California designin'
Amid sun and surf, auto artisans are given the task of dreaming up vehicles that could save Detroit.
February 11, 2007
BY TAMARA AUDI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES -- It is another blindingly sunny afternoon in Malibu, and the ramshackle collection of pricey beach shops known incongruously as Country Corners brims with the rich and gorgeous. One of Britney Spears' mansions lies up a dirt lane. The bar where Mel Gibson drank himself into an anti-Semitic stupor is down the road.
At a corner table outside a café sits the classic California girl: a tall, slim, flawless blonde in white capris, a gauzy shirt and delicate gold necklaces, eyeing the Sunday crowd from behind oversize Gucci sunglasses. But nothing is what it seems in this land of manufactured illusions, even in the daylight.
The flawless blonde is a designer for General Motors. And she is doing research.
"Look there. See?" she says in an urgent whisper, nodding slightly toward a young woman striding by in slouchy boots and a tangle of layered blouses. "That look is on its way out."
At 34, Vicki Vlachakis already is an acclaimed designer; her stamp is on two of GM's recent triumphs: the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice. The sleek, eye-catching sport convertibles managed to reinvigorate two GM brands as Detroit strains to avoid catastrophe.
Vlachakis (pronounced, vla-ha-kis ) is at the front of a small but increasingly influential pack of smart, young designers Detroit counts on to make it relevant to an under-40 crowd that not only doesn't much care for American vehicles but, just as troubling, has almost no loyalty to the home team.
Vlachakis, who is equally at home in the Warren Tech Center and in a strappy dress for glossy magazine photo shoots, was named by House & Garden magazine as one of America's top 50 tastemakers of 2006.
She was photographed, her tresses lilting in the breeze, in the desert behind the wheel of the Sky. "In an industry where horsepower can overpower design flair, " the magazine gushed, "Vlachakis has made a name for herself by injecting interior oomph into cars."
Part car geek, part Malibu glam girl, Vlachakis insists, "design is going to be the big thing to pull us out of this mess."
It's a mission launched by GM products chief Bob Lutz, who has restored power to designers. "They're back to basically running the asylum," Lutz said in an interview last week.
"Design is the last great differentiator in products," Lutz said. "All cars work well. They all have about the same fuel economy. They're all safe. They're all comfortable. They all have heat and air-conditioning. ... What you're left with is, 'Do I love it? Do my friends admire it? Do I feel good about myself when I drive it? When I'm sitting in it?' "
GM takes cues from the fashion industry to create more luxurious interiors. A new commercial for its Acadia SUV shows fabrics, feathers and diamond necklaces floating into the air, finally gathering to form the vehicle. Industry observers call GM's new devotion to design the "Lutz effect."
Emotion over engineering
Rebecca Lindland, a director with Global Insight, an industry analyst firm, said of Lutz. "He is our Ralph Lauren, our Givenchy. "It's his return to the idea that you can't let the accountants run the place,"He understands that buying a vehicle is a very emotional purchase. It's really coming back to the idea that consumers want beautiful vehicles."
Design is king, and it's not only designers who will tell you so. Consumers are demanding beauty from even the most mundane products: from Target's cheap, chic cone-shaped vacuum cleaners to Toyota's belated redesign of the reliable, reliably bland, Camry.
"It used to be the accountants, then the engineers," Imre Molnar, dean of Detroit's College of Creative Studies, said of the design-by-committee approach that led to icons of mediocrity like the Lumina or such oddities as the Aztek.
While Michigan is still heavily involved in design, Detroit is absorbed in designing vehicles that will be produced and on the roads in the next few years, while the more distant future is unfolding out West. Every major automaker is represented in southern California, with advance design studios spread from the beaches of Santa Monica to the outskirts of San Diego.
Designers wax about the state's natural beauty and the inspiration they draw from its sunsets and coastline. But there are more practical reasons. An L.A. studio allows automakers to capitalize on the area's creative talent and forward-thinking tendencies. It also provides entrée into a massive consumer market and a car culture ahead of the national curve on driving trends, including fuel efficiency and environmentally sound vehicles.
The Solstice, for one, was conceived in GM's design team in North Hollywood. "I thought about the car on the Pacific Coast Highway early in the morning, the way it would look, the way it would feel," Vlachakis said.
She then spent the next few years in Detroit trying to hold on to that image as the vehicle worked its way from show car to factory floor at the Warren Tech Center.
Lutz fast-tracked the car through GM's bureaucracy to preserve the vision of the car's two young lead designers, Franz Von Holzhausen (now with Mazda) on exterior and Vlachakis on interior.
