Design & Desire: Keith Helfet

When Keith Helfet embarked upon an ambitious project to create a new body shape for a secondhand Triumph Spitfire using little more than foam offcuts and plaster of Paris, a life as one of the world's most successful automotive designers seemed like an impossible dream. And yet that's precisely what he would become.

After studying at London's prestigious Royal College of Art, the South-African born youngster secured a job at Jaguar, where he would meet his mentor – marque founder Sir Willia...