Design Champion - Ed Welburn, General Motors Corp. North American Operations - Column

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2000 by Lindsay Brooke

Connecting GM'S design concepts to their appropriate vehicle brands is Ed Welburn's job. Blame him for Aztek, cheer him for SSR -- and watch him in the future.

Judge General Motors Corp.'s North American vehicle designs in a roomful of automobile lovers and you might start a riot. Opinions about GM'S styling are a lot like the cars and trucks themselves -- ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, with equal amounts of mediocrity and brilliance in between.

That's probably a good thing, considering how long GM was deservedly blasted for allowing cookie-cutter styling and shameless badge engineering to overrun its once-great portfolio. After too many lost customers, design distinction is again becoming a GM hallmark And certain divisions are actually achieving a family look.

In the view of this magazine, there have been plenty of outright winners rolling out of design chief Wayne Cherry's studios and into showrooms lately. Oldsmobile's Aurora and Intrigue look great from every angle. Buick's new Rendezvous has the right balance. The entire GMT800 truck range looks strong and contemporary. The Cadillacs are finally gaining a fresh identity. And GM is spending big to capture auto show crowds with production payoffs like Chevy's SSR (seepage 11), Traverse and the Hummer H2.

But all is not sweet between every set of GM bumpers. Chevrolet's Malibu and Impala are boring and bland; the Corvette's rear end appears to be an afterthought; Saturn's brand-new SUV looks like it was designed in 1990 and put in a deep freeze for later use; and there's nothing wrong with Pontiac's Aztek that a high-speed collision wouldn't cure.

Ed Welburn knows he and his colleagues have work to do.

"I don't know that any of us will ever be totally satisfied with all of the brands" he admits. "There's a very large market for mainstream, conservative vehicles. But even the customers in that market want a fresh statement For every one of those vehicles we'll include some innovation -- even something as simple as how a handle works, where the shifter's located, or how the seating's positioned.

"But in over 50 percent of our portfolio," Welburn pledges, "the total vehicle concept will be innovative. It's been a difficult journey, but our new brand-development process is paying off. When you see our next round of concept vehicles at the show, I think you'll agree."

Welbum is director of GM's Corporate Brand Character Center (BCC) in Warren, Mich. It's his job to make sure the hundreds of vehicle design ideas that bubble-up within GM'S studios each year are assigned their appropriate brands. He then helps shepherd the ideas through the various thematic phases, from rough sketches to 3-D CAD manifestations and eventually to full-scale concepts that GM's top management can touch, drive and possibly approve for production. Everything with wheels that carries a GM brand gets honed and tailored by Welburn's team before it hits an auto show stand or a showroom. The BOC is the hub of the process. Its people must keep the brands true to their definitions and the vehicles out of each others' orbit -- thus ensuring an Olds is quite distinct from a Buick and a Cadillac. And while it's primarily a North American-focused organization, its influence with GM's global partners is growing.

In this role, the BCC has been dubbed the "brand police" by some GM critics, with Welbum (who also champious the development of all GM show vehicles) being labeled GM'S top "brand cop."

"As corny as it sounds, this is an area where we can all come together and work together," Welbum explains. "The various chief designers are all building their brands, and they want to keep them separate. To have a location where they can congregate and see where the opportunities -- and potential overlaps between brands -- exist is important to all of us."

He adds that another mission for the BCC is to make sure all auto show vehicles are kept distinct and separate between the GM marques each year. "BCC and our new-vehicle development process are a very coordinated, strategic effort," Welburn asserts. "They're a key to how we make GM successful. All the other corporate strategies are part of it."

Welburn is 50, and he's already logged 28 of those years at GM Design. As a rookie designer in the early 1970s, he began earning his stripes amidst the traumatic downsizing of GM'S big cars. It was an exciting period for him because he was new and didn't have to radically change his mindset, as many veteran colleagues did. As Oldsmobile chief designer during the late 1990s, he guided development of the Antares show car, which had great influence on the Intrigue sedan. It was another rough time for GM and Oldsmobile. For Welburn, it became a learning experience that helps ground him today as BCC director.

"It was a very turbulent time," he recalls. "We were really trying to understand what our customers were looking for. The Aurora was already in place as our keystone. But each day we faced rumors about our survival. This energized the design team and intensified our focus on what the customer wanted -- interior space, exterior styling."