The duo met with engineers, and the result was a near-miracle in the auto industry: a car that actually bears a strong resemblance to the designers' sketch, with Vlachakis' large, rounded shapes and sleek, simple gauges left intact.
When the Solstice went on sale in 2005, GM sold the first 1,000 online in 41 minutes. By that August, when the Solstice went into production, Pontiac had orders for 12,000 more.
A year later, while most Pontiac vehicles were sitting on lots for months, the Solstice moved in less than three weeks. BusinessWeek dubbed the Solstice "Pontiac's Budget Porsche."
The Sky, released after the Solstice, is even hotter, typically selling in less than two weeks.
"Those cars do well because where else can you get a convertible that size that looks as good for that price?" said Chris Li, a researcher for a unit of J.D. Power and Associates, which tracks automotive sales. Both vehicles are large and priced in the 20s to start.
Expectations against limitations
Though it seems like an easy, logical formula -- build a cheap car that looks great -- it can be a maddening balance for an automaker. A low price often means cheap materials and fewer features, which can limit designers. And there are other pressures: political and economic imperatives demanding less oil consumption. There is also the small matter of predicting the future. What will people want in 10 or 20 years? The answer to that question is being sought in California, in guarded, password-protected design palaces. Eight foreign carmakers are headquartered in Los Angeles County, and most major automakers have advanced design studios there, with more planned for 2007. Automakers employ 15,000 in Los Angeles County, part of a thriving business that the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. recently described as "L.A.'s hidden industry."
While Detroit toils in the earthly business of producing vehicles, designers in California operate in GM's metaphorical kingdom of heaven.
"It's useful to have some people scheming and dreaming up new ways to execute Cadillac or Chevrolet in sort of a dream factory where they don't have to worry about, can this be produced?" Lutz said. "Is there enough investment? How would the stamping guys shape this hood? We don't want them worrying about that. They are more artistically the point of the spear."
World away from Detroit
Vlachakis lives in a quiet, whitewashed condo jutting out of the Malibu hills. From a balcony, she can see a blue corner of the Pacific and breathe in the low-hanging, green-mountain mist. Detroit seems like a far-off planet of cold and concrete.
Inside, bright, whimsical plastic toys sit on shelves. Dolce Vita black strappy sandals lie crookedly on the floor. Her fashion-forward grasp of the cultural zeitgeist has proven a vital asset to GM.
Vlachakis grew up 50 miles east in Pasadena. As a 12-year-old, she was a popular girl who preferred to sketch cars on the back of her notebooks.
By the time she finished high school, she had fallen in love with automotive design and enrolled at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, the only woman in her graduating class. Vlachakis said she has been encouraged by GM to maintain her youthful vibe in an industry that hasn't always celebrated change.
Vlachakis walks into one of her favorite spots, a Malibu shop called Madison, where celebrities are spotted and trends are born. She picks up a Marc Jacobs silver-hued, teardrop handbag and runs her hand over it. "The metallic look is softening. See how the coloring here is not harsh but soft and tempered? See how the shape is simple? We're seeing simpler, softer shapes."
Shapes that are found in the swirling circles of the Solstice.
"People want something expressive and sculpted," she said, referring to the vehicle's melting, swooning curves.
Take a toaster, she says. It's no longer enough that it toasts bread. A toaster must be sleek, chrome and complement your sleek, chrome food processor. The Treo smartphone Vlachakis keeps on the passenger seat of her Solstice, she notes, is a model of high design. So is the squarish, en vogue bottle of Fiji water next to it.
"Look at Ikea. Look at Target," Vlachakis says. "They've made design not just attainable but a must for everyone."
Target's tagline Design for All is something she understands well. Anyone can make a $200,000 car: unlimited resources, high-end materials. The guys at Aston Martin have it easy. The challenge is making a $20,000 car, something for the masses that does not look mass-produced. In that way, GM -- and its Detroit rivals -- don't have it so easy.
Which is why it was such a triumph when the Solstice, listed at $20,490, was the only American car named to Automobile Magazine's Most Beautiful Cars of 2006, listed alongside a $171,286 Bentley and, yes, a $162,250 Aston Martin.
Vlachakis finds ideas in the funky furniture shops and architecture in Venice Beach or in the iconoclastic detail of a well-made piece of jewelry. These days, she's especially taken by prefabricated concrete, steel and wood homes going up in trendy neighborhoods outside Venice.
To capture the masculine feel of the Sky interior, with its motorcycle-style gauges and punchy graphic interior, she drew inspiration from a chunky Tag Heuer watch.
Convincing the public on design
It is another perfect, bronze-sky sunset in Malibu, and a group of young men and women are encamped at a restaurant table, the darkening Pacific churning in the distance.
