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"To
design cars, one has to be a Renaissance man. A car designer has to
master a multitude of commercial arts; incorporate marketing and
research; create two- and three-dimensional models; coordinate
intuition with computer, ergonomic, and engineering skills; and, at
the highest level, manage hundreds of artists and convince business
leaders that the ideas embodied in clay will actually sell.
"It would be hard to imagine a more complex and challenging
activity, and yet no one writes about it at any length. Documenting
the process can be difficult because car design is a highly
competitive, and therefore secretive, business. You can't just walk
into the locked Ford studios to talk with the vice president of
design about his background, motivation, and philosophy."
- Dr. C. Edison
Armi,
author & professor of Art History at the University of
California, Santa-Barbara
Retrofuturism: The Car Design of J Mays,
Armi & Brooke
(Universe, 2002)
"We don't do
styling, but this car actually looks pretty good."
- Acura executive
(anonymous), commenting on the 2005 RL flagship
'Extreme Makeover: the new RL is more of a
driver's car,' Autoweek,
September
13th, 2004
"We're just building
what people want. Look at the
RS6. Bosses in
Germany can't believe that we sell any in the UK, what with the 70
mph limit and congestion problems. As it is, we have to constantly
beg for more, such is the demand."
- Audi executive
(anonymous), asked if the horsepower war was getting out of
hand
'Art Nuvo,' evo,
August 2003
"... this week, a
major conversational topic here has been the uncanny consistency of
scent among different models from the same manufacturer, even though
they might be built on different continents."
- Autocar,
July 20th,
2004
"If I had my way,
I would make it a crime to use automobiles on the public highways...
perhaps the time will come when horses will be educated to the point
where they will not be afraid of automobiles; but I doubt that, for
I have not yet seen the time that I was not afraid of them myself."
- Senator Joseph W Bailey of Texas,
speaking in 1909
Drive On: A Social History of the
Motor Car, LJK Setright (Palawan Press Ltd., 2002)
"As we got closer to
the launch communication of the car, it was heading into that famous
year 2000 wall [Y2K], which was the peak of retro. You never heard
the word emotion coming from designers like you do now. There was a
fear of technology, a fear of change. A fear of moving forward is
naturally a part of a century change. Don't forget, we were all
afraid our toasters were going in league with our refrigerators."
- Chris E. Bangle,
head of BMW
Group Design (on the environment
in which the E65 7 series was launched)
'Bangle
gladly takes heat, remains committed to design direction,'
Automotive News, June 14th, 2004
"Retro is like
'Hamlet.' You know what it is, you know how it ends, but you want to
see it again. The problem is, if all you have in town to watch is
'Hamlet,' you begin to ask yourself where the playwrights of the
world are. Retro isn't an issue; it's the absence of an alternative
that's an issue.
"The temptation to write a cheque on history is there. Today's
environmental risks are huge. If anything will change the
relationship among design, progress, and fear, it's changing the
formula of how much money gets you how much stuff. When every new
feature is not a major swallow, when it becomes normal, then
you'll see moves of boldness come back to design. How you make cars
is fundamental to how they look.
"I
get the feeling when I look at these cars that while they're not
retro, they're so classic and understood. You hear such easy praise.
I feel I'm at a Chopin competition where everyone knows the music is
going to sound good and you're going to enjoy hearing someone
playing it really well. But it's not a new composition. The
responsibility that comes with attempting to look forward is that
you also have to research, to bring your research into the world and
show people and generate discussion. That's something a lot of
companies don't want to do.
"I
appreciate old cars and their restoration. But we have an obligation
in the future to provide cars that owners will be proud to restore
and proud to bring back, so that at Pebble Beach in fifty years,
they'll be showing a fifty-year-old car instead of a
hundred-and-fifty-year-old car."
-
Chris E. Bangle,
head of BMW Group Design
'Designers
have their say,' Jean Jennings, Automobile, May 2004
"You have to look twenty years ahead at the engineering, and make
sure you can evolve the styling to use the same tooling. The styling
is dictated by changes to the engineering. To re-tool with every
re-style would be simply too expensive."
- Chris E.
Bangle,
head of BMW Group Design
'Chris Bangle interview,'
Toby Richards-Carpenter, Top Gear, March 8th, 2004
"Hybrids don't
sell magazines. Gorgeous new sports cars, preferably British ones,
do."
- Jason Barlow,
editor, CAR
CAR,
March 2005
"No matter what
technology is available, unless a car is carrying a load of
effective imagery it is unlikely to enjoy genuine popular success."
- Stephen Bayley, columnist
Concept Car Design: Driving the Dream, Jonathan Bell, (RotoVision, 2003)
"Even though
Pandas
remain familiar sights in rural Italy where they have assumed the
role once played by donkeys, its roadworthiness was not in the class
of an ass. Old
Pandas
crashed and lurched and shimmied and squealed uncertainly."
- Stephen Bayley,
columnist, CAR, February 2004
"In every respect - artistic, technical, commercial - the first
Golf
was one of the most significant cars ever. So much so that it took them an age
to decide how to replace it. In fact, they hardly did.
"But what they had done - either
through ingenuity or timidity - was establish an evolutionary design language.
"VW's insistence on making only
gradual changes gave a happy impression of the absolute rightness of the
Golf.
Just as back in '74 they were brave enough to say the Beetle was wrong, we need
another solution, the overwhelming success of the
Golf
concept forced a
conservatism in VW small car design. At first, this continuity brought benefits.
No customer wants to be told, 'Sorry, chum, you made a dud choice buying
Golf IV
because for the past few years we have had some much better ideas: just look at
the radical new design and technology we have saved up for
Golf V.'
But one of the only certainties
about consumer psychology is that taste changes unpredictably. Confidence can
become complacency and evolution can begin to look like a tragic lack of
imagination. Today, no-one wants to be told, 'Thanks, sucker, for making a
really boring choice.'
"Sticking with the knitting is one
thing. Staying in the game too long is another. Being too scared to replace the
Beetle
almost bust Volkswagen in the early '70s. Maybe the
Golf
will do the same today."
- Stephen Bayley,
columnist, CAR,
May 2004
"We
don't wish to be naive. This is the second-most incentivized segment
in the industry after full-size pickups."
-
Jeff Bell, vice president of Chrysler and Jeep marketing, explaining the choice to launch the 2005 Jeep Grand
Cherokee with cash on the hood from the outset
'Grand
Cherokee gets spiffs,' Automotive News, August 9th,
2004
"The car market is
built on brands, making the upper layers of an automobile - of
metal, plastic and chrome - the place for defining presence."
- Jonathan Bell, author
Concept Car Design: Driving the Dream, (RotoVision, 2003)
"Just
as classicism provided an order within which architects could
compose a vast array of building types, so the car's essential
components can be rearranged and reinterpreted, the difference being
that technology is continually re-defining how materials can be made
to perform.
"Just as fashion, architecture, music, literature, and design have
all learned to quote liberally from the past, so car design has
generated its own visual language, a semiotic wonderland of signs
and signals that defines each and every brand with an image and an
expectation. To master this language is the car designer's ultimate
goal, and every manufacturer strives to present a range of cars that
demonstrates a cohesive expression of this elusive automotive
alphabet, a cultural by-product of the automobile century."
- Jonathan Bell, author
Concept Car Design: Driving the Dream, (RotoVision, 2003)
"Concept car design
is not car design at its purest - however elegant, no engineer would
concur that freehand sketches represent the pinnacle of automotive
art.
"Yet free from the considerations that might constrain artistic
expression, concept cars allow for the creation of forms that might
otherwise never see the light of day.
