JANUARY 19, 2007
Auto Design
By David Kiley
Can this Man Save Ford?
Freeman Thomas has a record of rescuing brands—the VW New Beetle, the Audi TT, the Chrysler 300. Will the Interceptor save his new employer?
Freeman Thomas almost always has a good time at the Detroit Auto Show. And this year was no exception.
The director of Ford Advanced Engineering Design Studio, with locations in California and Michigan, had two vehicles on display at Ford's giant show space at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit: The Ford Interceptor and the Ford Airstream "people mover." While "show cars" developed under his leadership sometimes elicit reactions ranging from "what's that thing?" to "Whoah!" Thomas has a track record to back up his audacity.
Let's not forget that he led the Chrysler team that developed the show car that led to the Chrysler 300, easily the most influential design of the last decade. And at Volkswagen and Audi, he had a direct hand in designing the Concept One, which went on to become the New Beetle, as well as the car that became the Audi TT. Both those cars are credited with rescuing their brands from ruin and possibly oblivion in the U.S.
At Ford (F), he is working under circumstances similar to those he found at Volkswagen (VLKAY) and Chrysler (DCX). Like the designer's two previous employers, Ford is running for its life. It has been restructuring itself since 2001, trying to make consistent profits. It is losing big money and won't return to the black until at least 2009. Some industry observers even speculate that Ford's new chief executive, Alan Mulally, has been brought in to prepare the automaker for a breakup. Things are that bad.
But there is recognition at Ford that the one surefire way to make money again as it resizes itself by cutting employees, factories, and health-care costs is to give the company's designers a freer hand to excite and engage buyers. The carmaker might be onto something. Take the Chrysler 300. That car entered the sleepy, moribund category of the "D car," a designation that reflects sedans bigger than a Toyota Camry and Ford Taurus. Think Toyota Avalon, Ford Crown Victoria, Buick Lucerne. Bankers' cars. The 300 sold in excess of 100,000 units a year for about two years without a single incentive other than a small financing deal that cost Chrysler $250 per car. That's unheard of among domestic automakers. The 300, by some estimates, earned Chrysler around $400 million a year all by itself.
Likewise, Volkswagen was on the verge of abandoning the U.S. market. But the Concept One literally kept the fires burning from 1994 until 1998, when the New Beetle arrived and reignited interest in Volkswagens of all kinds.
Thomas took time to chat about the show and his designs with BusinessWeek senior correspondent David Kiley at the Ford stand at the North American International Auto Show.
How does the show stack up for you? Have you had time to walk around?
When you walk through the show, there are two camps: There's a camp of confusion and a camp of really good editing—good surface development and creating a holistic picture. And I believe we are in that camp. The idea we are after with our concepts here is to be able to tell a story at 300 feet away.
Tell me about your thinking on the Ford Interceptor. It looks a bit like a continuation of the theme started with the Ford 427 a few years ago.
When I walk around the show I ask myself: Why would I buy it? What attracts me? We believe the Ford Interceptor answers that question for people and that it passes the 300-feet test. The high belt-line of the car gives the driver a feeling of being a little mysterious. Contrast that with, say, a Range Rover, where the driver is up high in the seat and the belt-line is low. I have always felt the Range Rover looks a bit like a royal coach. You are out there in a Range Rover.
The car has a lot of attitude. And it reminds me a little of another car that came out of your camp—the Chrysler 300.
The Interceptor is a bad boy. It was like making a tough-looking football player and blacking out his face with a mask and just leaving a slit for the eyes. Every line in this car has a reason for being. We gave the rear end a chiseled-off edge to give some surface interest. It actually looks like a milled plane. There is a corresponding top line that has the milled plane. We call it "linear machined."
The graphics on the car are very important. Ford's design language has a lot of what we call "squircles," which are rounded-off squares. We have had a lot of cars over the decades that featured squircles—the 1964 Mustang, the Ford GT, even the Model T, when you look at the grilles and windows. And it's a language we are going back to.