They are mostly automotive designers, Vlachakis at the center, discussing a recent trip to St. Tropez when what passes for a barroom brawl among car geeks breaks out.
"A lot of people seem to want traditional things," her friend Mike, a Malibu real estate agent, said. "I can move a Cape Cod or a traditional farmhouse in a minute, but I have a hard time selling the modern, angular stuff."
Vlachakis leans forward and cuts in: "The average buyer does not understand modern architecture," she answers. Designers, she argues, cannot always force design principles on the public. People like to be challenged, within limits. They might love the idea of the modern, angular home but end up buying the Cape Cod.
It is a lesson she's learned firsthand. Her sketch for the Solstice exterior, which Lutz rejected, was what she describes as funkier than the sketch GM went with. She still loves the Solstice (enough to own one, she notes), but it was an acknowledgement that the classic and comfortable can still trump the futuristic and funky.
There is, it turns out, a philosophical schism in GM's design house. While designers all favor pushing the consumer forward with challenging, even polarizing designs, some contend the industry hasn't gone far enough.
Sushi arrives and the table quiets. Outside, the valets run back and forth, fetching diners their Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches. Not a GM vehicle in the bunch. Vlachakis' back is turned from the valet. She can't see, but she doesn't have to. She already knows what she is up against.
Contact TAMARA AUDI at 313-222-6582 or audi@freepress.com.
Time away from troubles frees designers to find inspiration
February 12, 2007
BY TAMARA AUDI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
CARLSBAD, Calif. -- On the day the bad news broke in Detroit that DaimlerChrysler's sales were down, underscoring the tepid performance of the "Dr. Z" ad campaign featuring the company's mustachioed chief executive, at least one group of DaimlerChrysler employees was in a great mood.
On the coast of California, Kevin Verduyn and his advance design team ate lunches of fresh avocado and shrimp salads on a sunny patio, talking passionately of designing cars with soul. Designer John Sodano, meanwhile, was pleased after finally learning how to geometrically map a tire tread on his computer program.
Far from the metaphorical and physical gloom of Detroit, the skies were fittingly blue over what DaimlerChrysler calls its blue-sky studio.
The studio, officially named Pacifica, is set in a quiet office park on the outskirts of Carlsbad, a seaside resort town about 90 miles south of Los Angeles and 2,330 miles from DaimlerChrysler's U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills.
While there was no escaping the latest piece of depressing automotive news in Auburn Hills, nobody in Carlsbad (except the public relations guy) seemed to know.
"Huh, something happened out there? I hadn't heard," Sodano said, shrugging. "I don't know anything about that. What I do know is that I learned how to do something new on my computer program that I didn't know before. I got a little further on a project. As far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty good day."
That detachment, that blissful ignorance highlights the value of placing Detroit's advance design studios at distant outposts. It leaves company's dreamers to their visions -- free from the daily pains of an aging industry. That's the idea, anyway.
The clot of advance design studios in southern California has created a sunnier, parallel automotive universe.
"It's one of the great benefits of being out here," Verduyn, 41, said. "It's hard to focus on design if you get mired in that stuff." That "stuff" is drearily familiar in metro Detroit: soaring health care costs, buyouts, slow sales, low profits and the constant threat of economic collapse. Each year, DaimlerChrysler plucks a few designers from Detroit and transplants them to the California studio for half the year.
"You can really see the difference when you're out here," said Scott Anderson, 31, a Detroit designer on six-month temporary assignment from Detroit. "Here, we work a lot further out, it's a little more concept driven. ...You get to go in directions that are limitless."
Akino Tsuchiya, 37, envisioned the Akino concept car -- a design so purely hers that they named it for her -- after moving to southern California from the Auburn Hills studio. The Akino, which looks like an elegant, exotic insect, has been described as a "teahouse on wheels" because of the lounge-style interior (complete with bamboo flooring and throw pillows) that seats five.
"This is the place where I feel more creative," said Tsuchiya, 37. "The climate and natural beauty here have a lot to do with it. You feel freer here. I guess you could also seek out places of natural beauty in Detroit, but here, it is just part of the everyday living. And it is inspiring."
The designers said that Detroit executives all seem to understand that stepping out of Detroit is one of the best and most important moves the industry has made in recent years.
When Detroit executives come to the design studio, designers said, they behave differently. They take off suit jackets, loosen ties, insist upon driving in convertibles. They sit in sun-filled conference rooms, lean back and breathe deeply.
"Detroit breathed its own air for so many years," Anderson said. "When you breathe your own air for decades, it narrows your thinking. Our studio brings a fresh perspective. It's fresh air for Detroit."
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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