Abstract: The Art of Design

I like to sketch the front of the car first.

The eyes are very important to me.

A vehicle can have a happy face, or a mask.

It has to impart a soul.

Why am I looking at this car? It's looking back at me.

It stirs something in me.

People say, "I fell in love with my car. It projects my personality so perfectly."

That connection with the vehicle,

it's extremely powerful.

He knows I'll kick his ass, so...

It's a friendly rev.

He only has 485 horse.

I mean, what are you gonna do with that?

Everything should be art.

It's not just designing for Chrysler. We're designing for car designers, right?

So we should up each other's game.

It should look good. It should sit on the road

and represent not only the brand well, but be an attractive craft from Detroit.

Ralph got a job as a designer,

and within a few years, this guy is leading the design at Chrysler.

I don't know of anybody, ever, younger than Ralph

who's been Head of Global Design.

Chrysler is a very, very scrappy, innovative company.

It's always been the third largest, you know, in the US auto industry.

And that's okay.

It's always had to innovate its way to be noticed.

It takes a lot of work to maintain a brand.

A lot of brands have died in the last six years because of that.

The Chrysler brand is better than it gets credit for.

Every brand, I don't care who it is, has had a dodgy product in their past

that has sullied the brand a little bit, unfortunately.

But I'm a romantic that way. I believe you can design your way out.

You can create a product that reinvigorates, revitalizes the brand,

and that's through engineering and design.

Right now, we're designing the concept car, the SM-1.

It's a family vehicle that's fully electric and autonomous capable.

- Wow! It's really different. - Yeah.

We really tried to play with giving the car more stance,

make it feel slender and more Airstream.

It has an athletic...

Even though it's not meant to be a sports car, it has an athletic stance.

I think that's what creates a unique proportion as well, you know?

Do you think the horizon line will actually behave that way?

Do you intend the line to be that crisp, or are you gonna soften it off a little?

Are you counting on paint to do this, or are you gonna make a crisp line?

Crisp line.

I think the initial idea was to soften it up,

- not so soft that there's not a break... - Yeah.

But soft enough that, you know, all of these radiuses kind of...

- You mind if I put a piece of tape on it? - Yeah, go for it.

See if it kind of holds all the way around the car.

Test it out.

Most designs have a theme line that holds the design together.

The tape is one of those lines.

If you don't get the bones right,

you're never gonna have a good design, no matter how hard you try.

I remember in school, times we talked about,

"Can you sketch this car in three lines?" You know?

"Is it distinctive enough to capture it?" And I think you could.

I hate to break it to you, I'm not feeling the wheels.

Those are just placeholders?

Well... That's where we're headed.

- However, we have time to change... - I've seen the wheels...

You know I hate directional wheels, right? You understand this as...

- I know now. - They're too much.

We can work on it, right?

No, I think it's a great design. I'm really proud of you guys.

Good.

If you ask someone at Ford or GM, they could care less about Chrysler,

they think Chrysler is already a dead brand.

So this concept car is a huge investment for Chrysler.

We don't want to just build a fanciful concept car.

That's easy to do.

Wow, there's a lot of work here.

This thing holds a lot of other innovations that will be useful to us

in a myriad of vehicles.

It still has a portal that represents eyes.

It celebrates the brand beautifully, but it's like nothing else out there.

For the next few months, we're designing everything your eye can see,

the safety items, the infotainment...

The design has to be so powerful that it blows through all the paradigms

and stands for something.

We already own this minivan space, but can we amplify it

and have it mean something to a whole bunch of people?

Fleet companies, the whole autonomous car,

there's so many ways we can take this, so it's pretty big.

So the fate of the SM1 is riding on a meeting we're having a month from now

with the CEO of the company.

If he likes it, it'll go to production, perhaps, or at least as a concept car.

If he doesn't like it, the whole thing will pretty much just be scrapped.

The real genius is Ralph is charged with designing a vehicle

that millions of people would want to buy, and like,

as opposed to a couple of hundred wealthy people,

who want something outrageous.

And when you talk to car designers,

you realize they're taking a styling cue from something that was designed in 1938,

some obscure car,

but they remember that, and they've integrated that into the...

You need all the information to do it now.

Oh, look at this.

This is another gorgeous, gorgeous Ferrari with these beautiful double-cockpit looks.