"Creating cars specifically for motor shows as opposed to for
internal design development purposes also imposes an entirely
different discipline, with tighter deadlines and higher pressure.
"Regardless of the ultimate purpose, the rapid nature of concept car
design generates working methodologies that ultimately benefit and
improve the integration between the design and manufacturing
process."
- Jonathan Bell, author
Concept Car Design: Driving the Dream, (RotoVision, 2003)
"(Standard-Triumph USA's 1960 distributor acquisitions) are
primarily designed to bring us closer to our dealers and to the
buyers of our cars, and to broaden present sales and service
facilities."
- Alan Bethell, head of
Standard-Triumph, USA, on the company's 1960
purchasing of its distributors
Triumph Cars in America,
Michael Cook
(MBI, 2001)
"Any plan to
help the American economy by curtailing the import of British cars would
probably have the reverse effect. It would reduce demand for American-made
materials and components for cars.
"Few Americans
will buy products from abroad that duplicate American products. Many cars from
Britain, for example, have met needs not otherwise satisfied by United States
manufacturers. British automotive sales in this country are mostly sports cars
and economy cars of types not directly competitive with domestic vehicles."
- Alan Bethell, head of
Standard-Triumph, USA, on the growing,
union-inspired political movement to Buy American in 1961
Triumph Cars in America,
Michael Cook
(MBI, 2001)
"What
was so great about the assembly line, where you do the same job
every day? Was that paradise?
"The opportunity to rotate jobs and learn new skills has been
liberating."
- Owen Bieber, UAW president, speaking to auto executives after participating in
the Toyota City visitor program
Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland,
David Gelsanliter
(Harper & Collins, 1990)
"The Audi
A2's origins will always make it a favorite of mine. It was a
research vehicle that ended up being produced, and that doesn't
happen very often. As a project, it was a real challenge to work
on."
- Chris Bird,
Design Director,
Ford of Europe (and, formerly, designer of the Audi A2)
'Early Draws,' Autocar,
July 27th, 2004
"It has very cleverly done one thing:
people don't think of it as a Golf coupe, which is what it of course
is. It has created its own identity: it has done with the Golf what
the Frogeye Sprite did for the Austin A35."
- Neil Birtley, Design Lecturer, on the Audi TT
'Design Round
Table,' How to: Design Cars Like a Pro, Tony Lewin
"People are reacting against the homogenization of the automobile.
They're tired of the bland sameness of the automotive landscape and
are looking for a way to express their individuality.
"A car can be
whatever you want it to be. It doesn't have to be what the industry says it
should be."
- Harrod Blank,
filmmaker (and producer of Wild Wheels,
1992), on the 1999 ArtCar Fest
Automobile,
February 1999
"When I came to
Subaru, they asked me how (they could) make Subaru a European-like
car? I said, no way - we would make a Japanese car [laughs].
"And when I left
Japan to go back to Germany, I sometimes wondered if I'd done all
the things I wanted to do in Japan. Because I think it's possible to
use a lot more from their culture. And, as you know, the Japanese
have this tendency to make pseudo-European, pseudo-American design.
So, historically they question if they can really develop their own
brand.
"It's not like there
is an American or European version of a Sony digital camera. It's
the same one everywhere. Why not the same with cars? And that's what
we're doing with the designs. There's nothing wrong with deciding to
cultivate your own roots.
"I did (Mitsubishi's
new design theme) in April 2001 on a serviette. Basically just one
design concept."
"... I had a chance to
visit the Mitsubishi museum, and in the museum I saw two cars that
inspired me with their design elements. One was a
Mitsubishi Leo
three-wheel-truck, the other the
Mitsubishi 500
- the company's first post-war car. The influence - or maybe the
better word is inspiration - is quite abstract, so you might not
notice it. But it's better that way."
"When strong
designers are in the European, American, Australian studios, it's
often because they are remote and this detachment lets them see
things that the Japanese don't see themselves. So we are really here
trying to help them identify all the things and it's very efficient
- very, very efficient.
"When we showed some
of the cars to the Japanese sales department, they all wondered if
the emblem could be made smaller. It was as though they were
embarrassed and thought it shouldn't be so big."
-
Olivier Boulay, head of Mitsubishi design
(formerly of Mercedes-Benz advanced design, and of Subaru)
'DiamondCutter,'
Wheels,
January 2004
"(on retro): In
Japanese culture, there is no desire to hang on to the past. It's
maybe related to the religion - you're born, you live, you die."
-
Olivier Boulay, head of Mitsubishi design
(formerly of Mercedes-Benz advanced design; creator of the Maybach)
'Designers
have their say,' Automobile, Jean Jennings, May 2004
"Political
polling tends to be done by telephone, partly to produce results quickly. The
auto industry, in less of a hurry, relies on mailing surveys to randomly
selected samples of buyers of each model.
"The
industry's pollsters say the initial response rate to surveys is 30 to 40%,
somewhat higher than the response rate to random telephone polling. Many
Americans would rather give their opinions about their new cars on a
questionnaire than discuss their political views on the phone with a stranger,
it seems."
- Keith Bradsher,
author and New York Times, Hong Kong bureau chief,
on industry research
High and Mighty (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"Until
recently, market researchers did not even ask customers how high they wanted to
sit in a vehicle. Now, surveys by companies like AutoPacific show that
visibility from the driver's seat ranks even with a vehicle's driving
performance and interior comfort as the most important attributes that buyers
seek."
- Keith Bradsher,
author and New York Times, Hong Kong bureau chief,
on industry research
High and Mighty (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"(Bob) Lutz's
penchant for taking risks often made fellow executives nervous. Auto
companies ban their executives from racing cars and motorcycles for
safety reasons, but Lutz did both.
"He sneaked into a
race in southern France under the pseudonym, 'Big One,' which the
announcer pronounced with an Italian accent, 'Bi-GO-nay,' and Lutz
was soon nicknamed Umberto Bigone.
"But for all his
tough-guy image, Lutz is actually a cosmopolitan man of
sophisticated tastes.
"He is the only
executive in recent years to play such a prominent role at all three
Detroit automakers. He has succeeded in almost every job because he
is an extremely gifted marketer who understands consumers from all
walks of life.
"Overseeing the
development of a new Pontiac car after recently becoming vice
chairman of GM, Lutz initially wanted to name it the
Antibes,
after a favorite resort town on the French Riviera. Marketers at
Pontiac, a brand catering to young, often blue-collar families,
persuaded him that it should be the
Pontiac Solstice
instead."
- Keith Bradsher,
author and New York Times, Hong Kong bureau chief,
on GM Vice Chairman of Product Development Robert A. Lutz
High and Mighty (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"Relying on the
work of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who founded analytic
psychology, (Clotaire) Rapaille divides people's reactions to a
commercial product into three levels of brain activity.
-
There is
the cortex, for intellectual assessments of a product;
-
There is
the limbic, for emotional responses,
-
And there
is the reptilian, which he defines as reactions based on 'survival and
reproduction.'
"Rapaille
focuses his attention on the deepest, most reptilian instincts that people have
about consumer products. He seeks to identify people's archetype of a product,
the deepest emotional identity that the product holds for them based on their
earliest encounter with it.
"His research
has led him to some disturbing conclusions about how to sell sport utility
vehicles, which he sees as the most reptilian vehicles of all because their
imposing, even menacing appearance appeals to people's deep-seated desires for
'survival and reproduction.'"
- Keith Bradsher,
author and New York Times, Hong Kong bureau chief,
on Chrysler marketer Clotaire Rapaille
High and Mighty (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"This
economic concept (network externalities) holds that if enough people
start using a certain product, everybody else will start buying the
same product just for the advantages of being able to work with
people who already have the product. Consumers will do this even if
the product chosen is technologically inferior to the alternatives.
