A Maverick with an Idea Is the Only Way to Make Interesting Cars
Have you ever sat in on a focus group about cars? I did once, and within a few minutes I would have given anything to make a bid for freedom and the nearest pub. It’s several hours of ill-informed people talking over each other, until the loudest, most monotonous person in the room grinds everyone else down to the point where they nod and agree with everything they say—just so they can escape for the nearest pub.
These people don’t realize they are born with two ears and one mouth. Which means they are supremely confident they know more about anything and everything than the rest of the room. Which would be fine, if their every word and whim weren’t being scrutinized by a team of marketing people desperately hoping to come up with a new car that will be different from the others, only exactly the same because they dare not upset their bosses and risk being banished to the stock-taking department, counting wheel nuts in and out for the rest of their careers.
This makes people who like cars jolly unhappy. It’s why we end up with the Austin Montego, Citroën C5, Jaguar X-Type, or Toyota Corolla, mediocrity in motion. And let’s not forget the Vauxhall Vectra, the car Jeremy Clarkson famously struggled to review for the BBC: “Honestly, trying to road test it is like trying to road test a microwave oven.”
Sometimes, the designers and engineers working at car companies get down about this, too. And just occasionally, one or two of them will snap that pencil or throw their laptop to ground, and say, “I can’t take it any more!” Only with a lot of swear words. And that’s when the fun stuff happens . . .
At the dawn of the 1970s, Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher reckoned they could have a bit of fun with a Mercedes 300SEL 6.3 and converted it into a 6.8-liter race car. Against the odds, and to a chorus of guffaws from onlookers, it won its class and took second overall at the 1971 Spa 24-hour race. Its influence led in no small way to the 1975 450SEL 6.9, a car many would argue is the original super saloon.
A handful of Mercedes engineers repeated the trick, in 1990, with the 500E. Originally, this was going to be nothing more than a mildly warmed-over 300E. Then, over a stein or three of pilsner after work, a few engineers decided that would be a rubbish approach. More firepower was needed, but how? Easy: Take the all-alloy, 32-valve M119 V-8 from the R129 500SL, modify the block, crankcase, and connecting rods to make it stronger and more muscular, then hand the project over to cash-strapped Porsche. It worked a treat and to this day the 500E and later E500 remain one of the most discreet forms of high-speed transport.
High speeds were far from the minds of the two men who dreamed up the humble Renault 5, the surprise smash hit (more than 5.5 million were built) that seemingly emerged from thin air. Bernard Hanon, Renault’s head of planning (who would later go on to become Renault’s boss) had been thinking of a car that would appeal to a younger, cooler crowd than the aging Renault 4. When he mentioned as much to designer Michel Boué, the latter worked on sketches in his own time, repackaging the 4 platform. The moment Hanon saw it, he knew they had a hit on their hands and made it his mission to fast-track it to production.
You’ll often hear car enthusiasts talking about BMW’s Z1 or Z3 Coupe as products of skunk works. But before both of these came the 3 Series estate. In the 1980s, Max Reisböck worked at BMW as a prototype engineer. He and Frau Reisböck had two kids and couldn’t for the life of them understand why BMW didn’t make an estate car that would carry the kids, dogs, bikes, and bags they so often lugged around.
So Max took matters into his own hands, applied an angle grinder to a 323i, and built the car BMW wouldn’t. Eventually, word spread so far around BMW that the board heard about his project and ended a board meeting early to size up Reisböck’s work. In the space of a few minutes, it convinced them that BMW needed such a car in its lineup, in a way no amount of costly market research had ever managed.
A personal favorite is the story of the Renault Espace, only because I learned to drive in one. As early as 1976, working for Matra, designer Fergus Pollock had sketched out the idea for the ultimate do-anything family car. The concept would go on to be refined until Renault commissioned it, and was ingenious as much for its versatile packaging and accommodation as its affordable engineering that kept the large, seven-seat car from becoming prohibitively costly to build and grotesquely heavy on the road. From those sensible beginnings would ultimately emerge the Avantime, a car so spectacularly off-the-wall that it looked like an exhibit from The Design Museum, not an executive express from the autoroute.
