Quote of the Day

“This is a non-rational business. It’s not irrational. But it’s not necessary for anyone to get a new car—almost ever.”

Jerry Hirshberg, former president of Nissan Design International

When Jerry Hirshberg uttered these words in an interview with Gary Vasilash of Automotive Design and Production back in 2002 he was fresh from taking part in a highly successful product renaissance at Nissan. He was at the height of his powers: making consumers fall in love with a product that they didn’t need.

Hirshberg was the guy that, when Nissan had sunk to a financial and creative low in the late 90′s, suggested reviving the Z. Clearly he knows how to pull at consumer heart strings to get a return on investment.

I don’t think we will ever eviscerate emotion from the car/human equation but what if the emotions we feel in relation to cars change? Imagine, for a minute, if automotive brands could no longer leverage power, size, opulence and selfishness as their emotional draw cards, but instead had to appeal with intelligence, authenticity, longevity and real value.

Filed under: Branding, Car, Design, Design Strategy, Eco, Design, Design Strategy, Downsizing, Grant McCracken, Hiroko Tabuchi, Jerry Hirshbirg, John Hockenberry, Re*Move, Recycle, Repair, Retreat of Consumerism, Reuse

My First Interview ™

I was recently contacted by Michael Roller, over at Strategic Aesthetics, about giving an interview on my approach to strategic design in the automotive industry.

Mike blogs on strategic design in the product arena, a part of the design world that seems so similar to automotive design, but in many ways is so different (and, dare I say it, further down the design strategy road) and his request carried significant weight, working as he does for Kaleidoscope and lecturing at University of Cincinnati’s prestigious College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. Needless to say it was a real honour and a pleasure to be given this opportunity.

It was a slightly daunting prospect given that it’s the first time I have collected my thoughts on the matter for public consumption, but I hope it gives some insight into my approach.

Many thanks to Michael for allowing me to hold forth!

Read parts one and two here!

Filed under: Car, Design, Design Education, Design Strategy, Uncategorized, Kaleidoscope, Michael Roller, Strategic Aesthetics

Sexy Old Mercs, Brand Building and Platform 21′s Repair Manifesto

The recent news that Mercedes – Benz is starting a German pilot programme to resell what are known in Germany as Youngtimers (cars too young to be considered bona fide classics, but too old to be uninteresting) was music to my ears. That they would be selling cars from the hey day of Mercedes engineering and build quality, the years 1970 to 1990, only turned up the volume.

I immediately started compiling an imaginary list of what I would buy if my pockets contained anything more than lint. On it you would have found the following:

1. A ’79 500 SLC, a little known rally homologation special with a lightened body and a wonderfully rumbly V8 under the bonnet
2. An ’88 190E 2.5-16 Cosworth, the less chavvy alternative to an E30 BMW M3
3. Two W124 E-Classes, a 300CE-24 Sportline (the discreet alternative to AMG) and a 500E sedan, built by hand at Porsche’s Zuffenhausen plant
4. A W114 450 SEL 6.9… Ok, you get the point, I have an unhealthy obsession with a certain era of Mercs.

Once I got my daydreaming out of the way I realised what a canny move this is.

Filed under: Branding, Car, Design, Design Strategy, Eco, 240Z, BMW X5, Brand Building, E-Class, Georg Karcher, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Recycle, Reuse, W114, W124, W210, Youngtimers

BMW Project-i: Paradigm shifting for rich folk

Car magazine is carrying a story regarding the development of the Project-i vehicles, BMW’s oft talked about but as yet unseen foray into the future of urban transportation.

That BMW is putting it’s weight behind such a programme is laudable. As I’ve often remarked on these pages, a radical shift in thinking regarding how we move about our urban centres will be vital to the return to good health of the automotive industry. It’s just a little galling that BMW is sticking to the notion that these vehicles must be “premium”.

Dr. Ulrich Kranz, the leader of Project-i, even goes so far as to say “They will not be Tata Nano rivals – no way! We can and will only build premium cars”. Wanting to distance his project from any associations with the tiny tot from India is understandable, having seen just how rudimentary it is (Euro facelift notwithstanding), but to stick to the concept that BMW will “…only build premium cars” seems a little short sighted.

Car also cites Shanghai and Mexico City, among others, as targets for the vehicles. Last time I checked Mexico City and Shanghai were flush with the cheapest wheels available, Beetles and bicycles respectively. These are not markets ripe for the introduction of premium urban mobility. They just need urban mobility full stop.

It’s been regularly discussed in the motoring press over the past year or two, and I see fit to bring it up again here: BMW is sitting on the perfect brand for reaching down out of their ivory tower and providing intelligent mobility for the masses. It’s called Isetta.

