New directions in design

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2001 by Andrea Wielgat

Three disparate brands -- Lincoln, Mazda and Renault -- are staking their futures on equally different design paths. Their design chiefs reveal the madness behind the methods.

When the North American International Auto Show opens in Detroit next month, industry insiders will scramble to define the next design trend.

Will it be avant-grade? Conservatie? Retro-modern? Will the pre-dominant forms be soft or hard-edged?

The answer is, none of the above.

Or, all of the above, says Carl Olsen, a design consultant and professor emeritus at Detroit's College for Creative Studies, one of the world's top automotive design schools. The most exciting trend in auto design right now, Olsen asserts, is that there is no trend.

Instead, he says automakers will offer a range full of stylistically different vehicles. "I think it's a sign of maturity that companies are prepared to do their own thing," notes Olsen.

Three very different automakers with equally unique design legacies are intent on doing just that. They've redefined their priorities and restructured their design staffs -- two of them have hired new design chiefs -- to ensure that design plays a major role in driving their future business.

France's Renault SA has built a reputation for risky, segment-leading designs that surprise even its European competitors.

Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln brand is working to redefine what "American luxury" is, as it re-establishes its place in the premium-vehicle world.

And Mazda Motor Corp. is starting over. With a new design boss and a controversial new sports coupe, Mazda is emerging from Ford's majority-shareholder shadow to establish its own look and true global presence.

Plotting the design directions of each company are Patrick le Quement of Renault, Gerry McGovern of Lincoln and Mazda's Moray Callum. Their insights follow in three exclusive Automotive Industries interviews.

Japanese Complexity Spurs French Simplicity

In the mid 1990s Patrick le Quement, head of Renault Design, took a trip to Japan. He saw a car that was so complex it was indescribable.

"Almost like a bar of soap which had been used many, many limes and lost its original shape," he says. The image of that jelly-bean-like vehicle inspired le Quement to change the design direction of his own company. He moved to simple shapes that express a strong idea -- shapes that once seen, "you could close your eyes and draw," he says.

Le Quement's tangible reaction was the Argos concept shown at the 1994 Geneva auto show. "It was very much like a manifesto that explained our wish to design a very simple, very memorable shape," he recalls. That strategy, now evolving in a second generation of production vehicles, helped Renault become one of the industry's most innovative and daring design companies.

At its heart isle Quement, a Frenchman educated in Britain and experienced throughout the world. He joined Renault in 1987 at the urging of company chairman Raymond Levy, who promised Le Quement carte blanche to effect any change that would help turn design into a strategic corporate tool. At the time, le Quement had been working with Volkswagen AG to set up a Center for Advance Design and Strategy. He had also worked at Ford Motor Co. for almost two decades, holding positions in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas.

But France is home for le Quement, who married his childhood sweetheart and lives west of Paris in a house he designed.

Since Argos, Renault's design philosophy has been based on developing exciting concepts with strong emotional styling and a French touch.

"We went away from the influence of the animal world to the influence of artifacts and more so the beauty of the machine age," he says. "Not high-tech necessarily, but away from these organic intertwined shapes to very simple structures." For the interior, Renault realizes that modem technology sometimes challenges minimalistic attitudes. Technology should make life easier. Le Quement rejects the enormous complexity that one finds in certain electrical devices, be it cell phones or computers.

While the company says it believes in globalization, it also feels it is important to ensure cultural traceability. Not surprisingly, le Quement looks to outsiders to help do this. The company's 350-strong design team includes 100 designers. Of that, some 40 percent are non-French and belong to 21 different nationalities.

"Very often it is the foreign designer who is able to see what Frenchness is all about," le Quement says. "French people don't necessarily know what French is."

These designers are sent out by le Quement to look outside the automotive world for inspiration and influence. They also have the ear of Renault chairman and CEO Louis Schweitzer, who often visits the design department during the creative process, not just when there is a decision to be made.

A key tool for the company is its concept cars, which le Quement says are important testbeds for communicating not only to the outside world but also within the company Indeed, Renault boasts a strong track record in turning its concept cars into successful production vehicles. The Scenic monospace created a new segment as a production vehicle four years after it was shown as a concept in 1991. And the company was ahead of its time with the Laguna concept, which turned into the Renault Spider roadster.