"The best example of
network externalities lies in the computer industry. Once enough
people started using Microsoft DOS, and later Microsoft Windows,
then practically everybody had to use it, even though Apple arguably
had a much better product in its Macintoshes.
"Another good example
of network externalities lies in VHS video recorders. They represent
a less sophisticated technology than the Beta machines with which
they initially competed. But once enough people owned VHS video
recorders, most movie rentals became available in a VHS format and
then everybody had to buy VHS machines.
"SUVs are inferior to
cars in safety, pollution, comfort, and driving performance. Yet
their sales have benefited from network externalities.
"It is becoming
harder and harder to see down the road while sitting in a car,
because of the impossibility of seeing through the tall SUVs,
minivans, and pickups ahead in traffic. At night, the glare from SUV
headlights is blinding for car drivers. Backing a car out of a
parking place between two taller vehicles has become an exercise in
hope that no one is about to come barreling by.
"The sheer size and
menacing appearance of SUVs inevitable make car owners feel less
safe. The result has been a highway arms race."
- Keith Bradsher,
author and New York Times, Hong Kong bureau chief,
on SUVs and network externalities
High and Mighty (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"Peugeots lope.
Ancient Minis jerk and bounce; modern Minis do the same if they're
Coopers. Citroëns
proceed in a state of well-controlled float, while Jaguars pad with
quiet serenity. Porsches steer brilliantly despite carrying the
burden of power aft of the driver, while Lotuses advance with their
own brand of darting suppleness. But, after this, it's hard to think
of makers whose cars move with a particular gait - and a motion
that's been consistent over the decades. These manufacturers - even
BMW with its adopted Mini
- have tried to be true to dynamic philosophies established 40 years
ago or more.
"Of course, there are
always exceptions and it's a fact that, today, not every Peugeot
lopes.
"But over the past 20
years, Peugeot has successfully blended the gently cushioned gait
from the admired saloons of the past - the
403, 404,
and 504
- with dynamics so deftly entertaining that the company came to be
regarded as the king of front-wheel-drive chassis development. The
405 Mi16, 306 GTi-6,
and 106 GTi, for instance, are amongst the most
accomplished and entertaining mass-produced cars of their
generation."
- Richard Bremner,
Executive Editor, Autocar
'Turning the Corner,' Autocar, April 6th, 2004
"... MG generally seems a poor brand
to want to rejuvenate.
"... I still have a recurring bad
dream of waking up in MGB world.
"In the nightmare I'm allocated a
bright red rubber bumper (MG) roadster with chrome-over sills, fake
wooden dash, a private number plate (that spells something like
'TO55ER') and equipped with a sound system that plays Chris
DeBurgh's greatest hits on a constant loop. The nightmare always
ends the same way; unable to take another rendition of 'Lady in
Red,' I die in a molten fireball of burning rubber having crashed
the car into a barbecue at an MG club meeting. I'm just about to be
given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a woman with a beard... and
then I wake up."
- Martin Buckley,
columnist
'Hard Shoulder,' evo, August 2003
"We learned a lot.
Of course we learned that four-wheel-drive is much better in sand
and conditions like this than two-wheel-driven cars.
"Because, with
four-wheel-drive, the car handling was perfect. You could exactly
drive between the dunes. Left and right, allowing only 15
centimeters clearance. And then, when it became the rear-driven car,
we had to allow 2 meters left and right. The center of gravity moved
around all the time on the sand; to correct the car was very
difficult. A good driver could do it, but..."
- Helmuth Bott,
Porsche Chief Engineer, on lessons learned from the 1984
Paris-Dakar Rally
Porsche Legends, Randy Leffingwell (MBI,
2002)
"With Porsche, we
cannot walk above the ground, always looking twenty, thirty years
ahead. Things change so quickly, so completely. We are small, we
must keep our feet on the ground, thinking over things that we
can fulfill. Instead, we look ten years ahead. What's possible
in ten years we fulfill in two years and end up eight years ahead of
the others."
- Helmuth Bott,
Porsche Chief Engineer (and with the
company since 1952), on Porsche strategy
Porsche Legends, Randy Leffingwell (MBI,
2002)
"If you have a lot
of people with the best knowledge in theoretical things, and you
bring all the best components together, it will not be the best car.
A car always is a compromise, and to decide the right compromise,
you should have the feeling in the seat of your pants.
"And you should know
how the compromise should be. You cannot get the best handling if
you can't compromise the comfort. You cannot get the best surface
for the car if you can't, perhaps, compromise the ease of entry into
the car.
"To make that decision
is very important, especially for Porsche. One should see in a
car the handwriting of the man who decides the compromise."
- Helmuth Bott,
Porsche Chief Engineer (and with the
company since 1952), on Porsche strategy
Porsche Legends, Randy Leffingwell (MBI,
2002)
"The (Ferrari 612)
Scaglietti... looks imperious. It's a big car. Huge, in fact. And
it's not one of Pininfarina's retina-searing beauties. Even so, it
has enormous road presence and a quiet grace. It whispers old money
where an F430 screams of a lottery win."
- Jethro Bovingdon,
Road Test Editor, evo
magazine
'612 Scaglietti & 575 Superamerica,' evo,
September 2005
"I'd love to have
been a songwriter. It's creative and expressive and is probably more
straightforward than the car industry - who ever asked Paul
McCartney to justify his work? Something I have to do daily."
- Ian Callum,
Design Director, Jaguar Cars
'20
Questions,'
Autocar,
December 30th, 2003
"...
stance. The way the wheels sit relative to the body, and the body
relative to the ground. If you get that right, you're halfway there,
and doing that is what I pursue above everything else.
"With a passion."
- Ian Callum, Design Director,
Jaguar Cars
'Early Draws,' Autocar, July 27th, 2004
"To
be honest, (the Mazda Ibuki Concept) doesn't really say that much
about Mazda's future design direction. It's all about MX-5 and MX-5
has always had an arms-length relationship with the rest of Mazda.
The MX-5 was the first 'retro' car and blatantly aped the original
Lotus Elan. The thing is that it's been so successful now that it's
completely consumed the Elan's identity if you know what I mean;
there's a lot of MX-5 in the Ibuki, but there's absolutely no Elan.
"We're just
trying to say that we haven't forgotten about MX-5. It's a
reaffirmation of faith in the car, if you like. A completely 21st
century interpretation of a classic motor car.
"A lot of
people are telling me we can't do a hood like (the Mazda Ibuki
Concept's), but I'm telling you we can... the argument is that the
new rules on pedestrian protection (which demand a lot of clearance
between the bonnet and wings and the hard components they cover)
spell the end for low slung sports cars. Well, not at Mazda. We've
already got a clever system in the RX-8 that gets us around the
problem and there's no reason why we can't use the same system here.
"Again,
everyone tells me that LED is still only usable at the rear, but the
suppliers are telling me something different, that they are only
three to four years away. Which would make them possible on a car
like this.
'"(The aircon
unit behind the seats) makes perfect sense if you see a modern
dashboard sub-assembly. It's just a whole network of tubes with an
airbag attached to it. It's just a big piece of plumbing really...
this system's really neat because it allows you to get the cool air
exits as close to the driver as you could possibly want, which makes
perfect sense for an open top car. It's just stupid otherwise when
you think about it. In the Ibuki, we can pump cool air directly to
the necks, backs, and thighs of driver or passenger or both -
they're the bits of your body that most feel the heat or the cold."
