car design thread

thats really funny

 

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I encountered it in real life yesterday. Very confusing to following drivers as to which direction the vehicle intends to turn. Surprised this made it past safety organizations.

 

No question that Ford had talented designers on staff. So did Chrysler. The corporate culture/politics were what determined the ability to deliver the best.

There are some serious questions about Bordinat's design sense but he worked in a very risk adverse environment. The amazement was when an actual good design managed to defy the odds and slip through; must have been some executive on vacation.

Jack Telnack was a major improvement for Ford.

Over at Chrysler I watched how Dick Macadam became subservient to Hal Sperlich who wanted to retread Ford designs. Later on Iacocca brought in Delarossa - claim to fame was being Bordinat's drinking buddy; really not good. The place screwed up and finally elevated Tom Gale who became an industry leader.

Right Design leadership in the right corporate environment wins anywhere. Too bad the B Schools can't figure this out.

 

The quant jocks can't reduce good design to numbers on a spreadsheet, so they feel free to ignore any positive impact on the balance sheet...

 

I wouldn't say they ignore it but instead they try to find want to get answers that give them numbers for intangibles. I remember Harry Bradley denigrating clinics and how they are based upon asking "general public" to look at something that is a couple years in the future while their frame of reference is the Duese and a Quarter in their neighbor's driveway.

In one of Bob Lutz' books he talked about going to GM and having to fight really hard, against every roadblock even though he was the vice-chairman, to get the raw data from the clinics. Then he found out how the data was being manipulated to make bad results fit the desired good answers. Along with that story he also goes into how those same GM folks were saying how a car would be 85th or so percentile on an assortment of measurements against its market competitors. His response was that although it had all those numbers what the potential buyer saw was an ugly/uninspired car. Make it desirable and people want to buy it, make in uninspired and they are asking about rebates and special financing offers.

Clinics have become the bane of Design.

 

I may have been a bit glib, but my point is the clinic approach is wrong in principle. It cannot be meaningfully applied to something as subjective as design, not least because good design always has the potential to lead rather than reinforce public taste. I'd follow this with a question (and as an outsider I have no idea of the answer): has there ever been a sales hit to which design made a major and obvious contribution which was predicted with any accuracy by clinic results?

 

I might ask the inverse as more indicative. A clinic hit that the designer knew was a turd and went thud in the market.

 

I don't know of specific examples but can sure envision a bunch of execs running around patting themselves on the back counting on their success (with Design pushed over in the corner shaking their heads). Then the car hits the market and all their expectations of a roaring success, promotions and big bonuses go poof as reality sets in.

I can see cases where the timing just hits the market wrong. Not necessarily a bad car but there was an unexpected market shift (gas crisis would be an example). As a possibility within design, new car hits just when someone else sets a completely new direction that makes everyone else look outdated That one did happen when Chrysler did the Forward Look in 1957. But that is not a clinic story.

 

Any examples come to mind?

 

By "clinics," do you mean Focus Groups?

 

Yes.

 

I did not know that the clinic results for the Taurus were bad. Good on Ford for disregarding those results and making the right decision. Maybe the industry should have reset their belief in the need for clinics after that.

 

The Taurus example is really interesting. It was certainly an out-of-the-box design at the time.

 

Testing proves testing works.

 

Yep, best selling car in America for a number of years.

The 1996 Taurus was on the list of ugliest cars I posted about a week ago. IMHO, it was an OK design and held out well against Honda.

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The issue with that generation was that it overplayed the oval theme throughout the car and made it feel gimmicky. It was just too much, and didn't like the oval rear window. The original Taurus was a more handsome car - my dad had a first generation Taurus as a company car when he was a corporate executive because the company wanted him to have a 4-door car. He preferred the way his Porsche drove (obviously) but the Taurus was a comfortable utilitarian car.

All the best,
Andrew.