Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
'Mercedes facelifts aimed at small updates'
Mercedes-Benz Exterior Design Director Robert Lesnik / Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
By Nam Hyun-woo
By Nam Hyun-woo
FRANKFURT _ Robert Lesnik, exterior design director for Mercedes-Benz, said the German brand's designing focus is on making small but sensual improvements to an already-made design base, rather than making drastic changes.
He also said such a philosophy will continue until self-driving cars emerge and remove the necessity of a steering wheel, although the exterior of cars will not look very different from that of nowadays.
“It is about making updates and improvements on an already-made design philosophy,” Lesnik said during an interview with The Korea Times on the sidelines of a media test event for the new Mercedes-Benz GLC family near Frankfurt.
“For example, we don't have the base lights in the front and some other design features we used to have anymore. Instead, we now have standard full LEDs and multi-beams. They are little things, and there's no reason to change much if you want a coexistence between old and new models.”
Lesnik, a Slovenian car designer, joined Mercedes-Benz in 2009, after working at global car brands including Kia Motors and Volkswagen. During his stint at Volkswagen, he worked with Gorden Wagener, who is chief design officer of Daimler AG, and Peter Schreyer, former head of design of Hyundai Motor Group.
“In 2009, Wagener want to do a completely different design, which now is the brand's design philosophy of sensual and purity, which highlights the proportions of cars but removes lines covering the body,” he said. “And the outcome is the new GLC family.”
He said the necessity for frequent updating the interior of a car or its software is growing as automotive technology evolves to embrace connectivity, artificial intelligence and even self-driving, but the general concept of the exterior has to be shared for one lifecycle of the vehicle ― six to seven years.
As he said, the exterior of the new GLC family, the brand's midsize SUVs, which will debut in Germany next month and later in Korea, have not gone through drastic changes despite being face-lifted. Instead, Mercedes-Benz made several major updates in their engines, infotainment and safety features.
On Mercedes-Benz's future design direction, he said the idea is the same.
“Though we are developing self-driving cars, currently you have to drive the car most of the time,” he said.
“At some point, technology will improve and the car will drive autonomously safely. Then, designers will have more freedom in changing the architecture.
“For the exterior, however, the aerodynamics will play a heavy role, thus the current shape will stay here for a while.”