- Moray Callum, Head of
Mazda Design (and brother of Jaguar Director of Design Ian Callum), on the Ibuki Concept
'Breathing new life into an old favorite,' Top Gear,
January 2004
"In a sporting car
it's crucial that you senses align with what the car is doing if
you're to enjoy it fully."
- Jost Capito,
Director of Ford TeamRS, and formerly E30
BMW M3 and Porsche 964 RS project leader
'Refocusing,' evo, September 2005
"You have to spend
proper time in a car. You can gain an impression in 30 minutes, but
it might not be the right one. If you're in a car for eight hours,
then you know what it's about.
"I think I have
personally done 10,000 miles of testing, split between test
facilities and public roads. We do a lot of our driving around the
Essex backroads close to Dunton, but we also take cars to a 12-mile
test route that Richard Parry-Jones found in Wales, where we can
drive all the rivals back-to-back."
- Jost Capito,
Director of Ford TeamRS, and formerly E30
BMW M3 and Porsche 964 RS project leader
'Refocusing,' evo, September 2005
"It has its own
identity. We didn't want to build a copy of a (Golf) GTi, we wanted
to build a car that we think is right."
- Jost Capito,
Director of Ford TeamRS, on the 2006 Ford
Focus ST
'Refocusing,' evo, September 2005
"I think it's more
important to get wide wheels in that getting big wheels in. We
started with a 7-inch wide, 18-inch diameter rim, then a 7.5, but I
still didn't think the handling was good enough, so we tried to get
the 8-inch in.
"There's a lot of
benefit from tire width over tire diameter, which is why we didn't
try to go with a 19-inch wheel. You want grip, but you have to
balance the torque steer and steering feel. That's the main task
with a front-drive car.
"Not having a
limited-slip diff has helped contain torque steer, but that puts
more emphasis on having a good ESP system so that you don't lose too
much traction or corner exit speed. You want to get the feeling of
the road but without the distractions or intrusions."
- Jost Capito,
Director of Ford TeamRS, on the 2006 Ford
Focus ST
'Refocusing,' evo, September 2005
"I think, with
this new (Focus) ST, a new RS would be much more accepted than the
(unruly) last model. You don't need any more than the ST, but if you
offer it, people will want it.
"Financially, to spend
money on a very low volume model such as an RS is a very difficult
decision at the moment. When you've achieved the volume in sales,
then you can do a car for enthusiasts, a car that really respects
your motorsport activity.
"Things very much
depend on the success of the ST, but if it goes well, then an RS
would be possible."
- Jost Capito,
Director of Ford TeamRS, on the 2006 Ford
Focus ST
'Refocusing,' evo, September 2005
"Meet this immensely charismatic and
persuasive American, and it's easy to assume he single-handedly
cajoled or bullied BMW's board into seeing things his way.
"Quietly, but inexorably, Bangle -
like a Bond villain - was formulating his plan for utter domination.
He began giving us more cues. He said that a BMW need no longer be
'a stack of wedges.' He said he wanted more differentiation between
the different ranges. For a time, he always swung interviews around
to the need to simplify highly specified interiors: that was his way
of softening us up for iDrive."
-
CAR on Chris Bangle (somewhat
tongue-in-cheek), June 2003
"Isolate the three
main constituents of cool and you get these: authenticity;
innovation; and unique style."
-
CAR, May 2004
(explaining its selection of the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing as the
'Coolest Car of all time')
"I was raised with
this view of the world that gasoline was rare and to be conserved,
and that small cars were great.
"We could not sell
big cars, so we turned it into a truck.
"The culprits are not
frankly the trucks themselves - they are the American customers who
don't want to drive small cars with four-cylinder engines.
"All the media were
banging on the Big Three, saying that you don't produce what the
country wants. We never had a Machiavellian plan, but we offered
something people wanted to buy."
-
François Castaing, Lead Chrysler Engineer (and formerly of
Renault F1),
speaking about the SUV trend
High and Mighty, Keith Bradsher (PublicAffairsTM,
2002)
"Farmers' vehicles
don't need to be facelifted. After all, when did you last think,
hmm, that combine harvester could do with a touch more emphasis
around the grille?"
- Henry Catchpole,
evo staff writer, on the nuances of
Subaru design
evo,
September 2005
"Because the Russian
car market only opened up a relatively short time ago, there is a
distinct lack of car culture, product awareness and badge snobbery
here."
-
Alexey Chernyshev, head of Russian Importer Sportmobil
'Rocket to Russia,'
CAR, May 2004
"An American, a
German, and a Swede walk into an auto design studio..."
-
Chevrolet Print Advertising for the Vectra/ 9-3-based '04 Malibu
Maxx.
"Fine or unusual foreign or domestic motor cars built between,
and including the years 1925 and 1948, and distinguished for their respective
fine design, high engineering standards, and superior workmanship."
- The Classic
Car Club of America's definition of a Classic Car
Classic Cars, Rob L. Wagner (Barnes & Noble, 2004)
"I actually had second thoughts about introducing this new RX right
now. Part of me was tempted to put the new
RX330 in my back pocket
and keep selling the current model until people got tired of it. But
I couldn't do that."
- Denny Clements, Lexus
Group vice president and general manager
'Prescription for success,' Ward's Auto World,
January 2003
"Modern cars are so
close to par with respect to performance, drivability, reliability,
durability, creature comforts and safety that most people can't
perceive the differences. It doesn't matter what shape a car comes
in - whether conservative run of the mill, forward-looking
avantgarde, or nostalgic throwback - unless aerodynamic factors are
important.
"After narrowing the
field on practical and economic grounds, design might stand out as
the only viable way to distinguish among them. Indeed, today's
shopper feels reasonably content buying a car on its visual merits
alone.
"So the industry has
arrived at an ironic junction: a car's design matters hardly at all
in any practical sense, but is crucial to marketing success."
- Del Coates,
columnist and professor of industrial design at San Jose State
University
'Design Matters' Sports Car International,
July 2004
"... design is so
cheap that it delivers the biggest bang for the buck.
"As BMW's Bangle
pointed out, the money spent on designing a car, whether a Mini or a
7 series, represents only a fraction of one percent of its price.
Considerably more is spent on ads.
"What matters most to
the bottom line is a design unusual enough to bring emotional juices
to a boil and, simultaneously, seems appropriate. The first baits
the hook; the second sets it."
- Del Coates,
columnist and professor of industrial design at San Jose State
University
'Design Matters' Sports Car International,
July 2004
"The most laudable
task for a designer - but the rarest and the riskiest - leads to
what the industry calls epochal innovation: an unusual design that
makes sense by enabling such profound practical improvement (such as
packaging utility or aerodynamics) that it initiates a design trend
by compelling competitors to follow suit."
- Del Coates,
columnist and professor of industrial design at San Jose State
University
'Design Matters' Sports Car International,
July 2004
"I
think he has made permanent changes... I don't know how GM could go
back to the old way it was doing things.
"“I'd give him
an ‘A'... he has been extremely influential in redefining the business process
at GM.”
- David Cole, director of
the Center for Automotive Research, Ann Arbor, MI.
Cole credits Lutz with toppling GM's slow-moving
bureaucracies, setting its talented product people free and spreading enthusiasm
among the ranks.
'Three Years and Counting,' Ward's Auto World,
August 1st,
2004
"Let me draw you a picture.
"One afternoon, Gloria Steinem goes out and buys a
Toyota Camry.
That night, she dreams that not a single female hand touched that
car as it was being built."
