 |
(Mark Wilson/Globe Staff) |
On the hot seat
In a career that has taken him from DaimlerChrysler to GM Europe and now North America, Bryan Nesbitt, 38, has been behind the design of such vehicles as the 2006 Saab Aero-X concept, Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky, Outlook, Aura, Cadillac DTS, Buick Lucerne, and the new Chevrolet Malibu. He talked recently with Globe reporter Royal Ford about the promises and challenges of modern automobile design.
Q. What are the greatest opportunities in auto design today?
A. We just revealed our new Cadillac Escalade Platinum Edition, and it will have LED [light emitting diode] headlamps. Projection lamps that we have today are a great thing, but you end up extending the front end - to fit them in - and anything that gives us a smaller package, [and can] still meet the output if not exceed the output, gives us lots more flexibility in the appearance. We have a number of brands for a number of different customers, and each has to have their own aesthetic.
Q. Besides LED, what else is promising?
A. Well, it's amazing how many basic functions stay the same. The engine box itself, cooling, getting air in and out of the vehicle. But if we can continue to minimize, and continue to get huge performance, for instance getting air in and out of the engine box, it becomes a large enabler for appearance. We can take more liberties, get more surface development.
Q. Engineering used to drive design. You were told: Here's the car we can build, you guys design it. How does that work now?
A. It's gone full circle many times, especially through GM's history. When you can look at a vehicle and say, "Wow! This really came together" - it's appealing, it's well made, the interior is well done, it drives well, it has a lot of innovation and features - it's really a testament to how well engineering and design are working together. If we don't communicate, the gaps show up in the product.
Q. The new Cadillac was the first "edgy" design done recently for GM. How are you going to differentiate the rest of your models - Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet - so that people won't see those models as "rebadges" of each other?
A. That's what I love about working for GM today, because there are so many brands to target to different customers. I mean, there's Hummer, with extreme mission equipment. With Saab, we target upper liberals, small engine displacement, appearances that originated out of the Nordic region, all those play together to portray an image and a value system that upper liberals appreciate. Cadillac is for someone who has communicated ambition quite loudly. There's more focus on customers' needs, how customers want to express themselves. And what are the solutions that allow them to do that.
Q. Do you think the days of rebadging - spiffing up a Chevy and calling it a Cadillac - are gone? I understand cars can share underpinnings and components.
A. If we want to cover the market and we've created different brands to cover that market, then we certainly ought to be targeting different customers. We've learned the hard way in a couple of examples.
Q. Not long after Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman for product development, first came on board in 2002, he sat with me in a GM product and said the problem with GM interiors was not that GM wasn't spending money on them, it was just spending it in the wrong places - such as lower door panels that, all that happens to them, is they get kicked. Is he behind these quality changes we're seeing in GM interiors?
A. Bob said, "Listen, we're going to prioritize these products."
Q. What's the best-looking car that you don't sell?
A. There's some beautiful stuff out there. The interior of the new Audi R8 is just absolutely wonderful, though I don't like the overall proportion of the car.
Q. What kind of car do you drive?
A. I had a Saab 9-3 Aero for the summer. I test drive a lot of the stuff we're dealing, and right now we're kind of in the 2012 time frame, so now I'm driving next-generation Enclave, next-gen Acadia, next-gen Escalade.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
