Mar 11
California Design Studios….
Nissan to Tennesee, Volvo to New Jersey and now Chrysler back to Auburn Hills. They must be getting too much sun out in Cali. Somehow the most inspirational place for auto design just isn’t cutting it. In the forever race to save money one house is cheaper than two.
Chrysler has had a lot of success with designs from the Pacifica studio.  Unfortunately most never made it to production and probably never will. Cars like the Nassau, Hornet, Treo, Razor, Akino, and the good Compass came from that studio.
Chrysler had a good routine of sending their designers to Cali for a six month breath of fresh air. Every designer loved going out there and said it was crucial to their inspiration. It gets tough being couped up in a dark room during a Michigan winter where your manager tells you to be creative.
Will the Pacifica designers buy some snow boots and move to Michigan? I doubt it. Which means Chrysler will lose some hugely talented designers. Auburn Hills is already losing great designers due to the eighty hour work weeks. What do you get for eighty hours? Upper management squashing anything good because of a couple pennies. An employee can only take that for so long.
Designers are very passionate about their work and will stay long hours to achieve their goal. Companies should not take advantage of this, but instead embrace and praise their hard work and dedication.
So what is next for Chrysler? They are hacking away their dead weight in products, consolidating studios and currently have some of the worst rated vehicles out there. There is talk of co-developing with companies in India and China, or will Cerberus just sell of the brands and try to make something off the sinking ship they bought?
Let us know what you think. What will they do or what do you want them to do?
4 Comments so far
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well, I have to say, it is very scary that people I know are in jeoperdy of losing there jobs at Chrysler even here in Detroit. Chrysler is in trouble, there is no question about that. But, leaning out an already too-lean design staff is not the answer. They are currently down to about 28 designers from about 45-50 just 4 years ago. (mostly a result of atrition and a few firings)
How can you expect these few people to design EVERY car, down to every last detail? People wonder why Chrysler products look like unresolved, early alias, slab-surfaced cars, well, basically it is because each designer is designing, as well as building there own math, and then the design is set. If they had more people sharing the load as a diverse staff of designers, alias modelers, hand modelers etc., then each design would go through more iterations, more updates, more complex surfacing, and therefore better overall designs. Take quality and materials out of the equation, and just look at the forms. They loo like a student model because they are the first shot out of the gate. Take those designs and go through a proper design cadence, and the designers will more able to show their abilities in design and not just surviving the flood of the work load. For the record, I know most of the design staff and they are VERY talented…the problem lies above their heads.
The industry goes through its own adjustments every few years or so, with a game of Musical Chairs and designers switching houses. The closure of Pacifica begs a new question: When the musical chairs game broadens beyond the automotive industry, where do these talented designers land? There are only so many jobs in Mobile Phones!
frankly, if you are able to make it as a car designer, you can make it at any product design firm. Usually a car designer can pretty much pick their next venture. The shoe and apparal markets are very competetive with companies like Nike/Converse constantly hiring away car designers at competitive wages, where as the product route doesn’t often pay as well. However, if you get fired as an underperformer…well, may be harder. If they are smart, they will all prepare and stock their portfolios and keep there eyes open for something new before it is too late.
Ironic that you ask “what’s next for Chrysler”, I was wondering the same just the other day after reading Consumer Reports where some of the vehicles they rated the worst were Chrysler products. Don’t worry Chrysler you had good company, GM and Ford placed cars on the bottom of the list as well. After reading this post yesterday I started to wonder if Chrysler even has a chance or would they end up like some other American car companies that disappeared long time ago, like Packard, Deusenberg, Hudson, Nash, Auburn and so on. Is there ANY reason to believe that they wouldn’t? Don’t get me wrong, it would be a sad day to see Chrysler disappear from the American car culture, but it has happened before and what is Chrysler doing these days to stop that from happening. To me there seems to be only 2 ways for it to go. If, and this is a big “IF”, if the management allows the designers to do their job, and IF the management looks out for Chrysler, the individuals that work at Chrysler and the heritage/history of Chrysler first and not for themselves, their paychecks and the bonuses they get for delivering marginal results year after year, than I think Chrysler has a chance and Cerberus will invest and hold onto them. If not, let’s not kid ourselves, Cerberus is in this to make money, be it by Chrysler making the right choices going forward and growing, or by Cerberus selling them off piece by piece to make back the money they shelled out in the first place. This will be interesting to see how it unfolds.