- David Cole, head of the
Automotive Research Institute, Ann Arbor, MI,
theorizing in the late '80s on whether the Big Three
could stop losing market share to the Japanese
Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland,
David Gelsanliter
(Harper & Collins, 1990)
"The name 'Standard' (of the company which acquired Triumph to
become Standard-Triumph in October 1944) had been chosen by the
company's founder, R.W. Maudslay, to indicate that his products had
interchangeable parts, a rare quality in the early days of car
manufacturing."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America,
(MBI,
2001)
"British firms had learned immediately after World War II that
they had to 'export or die.' The British government restricted supplies of
things like sheet steel, unless most of the finished products were going on
board ships to earn dollars.
"With the
British Isles still devastated from the war, the potential sales volume for any
new sports car was very small at home anyway, but vast in the lucrative U.S.
market.
"The
Mayflower
(approximately the size of a Volkswagen
Beetle) was supposed to open
up North America for Standard-Triumph, but this was merely (Standard-Triumph
head) Sir John Black's opinion, unsupported by market research.
"Fergus Motors
imported them into the United States but they did not catch on, for several
reasons. One was timing. The American driver wasn't ready for economy cars in
1949 any more than in 1954, especially when the
Mayflower
cost nearly equaled a much-larger
Plymouth or Ford.
"For North
America... its major contributions to Triumph history were the suspension and
rear axle it bequeathed to the TR2.
"MG had the
edge in history and a humpy little two-door from Wolfsburg was setting new sales
records, but Triumph was the fastest-growing make in the sports car field.
TRs
weren't pretty but they were solid, reliable, roomy for a two-seater, and had
the gutsy 0-60 acceleration that Americans loved. They qualified very well as
'cute little sports cars' and that's what the country was buying.
"As 1959 came
to an end, sales figures shows that the TR3
had passed MG for the lead in
U.S. sports car sales for the first six months of 1959. The competition between
the two for top honors in this sales battle was always fierce. Triumph had no
trouble outdoing MG in overall marque sales - the MG sedans usually did not sell
as well as the Triumphs, but the MG people made certain that sports car volume
was reported separately and they nearly always won that battle.
"This rivalry
was deeply rooted and continued even after the two marques were both being sold
under the British Leyland banner."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"As a
TR2
owner back in Cincinnati, I had partaken of the sheer joy generated
by sports car ownership in those days. At driving events, on
rallies, or crowding some bar on wintry evenings, sports car club
people got more fun out of life than anyone else.
"Whether any
company is a nice place to work or a dismal environment is determined by the
attitude of top management.
"It was
delightful to find that the sports car camaraderie existed in full measure at
Standard-Triumph in New York. Indeed, the entire imported car industry was like
that - people selling products they liked, driving the cars on weekends,
attending car events, racing, and enjoying life on four wheels."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"The American
car manufacturers had managed, over the years, to create full product lines
under every nameplate. You could get a Chevrolet badge on anything from a pickup
truck to a snazzy convertible.
"Not the
imports. Most of the early imported cars, especially the British, made their
mark through a fad for a single model. MG became a household word via servicemen
returning home with TC
sports cars purchased in Europe.
"With Triumph,
it was 'TR.'
The name became so pervasive that
one major corporation, TRW, Inc., ran a national ad campaign announcing, 'We Are
Not A Small British Sports Car!' "
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"TR2s
and TR3s
had 'fly-off' handbrakes that
operated backward. To set the brake, you pulled up on the lever and pressed in a
button on the top. To release, you pulled hard enough for the button to pop up
and then released the lever. Anyone trying to release the brake by pushing down
on the button wasn't going to drive away any time soon.
"Importers
trying to break into the American market had problems educating their customers,
but overseas management also had an attitude. The fly-off brake was confusing to
most Americans, but management didn't change it until the 1960s. Other anomalies
like the manual choke, side curtains, and button-on tops would also have to be
dealt with sooner or later."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"By the end of
the 1950s, the American consumer knew there were things like sports cars and
economy sedans, but not much more than that. The designation 'imports' was not
yet common. They were all 'foreign cars.'
"For many
consumers, any sedan smaller than a Ford was an Austin or Volkswagen and any
two-seater was an MG. The various importers had to battle for recognition. In
doing so, they used some familiar methods and some not so familiar.
"Normal print
advertising in newspapers and magazines was a major segment. Importers
frequently relied on radio, using television when they could afford it. Auto
shows were swamped with requests for exhibit space from 15 or 20 importers at a
time, and it was sometimes difficult to get space because so much of any show's
floor area was allocated to the domestic manufacturers. The imports were tucked
into corners, lower floors, and hallways, but they often attracted more of the
crowd than Detroit's cars.
"One show that
did not slight imports was the New York International Automobile Show.
"In those
days, when import buyers were out of the mainstream and ad dollars were short,
it was vitally important to target potential customers accurately. The
advertising sales staffs of magazines like Time fully realized this, and
named import market specialists who worked very closely with the advertising
managers to develop rifle-approach campaigns aimed directly at real-prospective
buyers.
"As time went
on, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Fortune, and other
news and business magazines joined the import media roster.
"Nobody was
yet using the word 'lifestyle,' but our target consumer's preference was for
possessions that would contribute to enjoying life, and a sports car was the
central acquisition in the list."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"Going back
through the files, I found internal memos complaining of lack of agency
attention, lack of creativity on certain cars, and excessive costs.
"Hindsight
says that we were probably getting our money's worth. The agency's performance
reflected its client's attitude. Its poorest work was on cars in which we, the
company people, had the least confidence. The
TR3, TR4,
and Spitfire
always had good, hard-hitting ads. The
Triumph 2000 and the Herald
campaigns were well-executed but missing some of the enthusiasm that made the
TR
ads shine.
"All of us
knew that the TRs
made the most money and were market
leaders, while the economy cars and the mid-priced sedan lacked the
TR's
established reputation and had tough competition."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"During 1959,
Alick Dick, Standard-Triumph's managing director, engineered the sale of the
Ferguson Tractor manufacturing business to Massey-Ferguson. In New York, any of
us who actually were aware of the transaction found it interesting but not
significant.
"It was known
that cash would be needed to develop and market new models like the Herald, so
the elimination of the Ferguson business looked like a good source of funds.
Cars, not tractors, were the company's future.
"It was
unthinkable that the loss of the tractor income might be the start of problems
for the company from which it would never recover. Yet, so swift was the decline
that, only a year later, Standard-Triumph would willingly give up its
independence in an acquisition by the Leyland Group.
"In 1959,
leaning heavily on the TR3,
Triumph sales had been right on
23,000, a figure they would not match for another 15 years. In 1960, for the
first time since the TR2
arrived, sales turned down, dropping to around 18,000
"The
Herald's
(the car on which Alick Dick had bet the company's future) performance was
especially disappointing. Although it had features, room, and looks, it didn't
catch the consumer's fancy the way the VW
Beetle had. Part of the
problem was the American compacts - Corvair,
Falcon, and
Valiant -
which had more room and power for a price very close to the Herald's. Another
part was a drop in enthusiasm for sports cars and imports in general."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"(The early
'60s were) an era of one-car ownership, with only 18.1% of American households
owning more than one car. There were 'domestic buyers' and 'import buyers,' but
few who crossed over."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"According to
a Triumph buyer survey, 58% of new Triumph buyers traded in an import. Product
loyalty was strong - 40% of TR4
buyers traded in a
TR2
or
TR3."
- Michael Cook,
author and former Standard-Triumph USA Advertising and Public
Relations Manager, on owner
loyalty in the early '60s
Triumph Cars in America
(MBI, 2001)
"A concept vehicle
should have some dream-like qualities but it shouldn't be so far
away from reality that it is just a dream. It should project a
future that's reachable."