Sure, it may not be terribly well known by name outside of Europe and groupings of predominantly old men who worship at the alter of slow, smelly and insane microcars of the mid-20th century. But nobody knew of Lexus when it launched, and it has done a passable job of establishing a presence for itself, answering a question nobody asked.

Crucially, Isetta has the all-important story behind it: it produced highly efficient, intelligent cars that intended to mobilise the masses. And as I’ve mentioned previously, having a great story is half the battle in getting people to fall in love with a new product.

Story aside, if BMW managed to nail a suite of solutions to urban mobility, no body would give a damn what it was called and whether it was “premium” or not. Our predicament is far more serious than that.

You can counter that the big changes in technology always start at the top of the market and work their way down (I remember when my first iPod cost €400 and held 500 more songs than the Shuffle that launched this week for €75. The thought of using it as a tie-clip was also a non-starter…). I honestly feel, however, that should we not work towards far-ranging, cross-market changes to the car industry, our recovery is going to be even more painful and protracted than we’re currently predicting.

According to Kranz it will be 2015 before we see the first fruit of his Project-i labour. From where I stand, we have until 2015 to convince him to spread the love.

[Source: Car Magazine][Images: Wiki Commons]

Filed under: Apple, Branding, Car, Design Strategy, Premium, Technology, BMW Project-i, Paradigm Shift, Premium, Urban Mobility

Light (‘em up) entertainment: torque made visual

I’ve often wondered what the rear tyres of a Bentley Arnage (with an insane 1,000 Nm of torque) might go through during a full-throttle assault on the redline. Thanks to this video, found via Gizmodo, I can wonder no more. .47 seconds is a particular treat.

Filed under: Eye Candy, Things I like, 1200fps, Drag Racing, Slow Motion, Torque

Best in show: VW Polo

Yes, you read that correctly. My personal star of the Geneva Show is a thoroughly vanilla B Segment competitor from Europe’s most conservative mainstream manufacturer. It may sound perverse but the Polo won my heart on a couple of fronts and it manages to comprehensively nail the zeitgeist in the process.

Filed under: Car, Design, Design Strategy, Eco, Geneva, Motor Shows, Things I like, 2010 Volkswagen Polo

NGOs, SUVs and a useful student project

I recently commented on the dearth of useful, innovative concepts at student transport design shows, in particular at the Pforzheim winter show I visited in February.

Today I read this blog posting (found via Twitter) from Stephanie over at From Kala. She’s a project manager for an NGO, working in a refugee camp in Zambia and her observations gave me a flash of inspiration for a socially oriented student project.

Stephanie outlined the problems that the use of SUVs present for both those working for NGOs and those being helped by them. In brief they are:

1. SUVs foster an “us and them” or “developer and developee” mentality by elevating and separating the NGO employees from those that they are meant to be protecting and assisting.

2. SUVs have a destructive effect on the minimal transport infrastructure that exists between the refugee camps and town centres. The problem is exacerbated in the rainy season when the combination of the SUVs ability to ride roughshod over already poor roads and the saturation of the roadbed leads to potholes that make it almost impossible for local vehicles, mostly bicycles and regular cars, to pass. Putting the parlous state of the roads and the gap this creates between the outsiders and the locals in perspective, Stephanie says:

“If I hitch a ride in one of these white monsters, it takes us about 25 minutes to drive to the camp. If I hire a taxi… , it takes more than an hour, nearly as long as it takes to bike.”

Clearly SUVs will have some benefits in these environments but the social and infrastructural impacts of their use makes me wonder if there isn’t a smarter solution than using an off-the-shelf SUV product.

To actively encourage transport design students to pursue a project that looks deeply at both social context and appropriate product fit is, in my experience, pretty unusual. In the product design realm, it’s a different story however. Case in point is Play Made Energy, initiated by Dan Sheridan.

A Coventry University MDes (product) student, Dan recently completed his major project with the assistance of Aventure, a charity and volunteer placement enterprise, to develop power-generating play equipment for a community in Uganda. He’s now secured funding from a consortium of investors and a local innovation investment initiative that will allow his company to start implementing the product on a broader scale within Ugandan schools, in partnership the the Build A School charity.

Obviously, designing an SUV replacement is a task of significantly greater complexity, and one that is unlikely to have such an immediate impact, but Dan’s example shows that well-considered work at the student level can have far-reaching effects, not least on the student themselves. Dan himself talks of the difficulties and rewards of having undertaken such a project but his success is testament to his growth as a designer who is increasingly aware of his social responsibilities.

