston Martin DB9 and a BMW M5 in his country garage while in London he has an Audi A4 with driver to chauffeur him between meetings in comfort.

Right now, though, the 76-year-old is in far less salubrious surroundings. He is on a bus in Cuba, on his way to visit the factory of the cigar maker Hoya de Monterrey. The ride is bumpy. Conran is in pain due to an old injury.

“It comes from sitting in the back of a Cadillac in India with two very large Indians sitting on either side of me and a Sikh driver, fearing nothing,” he explains. “Seeing a heavily rutted road in front of him, he thought he’d put his foot down and drive across the top of the ruts. Far from it: the driveshaft punched me in the back several times and I had a slipped disc that has bugged me for the last 40 years.”

The problem was compounded by an accident while at the wheel of a Karmann Ghia. “I was crossing Sloane Street at Pont Street, not shooting lights or anything like that, and a very sad fellow who turned out to be a deaf mute was driving down Sloane Street in an MG. He hit the front of the Karmann Ghia and spun several times and went through the railings in Cadogan Gardens.

“Luckily a friend of mine who was a doctor was just behind me in an old Bentley. He saw this happen and came to my aid.”

Conran has hopped into Cuba on a private jet from Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos with his wife Vicki to indulge his passion for cigars at the annual Habanos Festival. His smoking habit can be put down partly to the fact that he associates the aroma with the smell of success.

“We had a party in 1964 after the opening of Habitat and a friend of mine, a designer I was working with, said why don’t we all have a cigar. The restaurant had some boxes of cigars and I think I had a Romeo et Juliette. And over the years instead of just smoking one after dinner, I’d smoke one in the morning. Now I smoke about four a day. I just find them a very calming, steady, pleasant experience.”

He believes that smoking in moderation, far from being an antisocial habit, is a cultured and gregarious thing to do and the smoking ban has upset him. “Cars now are about the only place you can smoke outside your home these days.”

Conran made his name in the 1960s with Habitat, which opened the door to affordable designer furnishings for the British public and put the Conran name alongside that of Twiggy, the Mini and Concorde as superbrands of the Swinging Sixties. In the 1980s his Storehouse retail empire, which included Mothercare and Bhs, had branches on practically every high street.

The stores have been sold and while Conran designs furniture for his company Benchmark, food is his main focus. His 25 restaurants include Floridita and Bluebird – inspired by his passions for Cuban cigars and cars respectively.

He has also tried his hand at car designing. “We were given a job by Renault many years ago to see if we could revive the R4. We did some quite radical work, quite a lot of which then appeared in the Twingo.

We were flattered. I think it’s many designers’ dream to get their hands on a car.” Since then his son Sebastian has worked the family magic on two Nissans – the Murano and C+C. Fiat, too, has been knocking at his door, but Conran says the only company he would work with is Bentley. “I think they [Volkswagen] have done a terrific job modernising the image of Bentley,” he says. “I’d love to work with them to give it an even more contemporary design feel.”

For the moment, though, he has his sights set on modernising British housing and has been advising Gordon Brown.

“Our housing in Britain is quite, quite appalling. And I think Brown understands very well that design is a contribution to the quality of life and what is his government there to do but try to improve the quality of life. But there is a long way to go.”

Brown isn’t the first prime minister to woo Conran. In the 1980s he was invited to lunch with Margaret Thatcher but turned it down because of his views on the Falklands war – he is a dedicated antiwar campaigner.

He also declined a more recent invitation by Top Gear to appear in the Star in the Reasonably Priced Car slot. “At first I thought I’d try and be the slowest, smoking a cigar as I calmly go round the course,” he says, puffing away on a huge Hoya de Monterrey. “Then I didn’t like the idea of being slower than Gordon Ramsay so decided against it.”

My stuff...

In my car My musical taste in the car is very much guided by my wife Vicki so there’s a lot of U2 since she used to work for Bono

On my DVD player Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd

In my parking space A Porsche 911 convertible, a BMW M5 and an Aston Martin DB9, right

I’ll never get rid of A good set of steel knife sharpeners

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