- Simon Cox, Director, GM Advanced Design
Concept Car Design: Driving the Dream, Jonathan Bell (RotoVision, 2003)
"(The Lotus
Elan) was Lotus'
attempt to switch to mass production. Peter (Stevens, the
Elan's
designer) wasn't interested in interiors, so the job fell to me. It
was obviously a steep learning curve for me, and at the time it
seemed Lotus' engineers didn't know what they wanted, either.
"In hindsight, I don't think mass production was the right step for
Lotus then: low volume would have given us more freedom to be
radical but the intentions were clear. The
Elan's
styling wasn't brilliant but, considering it was done in 1986, I
don't think it looks 20 years old, either."
- Simon Cox, Director, GM
Advanced Design (and largely responsible for Art & Science)
'Early Draws,' Autocar,
July 27th, 2004
"If you look back (to the '80s), there was a
common theme among those (30,000 unit vehicles) that became, financially, a
burden, and that was unique platforms driving low volumes. And that doesn't
work. The secret to success is to have flexible architectures that are
integrated into flexible manufacturing systems and then drive lots of variants
where you have absolutely no clue that the underlying platform is shared by
anything else."
- Gary Cowger, President, GM North America
'At GM, the secret to success is flexibility,'
Automotive News,
May 5th, 2003
"I can't think
of another industry that enjoys the affection of so many people for
the business and its products.
"Aviation may have a lot of followers. But nothing comes close to
the automobile industry for the widespread passion of the people."
- Keith Crain, Publisher and
Editor-in-Chief, Automotive News, July 12th,
2004
"The name has positives and negatives... we think the positives
dominate."
- Trevor Creed,
Chrysler Group design vice president,
on the upcoming 300C-based Charger
revival
Car and Driver,
October 2004
"News that
mighty Toyota has signed a new research agreement with tiny,
Wiltshire-based Moulton Developments (proprietor Dr. Alex Moulton,
84 years old, life-long suspension innovator and friend of the
legendary Alec Issigonis) again highlights the unquenchable
influence on today's cars of a bold group of young Britons who
dared, half a century ago, to conceive a tiny, transverse-engined
saloon: the Mini.
"Now it seems Alex
Moulton's 40-year-old advocacy of inter-connected, fluid-based
suspension systems - another Mini tour de force - could also bear
new fruit. Neither Moulton nor Toyota will specify the direction of
their forthcoming research, but it is well known that Moulton has
continued to develop his suspensions at full speed, and that his
prototypes astonished BMW's engineers with their smooth
sophistication during the Germans' tenure at Rover.
"Contemporary car
design, it seems, keeps moving Moulton's way. Small cars, with small
wheels and wheelbases, naturally pitch more than bigger cars. Put a
wheel at each corner, as you must to accommodate today's ever-larger
adults, and you make it worse. Interconnected suspensions can negate
the problem, says Moulton, and his prototypes prove it.
"Thus is may be that
the baby Toyotas of tomorrow will be made comfortable (and popular
and viable) by a series of far-sighted innovations espoused and
refined over half a century by one of Britain's greatest engineers,
working more or less on his own. It would be the fitting result of a
wonderful life's work."
-
Steve Cropley, Editor-in-Chief, on Toyota's new research
agreement with Dr. Alex Moulton
Autocar,
August 10th,
2004
"Moulton's
reputation as one of the world's greatest suspension designers was
secured many decades ago: he put millions of BL Hydragas and
Hydrolastic cars on the road from the '60s to the later '90s.
"What's amazing now
is that at 84, Moulton seems busier than ever. His inner strength
and unquenchable appetite for making progress shine like beacons.
The small-wheeled bicycle factory is at full capacity, yet he's also
found time to produce several more Mini
prototypes with interconnected suspensions.
"I've recently driven
the latest, a 2000 model, and it seems as flat-riding and refined as
a very good family car, yet its characteristic Mini agility is undimmed."
-
Steve Cropley, Editor-in-Chief, on Toyota's new research
agreement with Dr. Alex Moulton
Autocar,
August 10th,
2004
"In
today's market in which it is increasingly difficult to achieve and
sustain a significant advantage in performance, styling, or
technology, manufacturers should be more cautious about introducing
control systems with obstructions to easy operation.
"Controls should only be introduced
if they are clearly superior, because when it comes to automotive
controls, change without improvement is a step backward.
"In this market, no brand can afford
that."
-
Csaba Csere, Editor-in-Chief
'The Steering Column,'
Car and Driver, September 2004
"Toyota eventually
will get the design aspects of its cars completely right. There are
many exquisite objects in Japan, carefully thought-out and superbly
executed designs of all sorts; it is inevitable that Japanese
designers will grasp the way to express their national character in
automotive terms.
"Today, there are such a number of foreign influences - cars made in
countries that have made them much longer, designers brought in from
other cultures - that even the best Japanese cars are too
'international' and not Japanese enough. That will change, and this
car
(2006 Lexus GS) is a harbinger of that change."
-
Robert Cumberford, columnist
'Not There Yet, but Getting Closer,'
Automobile,
May 2004
"We
loved Chrysler Corporation during those few short years between Lee
Iacocca and Daimler-Benz. We loved Bob Lutz and Tom Gale and
François Castaing and Tom Denomme because we'd see them in one of
those amazing Chrysler press conferences on Thursday, and on
Saturday we'd run into them at some automotive event.
"The were
real car guys. They drove them, and when something went wrong they knew
where to look to find the source of the problem. They never quite solved
Chrysler's quality problems, but in marketing savvy, car design, perceived
value, and pure automotive showmanship, they showed the automotive universe how
to do it, for a little while. They suddenly created excitement when the domestic
car industry seemed to be drifting off into a coma.
"There'll be
other great teams, and no doubt many of the things we have long admired about
the Mercedes-Benz approach to the business will show up at Chrysler, but
Chrysler was the American contender, Detroit's own Rocky Balboa. They'll be
missed."
- David E. Davis, Jr.,
Editor Emeritus
Automobile,
February 1999
"The BMW M Coupé
is basically a Z3 roadster with a roof... when necessary considerations like
headroom and luggage space were factored in.
"BMW calls it
eigenwillig, with means determinedly going its own way. Only the
German language would have a word for that.
"L.J.K. Setright
once wrote that he didn't care what his cars looked like, since he was generally
inside where he couldn't see them. If you have a problem with the M Coupé's
appearance, think about that."
- David E. Davis, Jr.,
Editor Emeritus
Automobile,
February 1999
"Volkswagen's New Beetle is our 1999 Automobile of the Year.
By a landslide. Nothing else came close, even though the list of nominees was
impressive. The truth is that we probably made up our minds the first time we
saw a prototype.
"Nothing else
has so captured the imagination of the car-buying public, and nothing else has
so effectively pointed out the current bankruptcy of ideas in new car design.
"In our June
1998 issue, we published sixteen profile views of contemporary sedans,
challenging our readers to identify the individual makes and models. It was
virtually impossible to do so. I can promise you that if the New Beetle had been
included in that presentation, it would have stood out like a lighthouse.
"The New Beetle
is a landmark car. It will encourage other manufacturers to look for unusual
answers to new-model dilemmas. It will raise the expectations of people in the
marketplace, because it is a vividly tangy alternative to plain vanilla."
- David E. Davis, Jr.,
Editor Emeritus
Automobile,
February 1999
"Brought in (to GM) by ex-P&G chairman John Smale... Zarella thought
that cars could be sold like soap, toasters, brooms, and other
household products. A car was just another commodity, and if car
designers would just listen to customers, the manufacturing might of
GM could make a car for every purpose and every lifestyle.
