car design thread

Would guess most would ID the V as a Cadillac, consistent w/current sharp/angular design equities? Grille shape alone sorta says recent Caddy?

Separately, was there much debate in abandoning model names like DeVille and Fleetwood?

 

wait wait wait...

We have all been talking about your involvment at Pontiac... and we all skipped the biggest questions...

WTF... AZTEK?

Go ahead...

 

The Aztek was headed by Tom Peters. Tom is incredibly talented and has done some astounding work at GM through the years.

This is a perfect case of do not blame the designers in the studio for the (mis)management by all those that were making the approvals at each step of the process. Recognize that all those that were actually guilty went and hid as they threw the lowly designers under they bus.

 

YES! This is what I wanted to know... or always wondered about...

Ok... So... can you spill the beans?

Did they know it was a wreck? Meaning the designers? Or were they like the 700 lbs woman choosing a two piece bikini going... damn... I look good?

 

Designers know. A completely different car project at a different company; one of the designers on the project took me aside to show the alternative proposals they gave "management". At each opportunity during the design process that same "management" selected the inferior choice each and every time. No wonder the designers were disheartened. All they were left with doing was making the best they could out of a loosing proposition; aka: polishing a turd.

 

The grey Aztek that is lowered isn't all bad for an Aztek. At least it got some proper tires and wheels to fill the holes in the body.

 

DANG. I was hoping for some inside scoop! Or at least something funny to laugh at.

And the Cimarron sadly I am aware of. I don't think it was a bad looking car for the time. I think its just as good looking as most cars in that era.

(concerning my age and cars etc... many/most of my cars have cranks to start them if the starter fails )

 

If you want to get a partial understanding read Bob Lutz book and what he discovered upon arriving at GM. "Management" was obsessed with measurable data. As in, the new Belchfire was 95 percentile in its class on hip, shoulder, head and other measurable dimensions. That it looked completely non-descript or even as crap was immaterial. Criteria like this precluded design from adding in more tumblehome for the roof and making a somewhat faster roof to trunk transition. Lutz went on about how the clinic surveys were making turds come out with favorable ratings. He then had to fight hard to finally get the raw data to understand how the surveys were being manipulated to "protect the guilty". He even described how final approvals could be done without Design signing off. During this time period Design had been neutered by "management". Certainly did not help that the then VP of Design for GM had sold his soul to ascend and owed allegiance to that same "management".

Absolutely do not fall into the trap of believing that GM did not have the design talent inside the building. It was there in abundance with some of the best of the entire industry. What to more properly asked is how is it that GM's highest levels of management and the board of directors were able to completely squander the design legacies of Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell.

 

Very interesting. Ill check that out!

Gotta love it when the people taking the poles and the ones ordering the poles are manipulating the pole... sounds like a recent presidential election.

 

Lutz talked about the clinic data as being performed by the corporation, for the corporation, to inform the corporate management of how their product proposals were being received by what are supposed to be representative of potential buyers. Read his portion on this and you will get an eye opener of data manipulation to make an obvious turd into highly desirable because no one wanted the report to indicate that the obvious turd was, in fact, a turd.

If you go back to Lutz' book just after finishing at Chrysler he made a massive point about desirability. The company needs to make cars that are so desirable that a buyer comes into a dealership to buy that car. Not some other car in the dealership, not cross shopping other brands but that model and only that model. With that sort of desirability there do not need to be rebates or other incentives that cut into the profit margin. Maybe the shoulder room isn't that 95th percentile for its class - I want it and now all to discuss is colors and options.

That is a home run car. The turd can still be sold but they have to "put money on the hood" to move it off the dealer lot. Rebates, discount financing, dealer incentives and everything else that cuts into profit margins to make it find a new home. The backside is it also kills residual values.

Of course understand that Lutz is an aberration. He likes cars and believes in the concept of product. He did not believe that cars are just oversized boxes of soap to be marketed.

 

Huh?


Edit: oh, POLLS.

 

The grey one's kind of a cool weird. At a certain point it must come down to not presenting anything you can't live with? Alternatively, if they're not buying what you're selling, eventually you're gonna get toss'd (unless there's a designer's union?)?

 

I lost track of Luigi Colani and how far he got with his aerodynamic truck designs. It seems there was one on a Mercedes chassis and then there was one called the Spitzer-Colani. Why didn't these designs get accepted when they cut fuel usage by 50%.
Does anyone out there think Musk's design will be as aerodynamic as Colaini's?
I put the slow change in US semi design blame on the customers, When I saw that TV show on How Things Are Made and they showed Peterbilt I was astonished buyers of tractor trailers were specing things like:

straight up windscreens
straight up radiators
chrome air horns on the hood

That would be like Pentagon weapons orders being put in for M1 Garands ("because dad liked his so much")

It seems like Tesla could go right around the makers of conventional semi tractors if he can get the costs down on manufacturing. I also think public pressure (the eco-greenies, whatever you call them) could force big companies like Walmart to use aero non polluting tractors and the American truck makers will have to go aero (even if they don't go for the Tesla drive train) to remain in the game. Or am I hoping for too much?

(illustration: Mercedes based version and later Spitzer-Colani cab)

 

I contend, that if the Aztek was built today (and had a roof rack) that it would be one of the most popular vehicles on "expeditionportal.com"

 

The 15 year old in me loves that Extreme Aztek !

 

No offense, but I've never seen anything like the Juke & Lexus above on ExpeditionPortal. Most of the stuff there is about vehicles that can actually traverse hostile terrain, not mall crawling.