The pic above is one of the original concept renderings. The original 1998 'show car' was used again as the basis for the Coupe. Stripped back to the bare glassfibre panels, it was put back into the design studio and the new Coupe styling was completed in the age-old manner of clay modelling.
The clay model was completed in two halves, the right hand side being a direct reflection of the S-V8 styling, the left hand side being a much more aggressive design with wider rear wheelarch and a larger. more obvious, integral rear spoiler. The aggressive design would have become the 'Predator' model, which I had put to the Jensen management as a detailed specification and concept in mid-1998. The name was subsequently registered to Jensen Motors.
It was decided to go with the 'right hand side' for the coming motor show and below you see the finished result. It gained a very favourable reception, and many commented that we should have put the Coupe version into production first, before the open model. In hindsight, that could have been a good idea, as probably over xxx£500K was spent in the design of the soft-top and the associated tonneau-cover and fuel tank packaging.