"The voice of the car guy was gone, and committees designed cars
according to what consumer polls and focus groups indicated
customers wanted. The ultimate manifestation of this philosophy was
the Pontiac Aztek.
It was a General Motors camel, a horse created by a committee. Not
just any committee, mind you: a committee without any sense of
automotive style, history, or intelligence."
- Eric Davison,
author
Snake Bit (Motorbooks,
2004)
"One
of the most interesting cars I worked on was the last Lamborghini Diablo GT.
It was a transitional time for the company. It didn't want people to
know there was an Audi designer in charge, and I had to link the
marque's past to the future as I saw it, without arousing too much
suspicion.
"I
wasn't even allowed near the show stand."
- Luc Donckerwolke,
chief
designer, Lamborghini
'Early Draws,' Autocar,
July 27th, 2004
"I have managed to write a
complete column about BMW without mentioning the styling of the new
5 series in particular or Chris 'There's Methodism in my madness'
Bangle and his celebrated Flamethrower School of Design in general."
- Peter Dron
'Leftfield,' evo,
August 2003
“Contrary to what you might believe, it is universally recognized in
the automobile industry that nothing is more difficult to design
than a small car.
“For a
long time, Honda has been developing its young engineers in the Formula 1 arena
and then assigning them to the far more complex and difficult task of designing
the next Civic.”
-
Denis Duquet, Marc LaChapelle, and Jacques Duval
The 1994 New Car Report (Contemporary
Books Inc., 1993)
"Without a doubt
it is in the motorcycle business that the Japanese met their first
Waterloo. They tried absolutely everything and invested fabulous
sums attempting to capture and reproduce the spirit and essence of a
Harley-Davidson. But a few years ago, the Japanese must have
realized that they would never be able to equal Harley-Davidson on
its own turf. The American firm, however, is booming and has never
done so well.
"The same thing could
be likened to Jeep, which always seems to have the magic touch of
creating 4x4s that are unequalled... small dimensions, agility,
simplicity."
-
Denis Duquet, Marc LaChapelle, and Jacques Duval
The 1994 New Car Report (Contemporary
Books Inc., 1993)
"Never forget, a
warning is a warning. Even if you are as rich as Rockefeller, or
you've just won the biggest lottery in America, please don't commit
the error of thinking that buying the most expensive car in the
world will guarantee you the best built car on the planet."
-
Denis Duquet, Marc LaChapelle, and Jacques Duval
(remarking on the Lamborghini Diablo)
The 1994 New Car Report (Contemporary
Books Inc., 1993)
"The great success of
the Lexus sedan in the United States flabbergasted the world
automotive industry. According to some, Lexus redefined the luxury
segment of the market.
"But this is not
entirely so. Lexus perhaps transformed the approach and the
marketing, but its cars are not really very revolutionary."
-
Denis Duquet, Marc LaChapelle, and Jacques Duval
The 1994 New Car Report (Contemporary
Books Inc., 1993)
"When a Toyota
engineer begins to sell you on the merits of a
Corolla,
he doesn't talk about performance or handling. He stresses
reliability, assembly, quality, and a very quiet ride.
"He will enumerate
for you the numerous mechanical improvements, but he won't point out
that perfection can be boring to drive."
-
Denis Duquet, Marc LaChapelle, and Jacques Duval
The 1994 New Car Report (Contemporary
Books Inc., 1993)
"My primary purpose for 28 years has been to
lengthen and lower the American automobile."
- Harley J. Earl,
former GM Styling Head
"This is a
business of smoke and mirrors. Above all, never forget that. Why do you need a
Lincoln when a Hyundai will get you to your office? This is a business that
appeals to us for emotion."
- Paul Eisenstein, Editor, The Car
Connection
'CAR:
A Drama of The American Workplace, Mary Walton (W. W. Norton & Company,
1997)
"Arbitrary, but
nonetheless compelling."
- evo magazine,
September 2005, on the 0-60mph
sprint
"The Griffin's
tried and tested recipe: mating a gutsy engine to a stable but
essentially straight-laced chassis."
- evo magazine,
September 2005, on
Vauxhall
"The (2004) XJ is where the company is headed
as a brand. Jaguar will never be the largest luxury brand, but we are among the
purest of the brands."
- Mark Fields, CEO, Ford Motor Co.'s
Premier Automotive Group (Jaguar/ Aston Martin/ Land Rover/ Volvo)
'Jaguar pays $40 million to promote new XJ,'
Automotive News,
April 28th, 2003
"We could have sold the entire run (of Ford GTs) - around 4500 over
three years - three times over in the States alone... but we wanted
to reward European interest."
- Ford spokesman (anonymous)
'Ford GT - will you make the shortlist,'
CAR, February 2004
"(on the
Bentley Continental GT)... the graphics and the
detailing are very well done, though I don't think the proportions are quite
right. I think the bonnet is too short and the front wheels are in the wrong
place. The cabin is way too big. In my opinion, these are not the proportions of
a Bentley - but maybe the Bentley people are convinced it is. It is probably
more to do with the VW/ Audi platform that was most likely required by
engineering."
- Henrik Fisker, Design Director, Aston
Martin
'Design Defined,' How to: Design Cars Like a
Pro, Tony Lewin
"They wanted to control
the handling! What the handling had to be like going down the road!
"You have the rules as
they were in people's minds. These were, for certain, rules
for the American car. But the 911 was absolutely not an American
car.
"There was talk of
tests, of procedures. There was quite a bit of
nervousness here. Whatever rule they wrote, we could not
guess what the handling was to be. They would define it, but
they surely would not forbid American cars! They can make all the
rules as they want, but somehow, American cars would meet their
rules.
"By then we clearly
knew rear-engine, air-cooled cars already did not meet their
rules... a rear-engine car just has different handling. We knew if
these ne rules came to life, we would have no car we could sell in
the United States!"
- Helmut Flegl,
Porsche 907 Project Engineer, discussing
the late-70s regulations that would lead to the Porsche 924/ 944/
928
Porsche Legends, Randy Leffingwell (MBI, 2002)
"The
Z07 Concept
fathered the (BMW) Z8,
so that would have been my first production car.
"Both it and the (Aston Martin)
AMV8 had a side
vent - in fact, there's been one on every car I've designed. I think
the Aston's works better, though: it grows out of the side of the
car. It's very dramatic."
- Henrik Fisker, Executive
Director of Global Advanced Design, Ford
'Early Draws,' Autocar,
July 27th, 2004
"... motoring journalism must not be, or seen
to be, a part of the motor industry. I was always under the impression that
one's journalistic responsibilities must be with the readers, yet the real
threat, which is far greater than anything conjured by industry PR people, is
the influence of media advertisement directors who, because they can associate
themselves with money coming in the door, can wield excessive indirect power
over journalistic objectivity and criticism. Editors have always to be on their
guard."
- Ian Fraser, columnist and former Editor
of CAR Magazine
'Broadside,'
evo, July 2003
"(It
is) hardly fair to pick on this poor little country which has such a
task to feed hundreds of thousands of inhabitants."
- The French Government,
responding to Renault in the '50s over a complaint that Japanese
company Hino had not been paying royalties on 4CVs built under
license
Lexus: The challenge to create the
finest automobile, Brian Long (Veloce,
2000)
"By
focusing on what was happening in the automobile industry, the GERPISA Group's
work was able to demonstrate the great diversity, and divergence, of the
trajectories that firms have been following in recent times.
"At the time of writing, there is no 'one best way' - there never
has been, and there probably never will be.
