GM Plans to Reestablish Design Center in Southland
General Motors Corp., the only major auto maker without a Southern California design studio, is about to rejoin the crowd, The Times has learned.
Sources in the auto industry say GM, which pulled the plug for budget reasons in 1996 on its advanced design center in the Ventura County community of Newbury Park, will open a center in the Los Angeles area early this year.
The company, the world’s largest auto maker, began searching for studio space in Orange and Los Angeles counties several months ago but has since ruled out an Orange County location, sources said.
GM is no stranger to Southern California. It ran an auto-making plant in Van Nuys from 1947 until August 1992 and maintains a regional office in Thousand Oaks. Designs for current-generation Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds were inked at the Newbury Park design center before it was closed.
But the company that gave the world tail fins, the Chevy Corvette and stylistic standouts such as the Cadillac Evoq concept car has been losing market share in the U.S. for several years and has come under fire from critics for fielding a retail lineup of largely uninspired designs.
At a time when Ford Motor Co. is hitting styling home runs with vehicles such as the Focus compact, the Lincoln LS luxury sedan and its extended family of pickups and sport-utility vehicles, and DaimlerChrysler is winning accolades for edgy vehicles such as the Dodge Viper sports car and the forthcoming Chrysler PT Cruiser car-truck hybrid, the consensus among industry analysts is that GM “is struggling because of a dull product line,” said David Healy of Burnham Securities.
But top GM executives are flocking to Los Angeles next week to show off a fleet of new concept vehicles at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show. Ronald L. Zarrella, president of GM North America, and GM design chief Wayne K. Cherry are expected to use the occasion to announce Wednesday the company’s plans to open a new styling studio in the area.
GM representatives declined to comment, but the seeds of a new Southern California studio may have been planted earlier this year when the company was actively recruiting auto designers and model makers from the ranks of Hollywood-trained computer animation and effects specialists.
“We are just aggressively looking for talent, and Southern California is an important area for that talent,” Sheryl Garrett, resource manager for creative designers at GM, said in an interview last summer. “We are looking to diversify our talent pool, and we are going very heavily into the digital design arena.”
Larry Fallon, GM’s director of strategies and industrial design, acknowledged then that it is tough to persuade designers rooted in Hollywood and Southern California to relocate to Detroit.
“One thing we are exploring is the concept of telecommuting,” he said. “It is possible for us to have [design] team members who don’t spend every single day here in Detroit.”
GM has been closemouthed since then about its Southern California plans, but analysts are cheering the idea.
“They looked like fools when they closed Newbury Park,” said Jim Hall, a Detroit-based analyst with AutoPacific Inc.
“They have to have a design presence in Southern California, for a bunch of reasons. One is that everybody else does. And Southern California is such a trend center that you can’t ignore it.”
California is important for automotive designers “because of its incredible population diversity,” said industry consultant Chris Cedergren of Nextrend in Thousand Oaks.
“Any auto manufacturer that wants to have a good understanding of what’s happening in a variety of markets has to be here,” he said, because societal and cultural issues make a difference in how vehicles should be designed and marketed, and auto designers need to be exposed to those differences.
“Southern California is a true melting pot where you can get full understanding of the whole U.S. market in a fairly small region,” Cedergren said.
Auto makers that have taken such advice to heart include Ford and its Volvo Cars unit; both the Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler operating units of DaimlerChrysler; the Japanese Big 5 of Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi and Mazda; and Volkswagen and Bayerische Motoren Werke of Germany. Including independent studios that often work for major auto makers, there are at least 20 automotive design centers in Southern California.
Most specialize in advanced design and research--a Tustin studio, Prisma Design International Inc., recently developed a prototype “Car for the Year 2030” for German magazine Stern, for example. Prisma was founded in 1997 by Gerhard Steinle, former president of Mercedes-Benz’s North American advanced design center in Irvine.
In addition, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena is considered one of the world’s premier automotive design schools.
Ronald Hill, chairman of Art Center’s transportation design program and a former top GM designer, has said that Southern California “just lends itself to auto design.”
“Cars are not just a commodity, like they are in the East and Midwest,” he said. “It is vital for car companies to be here and to understand how this very competitive and important market works.”