A socially oriented project can only be helpful for the transport designers of the future by requiring them to deeply consider the consequences of their work. It would also help them understand real-world contexts as opposed to those that are created to support the Utopian vision of gran turismos, extreme off-road vehicles and track specials that continue, by and large, to fill the halls of student exhibitions.

So, those of you out there in design education, what do you think? Is this something you’d like to take on, or do you know of university transport design programs already dealing with broader social issues? If so, myself and the NGO community would love to hear from you.

[Image: John & Mel Kots]

Filed under: Car, Design, Design Education, Design Strategy, Eco, Dan Sheridan, Design Students, From Kala, NGO, Play Made Energy, SUV

Retour ahead: shifting the personal mobility paradigm

Mark Charmer over at Re*Move has just published a great piece on the current state of the car industry and offers a suggestion as to where it might head in order to survive.

Most interesting was Mark’s observation about the generational change in attitudes towards owning cars:

New technologies change how and why we move, too… . Today, our lives are often half physical, half virtual. The Facebook generation has new ways to demonstrate its individuality without buying a Clio or a Focus or an MX-5. We interact differently and spend differently – and this is going to change more in future than it has already.

This change in modes of expression and the subsequent impact on mobility and spending patterns is something I’ve recently debated at length.

Some have suggested that we need to find ways to get current and future generations to fall in love with buying cars again. It’s argued that the creation of new automotive icons will once again make owning a car desirable, similar to the effect of the Model T, Beetle, 2CV and Golf in the 20th century. Although the positive impact of mass personal mobilisation can not be underestimated, it was the unchecked expansion of an ownership model that has contributed to our current environmental and financial predicament.

I’ve been arguing that we need to move to a more democratic model of distributed ownership or rental. Mark further consolidates and builds on this argument. In doing so, he calls for the design community at large to join in and effect fundamental change on the personal mobility paradigm. It’s an exciting proposition that still takes into account our love of personal mobility while minimising the negatives.

Head on over to Re*Move to check out the rest.

[Photo: Mark Charmer]

Filed under: Car, Design, Design Strategy, Eco, Uncategorized, Car Sharing, Personal Mobility, Re*Move, Sustainability

Citroen launches DS Inside… inside.

The image you see above is the most revealing that I, a fully accredited member of the press, could manage to take of the CItroen DS Inside concept.

Is Citroen ashamed of the DS Inside? Or more specifically, are they ashamed of using the DS name on such an underwhelming product?

As I traipsed the show floor on Monday searching for inspiration, I kept passing the Citroen stand. I was keeping my eye out for the the inheritor of one of motoring history’s great names. After about the 5th fly-by, I realised that something was up.

I noticed an opening at the back of the stand, guarded by a velvet rope and a heavy-set Frenchman. There was a small gathering of people and the bloke was letting them in one by one.

I strutted over, flashed my pass and was admitted to the tiniest night club I’ve ever experienced. Electronica, mirrors and strobe lights saw me immediately dazed and confused. Then, for a split second, a single source of illumination hit the hitherto dark object in the centre of the room: It was the DS Inside.

Camera at the ready, I started snapping away, only for the lights to go spasmodic again, rendering any meaningful observation impossible. I skulked out, feeling somewhat queasy and totally cheated.

I’ve recently questioned whether it’s wise for Citroen to use such an evocative, powerful piece of their history as the namesake for their new mainpremium products. I lived in hope that their marketing chutzpah and the initial product, the DS Inside, would be ballsy enough to give some hope for the future of the DS brand.

That the car, from what I could see, is cute but totally average was a forgone conclusion. The press images released two weeks ago showed that and it gains and loses nothing in the flesh.

What was really mortifying was just how ashamed Citroen seemed to be in showing the car. It did not come across as cool, hip or nonchalant to show the DS Inside in a black box. It came across as weak, as if they regretted bringing the car here at all, much less slapping a DS badge on the nose.

I realise that I’ve been going on about this DS thing for a while now, and this will probably be the last post on the topic until the next travesty is launched (if I can summon up the passion at that time). Sadly, the damage has now been done and I’ll be surprised if Citroen can turn the DS brand around from its anti-launch without a complete re-think of their product.

A word of advice to Citroen and any other brand considering a challenging product concept launch (Lagonda, I’m looking at you), give a design strategist a call. We live and breath your brands, marketing and design. We’ll be more than happy set you right.

Filed under: Branding, Car, Concept, Design, Design Strategy, Geneva, Motor Shows, Premium, Citroen DS, Citroen DS Inside, Citroen Night Club, Lagonda