Automotive Journal

EYES ON THE ROAD By JOSEPH B. WHITE


Desperation and Design
Some Car Companies' Classic VehiclesSprung From Their Most-Trying Eras April 25, 2005.
A well-worn cliché about design is that "form follows function." But in the car business, this formula doesn't begin to capture the challenge facing the industry's elite cadre of designers.
These days, it's more accurate to say that "design drives the bottom line." Toyota and Honda have used their reputations for superior quality and engineering to prosper despite a penchant for staid styling. But most other car companies need vehicles that stand out in the crowd to make money.

Six of Detroit's leading car designers gathered Friday at a forum sponsored by the Automotive Press Association, ostensibly to talk about how technology will influence vehicle design. They made the case that technology will have a great impact on the way vehicles look in the future. New engines and transmissions could make possible a new balance between exterior size and interior space. New lighting technology could make dashboard controls easier to read at night, allow for "mood lighting" in the car, or give designers the freedom to create tail lights and headlights radically different from the conventional round or square shapes of the past. (LED technology is already making this possible.)

Carbon fiber and other advanced materials could allow designers to reduce the weight of vehicles significantly, allowing engineers to offer more power or more features without exacting a huge fuel-economy tax. Right now, the high cost of carbon fiber limits the material to one-of-a-kind show cars. But the weight-saving potential is huge: The carbon-fiber chassis for the Jeep "Hurricane" show vehicle, which was outfitted with two Hemi engines and a suspension that allowed the vehicle to steer crabwise, weighed just 200 pounds, said designer Aaron Pizzuti.
But between the lines of their comments and formal presentations, it was clear that computers, carbon fiber, LED light displays and other technical marvels don't explain everything that's going on in automotive design.

Automotive design is a hot field right now. Top car designers are stars, guarded by their employers and wooed by rival firms the way hot fashion designers or big-name ballplayers are accustomed to be courted. It may not be a great business model, but the fact is that one or two hit vehicles can do a lot to transform a car company from money loser to profit machine.
It's probably never been harder to figure out how to produce hits. Take aerodynamic styling, for example. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a slippery, aerodynamic look made the Ford Taurus a hit. Today, designers have sophisticated computer models and state-of-the-art wind tunnels to fine-tune the aerodynamics of a super sports car like the Corvette Z06.
But when designers come out of their wind tunnels, they find out that Toyota's Scion xB, which looks like a shoe box on wheels, is a hit.

"The Scion is something no aerodynamicist would sign up for, but a lot of young people say it's cool," says Chrysler designer Brian Nielander, whose credits include the sleek Chrysler Firepower concept super car shown at the Detroit Auto Show in January.
Most designers cringe when you say the word "retro." But graying Baby Boomers are making hits out of the overtly retro new Mustang and the Chrysler 300 C, which is a modern interpretation of an old concept -- namely a big, rear-drive, V-8 powered sedan.
Mark Trostle, president of creative services for American Specialty Cars, an independent design house/customizer/niche car builder in the Detroit suburb of Southgate, says his company has gotten a strong response to its hot-rod recreation of the classic 1932 Ford roadster, dubbed the "Dearborn Deuce." ASC now is trying to convince Chrysler to build an ASC-developed convertible version of the 300 sedan, which would bring back the four-door convertible from its current residence in the halls of memory. (Among the last such cars: the classic 1961 Lincoln Continental that certain readers will recognize as the black getaway car used in the first of the "Matrix" movies.)

Auto designers can't just look at the industry's past for inspiration. But what should they look at? In the 1950s and 1960s, the dawn of the space age inspired cars with tail fins and chrome ornaments designed to look like rockets. Today? "I keep thinking of the iPod," says Nissan designer Mark Milner. "I wonder whether this type of simplicity will affect automobiles?"
The goal of every designer is to create a classic. The original Mustang passes that test, said Chrysler's Mr. Pizzuti. "In Southern California you see a 17-year-old kid driving a '65 Mustang." What makes something timeless? "Proportion," says Mr. Gilles. "I would hope ten years from now you will look at the 300 and say the proportions were right."
Proportions matter. But so do emotions, and not just the emotions that a car design inspires in potential customers.

Look back on recent automotive history, and what stands out is how many classic, or at least very successful, automotive designs came out of companies that had run themselves up on the rocks. The original Taurus was a Hail Mary pass by Ford at a time when the company was floundering out of the early 1980s recession.

Nissan's recent run of eye-catching vehicles, including the Titan, the Infiniti FX35 and the 350Z, all sprung from the energy generated by Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn's strategy for rescuing the Japanese auto maker from the brink of collapse in the late 1990s.
The Chrysler 300 C and the newly launched Dodge Charger are just the latest in a string of ground-breaking Chrysler designs that have emerged from the smallest of Detroit's Big Three following one of its once-a-decade brushes with disaster. (Others include the first generation Dodge Caravan.)

If this history is any guide, the next company to hit one out of the park should be General Motors, which last week announced a $1.1 billion first-quarter loss, its worst three-month performance since the dark days of 1992. GM signaled that things are so bad it can't even predict what it will earn or lose this year.

GM has such a huge product portfolio that one hit usually isn't enough to turn the ship, unless that hit is a very high-volume line, such as the big Chevy pickup or Chevy and GMC sport utility vehicles.

GM designer Tom Peters, whose last job was overseeing the design for the new Corvette, is now in charge of coming up with a new look for the company's utterly conventional, and currently not so successful, mid-sized SUVs such as the Chevy TrailBlazer.
Mr. Peters doesn't give anything way -- designers get paid a lot of money not to say much about what they are working on. Asked what he can possibly do to put pizzazz in a truck like the TrailBlazer, Mr. Peters just smiles. "There's lots of opportunity," he says.

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