It’s tempting to mention the McLaren F1 at this point, given it was the single-mindedness of one Gordon Murray that led to its supremely successful conception and execution. But there’s another British supercar that deserves an honourable mention—the Jaguar XJ220.
It’s incredible to think that what was (briefly) the world’s fastest production car (217mph) had been born out of a group of (unpaid) people giving up their weekends to create a sports car that could take Jaguar back to its winning ways on the world’s race tracks. That group of no more than a dozen was known as “The Saturday Club” and without their tenacity the XJ220 wouldn’t exist.
But perhaps the most successful, and unlikely, car to be born out of a skunk works is the Toyota Prius. More than 4.5 million have been made, which isn’t bad going when you think it was an idea conjured up by just 10 people working in a skunk works at Toyota.
Who would have guessed that one of the most influential and positively impactful cars of all time to emerge from a skunk works is also one of the most boring to drive. Maybe a focus group or two would help fix that.
The auto industry needs to listen with in more often. Many inside the company have the right ideas of what to do but too often they get over analyzed.
Lutz often said to do the gut thing was the right thing. Yes you may hit a dud but more often you will get it right. But they build to a price so often a simple few bits of trim can make a looser to a winner for a couple buck more.
I can tell this write is in Europe as the examples were not what I would deem winners here. But each market has it own set of needs and interest. Once car seldom fits one world.
That sounds good on paper, but “hitting a dud” happens much more than you would think with this, “let’s just build things and see what people like” approach. And each dud costs billions of dollars. What makes a successful auto is one that does its job well while appealing to as many as possible. Often that involves selling people on a vision or a dream of what they think the vehicle needs to do, but it also needs to be practical in what they actually need it to do. The problem with focus groups isn’t that good ideas can’t come from them, it’s that with a diversity of people, there are going to be a diversity of ideas. It requires visionaries to find the gems among the stones.
At least James you can go to the pub to escape that- he who yells the loudest wins- idiot. Here in the states you’re more than likely to find another at the bar talking over everyone. Inane ramblings and tantrums. The Spartans used to decide their elections that way. Seriously. A practice Aristotle called “excessively childish” for obvious reasons, seems to have grown in popularity here of late and is often applauded. Go figure. _ Middle management types frequently tout that group thinking notion. Chapter 3 of ‘Successful Strategies in… Design by committee . While sometimes outside input may be required as matter of practicality generally the things we admire the most came from more of a singular vision. I’d bet everyone you mentioned snapping pencils will tell you the worst most annoying thing is to suddenly have someone looking over your shoulder say – ‘You know what you should do’.
Cars and trucks can be designed with flair without being costly and cartoonish. The hard part is the stuff under the skin. How much cost is there in the electronics and ‘features’ that are forced on the consumer these days. Are they actually wanted? Are they mandated by the govt.? It’s a fine balance. The biggest problem is car companies abandoning the low cost segment that ‘normal’ people can afford. It may not be as bad in Europe though cars are expensive there too. The buying public in Europe needs smaller cars and trucks because of the high cost for fuel and the narrow roads in most places. We in the US have few choices these days for small cars that are not as expensive. How many of today’s cars will be the classics of tomorrow? I don’t think very many. Just keeping them running will be nearly impossible. The high end cars may become classics but the same will be true of them>>how to keep them going when the electronics dies and parts are no more. At least with the ‘old’ cars, parts can be made if you have the money. Who is going to build new sensors and CPU’s?
Car companies need less bean counters and more car guys in mgmt. Especially upper mgmt.
The Miata, Mazda’s flagship and a car that is either loved or hated, but also sits up there with way more powerful sports cars for being a very well known sports car even if it doesn’t match the power or speed numbers, the Miata is as well known as the Mustang or the Corvette.