This is a car that is at once for the mature car buyer, but for someone who likes to stroke his bad boy side. He wants a grown-up car, but wants to feel fun.
You had a hand in the Chrysler 300. Do you feel this car is derived from that a bit?
Well, let me say first that the 300 started with me from Ground Zero and the team I put in place to create that car. It's a timeless proportion, just like a Bugatti. I think the Interceptor takes some of the themes of the 300 and goes even further. For one thing, we decided that it would only have to have comfortable seating for four, not five. The front overhang is shorter. The proportions are actually closer to ideal than the 300.That comes from being able to be on the engineering of the platform from the start. This platform is a stretched Mustang rear-drive platform. With the 300, we inherited a lot of hard points.
Tell me about the Ford Airstream.
It started out from an exercise I gave the designers to make movie posters that captured a theme. The one that inspired the Airstream was one by Jordan Bennett called "American Journey." We were working with Ford's Science Research Lab. They supplied a drive-train, a hybrid gasoline-hyrdrogen powertrain. We wanted it to feel a bit like something inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then we brought Airstream into it, and tapped their design sensibilities to mesh them with our own. It was really a puzzle that had to be brought together.
It's a bit funky. That interior red color is crazy, and there is a 360-degree lava lamp. It feels a bit Sixties to me.
I like to think it's more of a study in possibilities. We wanted the interior to have a lounge-like feel. The use of space is key. It's about the length of a Ford Fusion, though it appears longer because the drive-train makes it possible to use most of the footprint for space for the drivers and passengers. The 360-monitor is turned on to the lava lamp setting, but we can use it to show a fire. It could be used for games. Lots of possibilities. We wanted to convey a bit of innocence and optimism in this design. We have been short of both the last several years, we think.
Should I think of this as a replacement for the minivan?
The minivan is dead. The driving force behind crossovers today is to make carrying people aspirational again. That's what we are doing with the Fairlane [a concept car that Ford is producing for the 2009 model year].
Two of the best-selling cars, the Camry and Honda Accord, have never been accused of being overly designed. Yet they are successful beyond belief. How do you account for that?
Go back to Raymond Loewy. He said if all other things are equal, the better-looking vehicle will sell better. Toyota and Honda created a better-serviced and built product that appealed to those who wanted worry-free appliances. All things being equalÖif we serviced the cars as well and built them as well, and if people trusted the car and the brand as much, then we can win by being better designers.
The Camry and Accord sell so well because they have perfectly addressed the needs I spoke about. For design, they are zero. If we look at successful designs like the Ford Fusion and the Interceptor, I think of my experience at Audi. Focusing on design, like we did with the TT, showed you could take a brand that stood at below zero, and start to over-engineer it and create a gestalt in the design and excite a polarized customer base of people who see it and say: That's my car!.
What's the biggest change going on at Ford that affects you?
The fact that designers are working so closely with engineers so that we have real input on the underlying architectures of the cars we are designing instead of having the placements of the wheels and other hard points dictated. When designers and engineers have a chance to collaborate, great things happen. The great designers, like Alex Issigonis and on the aircraft side, Kelly Johnson, had appreciation for both and skills in both.
I'm going to get philosophical here. An elephant is designed for what it does. Look at a cheetah . It is perfectly engineered for what it does. Neither looks anything like the other, but both are perfect. It's that kind of design standard that can be achieved when both design and engineering are given equal and collaborative places at the table.
One of your more famous works, the Concept One, perhaps suffered after a short time in the marketplace, I have always thought; because it was built on the existing Golf platform, which is not what you designed around.
That's right. We had created a fresh architecture and envisioned alternative fuel drivetrains and everything. We had the arcs of the concept fall right onto the wheels. It was perfectly proportioned. But as you say, when it was grafted onto the Golf, it made the dash to bumper proportion a bit long. That's where the designer had no negotiating power with the engineers. Though we did get some of what we wanted in the face of objections from the engineers to protect the basic form.
Audi TT was a perfect marriage of design and engineering. I was joined at the hip with those guys when we developed it. Ironically, it was built on the same Golf platform as the New Beetle.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
