Posts Tagged ‘company’
Exterior Leads Companies In All Brands North America
General Motors recently announced that Bryan Nesbitt, currently the company’s exterior design lead across its North American brands, will be sent to Shanghai on Aug. 1 as vice president of General Motors international design.
He will also be the so-called brand champion for Waling and Baoji, two automakers with whom G.M. has entered into joint ventures. The man he succeeds, Ken Parkinson, will take on Mr. Nesbitt’s old job.
Mr. Nesbitt, 42, said in a telephone interview that he has not yet “been immersed” in the new situation, but that when he arrives in Shanghai, a top priority will be to tap in to local design talent.
“I’m interested in finding out what is happening in the Chinese design community and finding out the caliber of design education,” he said, adding that he also planned to closely examine trends in Chinese industrial design outside of the automotive realm.
In his role as brand champion, Mr. Nesbitt said he would be responsible for managing visual identity and creating consistency, so that each brand’s designs produced clear recognition among consumers. “With Cadillac, we have high recognition, about 80 or 90 percent,” he said. He will aim for similar results with other brands.
One of his roles, Mr. Nesbitt said, would be to present G.M. as a mobility company, not just a car company. G.M.’s display at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo of its futuristic, networked E-NV pods attracted a lot of attention. Such systems may have a future in China, he said.
G.M. is also looking at expanding beyond China’s megacities to the so-called Tier No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 cities — not exactly hamlets, but population centers with fewer than 3 million people.
In those markets, the Baoji brand will offer models below Chevrolet in the market pecking order. Waling is more a maker of small and utility vehicles. Mr. Nesbitt’s track record as designer of the Chrysler PT Cruiser and his association with Chevrolet’s HHR might be relevant there.
Led by Buick and the booming Chevrolet, G.M. sales in China are growing. The company also sells Cadillac and Opel vehicles there, meaning that Baoji and Waling must be integrated into the brand ladder without confusion and without the sort of overlap that famously plagued the company in North America over the last two decades.
This is not the first professional foray into China for Mr. Nesbitt. In the mid-’90s, while at Chrysler, he was one of the principal designers of a concept car conceived as a Chinese people’s car. Suggesting a Model T crossed with a Citroën 2CV, the Composite Concept Vehicle, or CCV, was to be built of recycled plastic bottles and kept basic for easy repair in the countryside. Ultimately, the project did not gain traction.
Becoming Too Common At World Automotive
Spy photos of the upcoming, 2-seat MINI Cooper Coupe have been leaked onto the internet…by MINI!
In a trend that is becoming far too common in the automotive world of late, the BMW-owned brand has released photos showing the car undergoing testing, partially obscured by a camouflage wrap.
First revealed as a show car at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, it’s clear from the photos that the production Coupe remains faithful to the concept’s “helmet roof” design and three-box silhouette, despite the fact that it is a hatchback. It will also be the only model in the company’s line-up available only as a 2-seater, although it is built on the same platform and shares an identical wheelbase with the standard MINI Cooper Hardtop.
While it will be a few more months before the car is revealed in all of its glory at this September’s Frankfurt Motor Show, along with the photos MINI has revealed the major mechanical specifications of the Coupe, which largely mirror those of the other small cars in the company’s lineup. Three versions will be available: Cooper Coupe, Cooper S Coupe and John Cooper Works Coupe, featuring 1.6-liter normally aspirated and turbocharged four-cylinder engines with outputs of 121 hp, 181 hp and 208 hp respectively. Six-speed manual transmissions are standard, while six-speed automatics will be optional on the Coupe and S Coupe.
Pricing and fuel economy information has not been released, but both numbers will likely be a little higher than those of the Hardtop, which starts at $20,100 and gets 37 mph highway.