That car started out as a design exercise to make something that looked like a fun little sports car.
It’s unfortunate that most of the brainchild ideas and innovations are not from the USA. The minivan crowd, plain jane 4 door sedan market hasn’t had a far out idea since the 70’s
Don’t you mean 4 door SUV & Car Comfort 4-door pick-up truck crowd? That’s all I see in the dealer lots these days.
We had a Renault Cinq (5) years ago, mainly because my wife needed a car immediately after having her Honda Civic totaled and in those days all Hondas had a wait list. That said, the Renault was a masterpiece of space efficiency, many due to its flat torsion bar rear suspension, make the entire rear of the car usable. It had plenty of personality, too. I remember setting the points by jacking up the front end and rolling the tire with my hands. It had the most comfortable front seats I’ve ever had (this was before the AMC-ized LeCar’s seats). The narrow tires made it “bite” in snow. Then it rusted away.
Exactly the experience my family had with a ’79 LeCar. In winter (which we had a lot of in Michigan during those years) the thing was nearly unstoppable. After heavy snows, we’d drive it down unplowed roads using a simple process: we’d go until enough snow had piled up in front of the LeCar to halt its forward momentum, then back up and drive it around the snow pile, Rinse and repeat until we’d hit a plowed road.
I also managed to dig the car out with a snow brush/scraper after it had spun into a highway median strip.
Of course, we had the huge, easy-to-use fabric sunroof. And of course, after 3 fun- and salt-filled winters, it’d rusted so badly the front suspension mounts gave way.
I’ve been in those meetings! We used to say that the hero of any product planning meeting was the one who could dream up an excuse to delay a decision. With no decision-no action. No action-no chance of failure. No failure-no blame. No blame-Life is good. The hero of one meeting was the guy who said “We should wait to get Maryann’s buy-in: Maryann was on maternity leave! The concept typically starts out as a Gazelle, and ends up as an Inbred goat unless it has a highly placed “sponsor” with balz!
Everytime I see a “modern SUV” or worse yet “crossover vehicle” I think the same thing; a focus group nightmare.
The title of this article “the lone way to make interesting cars” has nothing to do with the last one featured, which is merely noted via total sales, and is anything but interesting.
Every now and then we get a REAL maverick like John Z. DeLorean, who did great things at GM early on (there were some definite maverick moves there) and later on got sick of the bureaucratic nonsense and truly did something “different”.
Yes, we can go ’round and ’round about the stainless body, and this or that – and we could argue the same sort of points about a lot of “supercars”. A big issue with the DeLorean was the Renault engine. That was a bad compromise, for sure – but can you imagine what that car would have been if GM had agreed to sell him the small-block Chevy engines he wanted originally?
When I was getting edumecated I read DeLorean’s “On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors”. Later in my engineering career I’d see many of the exact corporate roadblocks, cynicism, bean-counter corporate nonsense and bureaucratic obstructionism that pushed him to do what he did and go it alone……..
…….and I didn’t even make a joke about the DeLorean being the first car with a fold-down rear-view mirror.
The problem with modern automotive design is that the Feds just keep tightening the screws with respect to crash performance. There are only so many ways to deal with the physics of impact. Most of the classically styled masterpieces of the past wouldn’t even make it out of the computerized crash simulations before being made into the jellybean design we are inundated with these days. Sadly, creative automotive design is dead – thanks to the Feds.
Every time I think what you wrote is true, Alfa Romeo shows up with a design like no other and also fits the regs.
True. One reason I find myself getting into the wrong mid-sized SUV in parking lots.
I couldn’t agree more
The XJ220, a misunderstood car at the time. It is an amazing and beautiful car. Having seen one in person a few times I appreciate the beauty of it.
Delorean comes to mind.
… and Tucker.
SAAB Sonett … 1960’s skunk-works to 3 generations of production. True, not a huge financial success.