This vehicle only has one door, and then there's no seam.

They really didn't want to waste the weight of the hinges

or create any more aerodynamic drag, so everything is seamless.

Now that's for future reference!

One of the reasons I went to Mille Miglia

is to really dive into the most known race in Italy,

the most known event of the country and be in it, to get it, to feel it.

That inspires me.

- How you doing, Larry? - Good morning!

Morning, man!

So this is Carina. I named her Carina because it means "sweet woman" in Italian.

She's a 1957 Super Sport Zagato... Alfa Romeo, Zagato.

What's cool about this car is it's called the double bubble roof.

If you can imagine, it didn't have that,

it would be a very tall, unattractive-looking roof.

So designers had to figure out a way to get the required clearance,

but keep the vehicle as low,

and punch the smallest hole through the wind, as possible.

And it's funny 'cause, actually, our current Viper, and a lot of cars,

have adopted this feature in various forms.

It's special.

I mean, there's maybe a dozen that have the double bubble, so...

No. No, imagine how ugly it would look.

If you fill that in, it would be here.

It would look terrible. So I think that's cool.

- Oh, I get it, so that was aesthetic. - It's always about aesthetics.

It's awesome.

I have no idea what that car was, but I'm going to find out.

That's the other thing that's hitting me.

I was born in 1970, so many of these cars are twice my age.

My love affair with cars came from just walking around

and seeing how ugly cars were.

I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, in the late '70s and early '80s.

I remember thinking to myself, "Ugh."

And then one day, I saw a Porsche 911 Turbo.

I think I was maybe nine years old.

And it struck me as being,

"Why is that car more attractive than the one next to it?"

And then I started noticing more beautiful cars.

I would watch Smokey and the Bandit, the Trans Am, even Tom Selleck.

I couldn't care less about Tom Selleck, I'd watch the Ferrari.

And, of course, Dukes of Hazzard . I used to watch it religiously.

I had to negotiate with my parents my homework time

and Dukes of Hazzard time.

So that's who I am, really simply.

Someone who just woke up one day and started noticing this machine.

So I'm the product of proud Haitian immigrants, you know.

And my father had very high expectations for me from the beginning.

Extremely critical. I mean, we didn't even have time to play.

Part of the problem with my dad and I

was he wanted me to be an engineer. I wanted to be an artist.

And he didn't know what to do with me.

So I just stayed in my room and drew a lot.

My brother, he started with stick figures of cars

and then eventually, they became... they actually started looking like cars.

I think it was just an innate gift that he had.

Okay.

But I guess the gnawing sensation in the back of my mind was:

"I can't let Dad down.

I'm not going to let him down. I'll find a way to figure this out."

I call this my folder of innocence.

Wow, this is really old. A Jeep Cherokee my dad had.

Chrysler, their image, it's not the greatest.

They are the smallest of the three automakers.

They don't have strong brand images the way Toyota or Honda or BMW do,

so they've really gotta fight to get people to buy their cars,

and design has to be spot-on for them to be successful.

Hey, Ralph.

Hi, guys. Sorry I'm late.

In our company, we have 21 nameplates just on this side of the pond,

and in Europe we have another 25 or so,

so we have a lot of different cars and we have multiple brands.

We've added some things. You can actually swipe songs now.

I love that.

There's something more to this than just designing.

You have to manage talent, 'cause it takes an army.

This is a little bit too fine. I think that could use a little more beef.

This is nice.

I always try and imagine the future.

The feng shui piece of the screen bothers me.

Like, the fact that the screen will be there all the time.

Maybe it flips and then it adjusts?

- We can do that. - It has to be all James Bond.

You're designing for five years in the future,

then you have to think about the car living in market three to six years.

So you're looking at a nine-year window of time

that you have to consider when you're creating these vehicles,

and that's...

It's daunting.

Jeep is in good shape, RAM is doing extremely well,

Dodge has found its way,

but Chrysler's the one that has the least amount of new nameplates.

People must be wondering, "What is Chrysler doing?

They only have three nameplates. They used to have eight or nine."

So this concept car's important to say, "Hey, we're investing in this brand,

but we're changing the direction of what the brand means."

Last, but not least... All those wanting to know your feelings on SM-1.

A comment on the fabrication side, Ralph.

The roof glass is probably going to have to be acrylic.