"In fact, the first GERPISA research project made it possible to
identify and characterize not one, but three industrial models, all
of which have been in operation since the 1970s:
- Michael Freyssenet and
Yannick Lung,
scientific co-ordinators of the GERPISA
program entitled, The Automobile Industry between Globalization &
Regionalization
Globalization or
Regionalization of the American and Asian Car Industry, Freyssenet, Shimizu
& Volpato (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
"Each
(of Honda's Marysville and Jeep's Toledo plant) builds roughly the
same number of vehicles, but Jeep has twice as many workers... both
use enormous stamping machines to bend thin sheets of steel into
side panels, hoods, and trunk lids.
"But while at Honda the machines can change dies in minutes, that
changeover at Jeep takes several hours...
"Honda spends 4% of its sales dollars on research and development;
American Motors, only 1% ."
- Forbes, January 1986,
comparing Honda and American Motors' (now Chrysler's) Ohio plants
Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland,
David Gelsanliter (Harper & Collins, 1990)
"(GM Vice Chairman Bob
Lutz is) a real game changer. I'm worried about all the good people
Lutz is attracting to GM. The real impact of Lutz isn't felt today,
it will be felt years from now."
- Ford executive (anonymous)
Six Men Who Built the Modern Auto Industry,
Richard A. Johnson, (Motorbooks, 2005)
"(It) would be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to
be hired, (and) offer the simplest designs that modern engineering
can devise.
"But it will
be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one,
and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in God's great open
spaces."
- Henry Ford,
founder, Ford Motor Company,
outlining the Model T. The car debuted in Oct 1908, priced at $825
Taurus: The Making of
the Car that Saved Ford, Eric Taub (Dutton, 1991)
"They
had been fed the rhetoric that Japan was ahead because of low wages
and unfair labor practices. We wanted them to see for themselves. We
wanted them to understand that the Japanese supervisor is an older
brother, a part of the team, a truly hands-on kind of person.
"Not at all like the American supervisor, who doesn't know half what
the worker knows about his machine, who just stands off to one side
and says, 'do it.' "
- Kiyoshi "Nate" Furata, Toyota's lead
trainer at NUMMI (and later in Kentucky)
Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland,
David Gelsanliter
(Harper & Collins, 1990)
"I admired (GM design) because the designers had absolute power... they
always had absolute influence over package and architecture. At Chrysler, we had
always been, as an office, reactive. Someone would come to us and give us an
assignment and tell us what to do. We never really had a chance to say, 'Well
have you considered this?' They'd say, 'No, we're out of time and we're out of
money and we have to do this.' Basically, design was reactive instead of
proactive. We were never in a position to go for it. If we didn't change
radically, we would never get out in front."
- Tom Gale, Chrysler Product Design Head
Modern Chrysler Concept Cars, Matt DeLorenzo
"You have to deliver on a few things so that
people can't dismiss the car out of hand... I've always said, we may not do many
concept cars, but the ones I do, I'm going to make them so I can drive them.
That's why we make them out of metal."
- Tom Gale, Chrysler Product Design Head
Modern Chrysler Concept Cars, Matt DeLorenzo
"We respond to
the enthusiast press. You don't see us do a lot of black concept cars that they
can't photograph. Instead you'll see red and yellows. We do things that we hope
will get magazine covers. With the Viper,
we got more third-party endorsements and credible reporting that did more for
our image than all the advertising we could ever do. It's worth its weight in
gold. If we went out and had to buy all the exposure the
Viper
got, we couldn't do it - at least not for the relative pittance that the concept
car cost us."
- Tom Gale, Chrysler Product Design Head
Modern Chrysler Concept Cars, Matt DeLorenzo
"You go through a lot of money fast in racing.
I could do 10 years' worth of concept cars for one year of racing money."
- Tom Gale, Chrysler Product Design Head
Modern Chrysler Concept Cars, Matt DeLorenzo
"The quickest
way for American automakers to convince consumers that they were
coming down from the clouds and offering efficient, functional
machines was to append this functionalist look to the surface of
their cars ... the square, stern lines of the cars of the late 1970s
to early 1980s assured Americans that they could consume themselves
out of the indulgent excesses without altering the structure of
Fordist production that gave rise to the notion of salvation through
consumption to begin with.
"Beginning in the
mid-1980s, the American automobile industry experienced a comeback
based on the bifurcated marketplace. Relenting to their foreign
competitors, the Big Three largely gave up on the domestic
production of small economy cars... (and) began to focus their
efforts on the growing and more profitable market of upscale autos
for the class of overconsumers.
"But in order to do
so, they had to change aesthetic directions from the severe,
downsized functionalism of the 1970s and early 1980s.
"American automakers
found two solutions to this dilemma - one pirated from Europe, and
the other more authentically homegrown. The borrowed solution was
actually a refurbished automotive ideology from the 1930s -
streamlining - that entered America through its European incarnation
of aerodynamics.
"In the mid- to late
1980s there was, however, another trend in automotive design that
appealed to the upscale demands for functionality and distinction,
one more authentically American than the European import of
aerodynamics. It emerged in the exploding market for what the
industry called sports/ utility vehicles, which included pickup
trucks, vans, jeeps, and other automotive hybrids.
"There was nothing
particularly new about these types of autos - all had been around
for decades... what was new to the 1980s was the entrance of these
vehicles into the mainstream automobile market."
- David Gartman, author and
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of South Alabama
Auto Opium: A Social History of American
Automobile Design
(Routledge, 1994)
"In order to compete in an automobile market in which demand for
basic transportation was becoming saturated, Sloan decided in the
mid-1920s to offer customers ‘style,’ cars with superficially
distinctive and diversified ornamentation. The style changed
annually to aesthetically depreciate models with years of functional
service remaining, and to whet consumer appetites for the new."
- David Gartman, author and
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of South Alabama
Auto Opium: A Social History of American
Automobile Design
(Routledge, 1994)
"The
American approach to auto making has been to narrowly define the job
and then fill it with a low-skilled worker. U.S. plants have carried
large parts inventories so that disruptions caused by worker error
or defective supplies could quickly be remedied. Auto workers were
and are hired or (more commonly) laid off in response to
fluctuations in market demand.
"The Japanese approach seems to be just the opposite. Jobs are
rotated and the emphasis is on training and long-term employment.
The worker on the assembly line has real authority. Frequent
meetings, the absence of worker reserves, and an emphasis on
teamwork generate peer pressure which, while stressful, reinforces a
sense of common purpose. Just-in-time delivery and smaller buffer
stocks save money and force suppliers to get it right the first
time. Emphasis is on market-share gains rather than quarterly
profits improvement. When times are bad, layoffs are a last, not
first, resort."
- David Gelsanliter, author
Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland
(Harper & Collins, 1990)
"Honda
nurtures its image as a rebel willing to set trends in a society
more comfortable with following them. Because it has few friends at
home and less money to spend than its rivals, it has had to run
faster and learn to do almost everything well.
"Not until 1963... did it build its first car, and then over the
opposition of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI). MITI wanted to restrict automobile production to
companies already in the field, primarily Toyota and Nissan. Had
MITI had its way, Honda would not be making cars today.
"Nimble and gutsy, this youngest of the Japanese car companies
gambled that it could do better in the United States (and Canada)
than back home in Japan. There, land prices had skyrocketed, the
government was still unfriendly, and Toyota and Nissan had a
monopoly on the best sales outlets.
"Soichiro
Honda has said that the ideal place for Honda to have its world
headquarters would be on a satellite circling the globe.
"In its collective subconscious, Japan still seems to see itself as
a poor is | 
