SHE is the actress dubbed the Queen of Curves who stood on the bow of the Titanic. It is the marque that for decades has boasted a leaping cat on its bonnets, write John Harlow and Flora Bagenal.

Suddenly and somehow the two have fused. Kate Winslet, 31, has confessed that her well-upholstered frame was the inspiration for Jaguar’s new £60,000 coupé, the XK. Gone is the cat. In its place are soft curves and a “smiley mouth” grille.

Winslet has revealed that she was in the mind of Ian Callum, a Scottish engineer, when he was designing the latest Jaguar XK. She told the American chat show host Jay Leno that Callum had “decided that I, for whatever reason, was his ideal woman. So I guess he was inspired by the shape of my body, which is kind of flattering”.

Not that she is overimpressed with Jaguar’s efforts. Winslet complained that she would have liked to be involved in the design. “The headlights are too small. They will have to go. And it needs a bar under the dashboard with pink and blue neon lights, umbrellas and pineapples.

“And wings,” the mother of two added, warming to her role as car designer, “like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And inflatables, so it can go in water. I absolutely think I should get a free car.”

The latest Jaguar XK, with a top speed of 155mph, has been greeted as a potential lifeline for the Ford-owned Jaguar’s Birmingham plant. American sales are up 6% this year, promoted by celebrity owners such as Leno, George Clooney, the actor, and Robbie Williams, the singer.

Jeremy Clarkson, in this newspaper, summed the car up as a “honey” and “pant-wettingly pretty”.

Winslet read about Callum’s comment in a magazine called Hollywood Life. Last week Callum, Jaguar’s chief designer who worked on the Aston Martin DB7, confirmed that Winslet was indeed his muse, but insisted it was not a “sexist” thing. “Aesthetically some cars are very masculine — people have linked Astons with James Bond for obvious reasons, and the Vanquish is very like Pierce Brosnan. But a Jaguar should be sensuous and voluptuous, very sculptured and when I was thinking about it Kate Winslet came to mind.

“Kate Winslet is my ideal woman. She is naturally a very shapely woman, very British with an underlying integrity and ability. Like a car, she has got substance, she is not just a pretty face.

“So I designed the new XK body with her in mind. The interesting thing is that so many woman find sensual cars more appealing as well.”

Winslet is not the first powerful woman to be celebrated in automotive design. The Spirit of Ecstasy that adorns Rolls-Royce bonnets in the form of a woman leaning forward with billowing garments, dates back to 1911.

She was based on Eleanor Velasco Thornton, secretary and mistress of the motoring enthusiast John Montagu, 2nd Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.

Thornton drowned four years later in a U-boat attack. But her memory survived as the silver-plated figurine known to Rolls-Royce workers as Nelly in Her Nightie.

The contemporary compliment to Winslet comes a decade after her first day on the set of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic when James Cameron, the director, reduced her to tears by saying: “God, you are so fat.”

Winslet, nominated for a record four Oscars before she was 30, was shocked when people started discussing her curves. “I have dieted, yes, but these days I think I prefer to enjoy life as it comes, naturally.”

Perhaps she will not share the verdict delivered on the new Jaguar by Whatcar? magazine: “It can feel short of pull.”

To read Clarkson's review click here

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