Design: driving force of Korea‘s auto industry
Design chiefs of 4 major automakers talk about past, present and future of Korean car design
By Kim Da-ye
The Korean automotive industry is flying high.
Hyundai Motor Group, which owns both Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, sold over 1.13 million vehicles in the United States last year, breaking the 1-million-plateau for the first time in the world’s most important market.
GM Korea, which introduced the Chevrolet brand last March, launched eight new cars in Korea in nine months and achieved record high sales.
Renault Samsung Motors emerged as French automaker Renault’s strategic center in Asia, exporting more than 137,000 of its key models with the Renault badge ― up 19 percent from a year ago despite disruptions in supply of auto parts after the massive
earthquake in Japan.
Behind the Korean automotive industry’s spectacular growth is design.
Kia’s K5 sedan and Sportage R SUV swept major international design awards while Hyundai’s YF Sonata became the best-selling Korean car ever in the United States and China largely because of its design.
GM Korea’s design studio, which has about 200 employees, is the second largest among General Motor’s 11 studios across the world in terms of the number of projects and the third largest by the number of staff. The Korean studio is the home ground for the design of GM’s mini, small and compact vehicles.
One recent impressive development in the Korean car design scene is Renault
Samsung’s decision to make the Korean design studio a regional leader.
Alain Lonay, the director of design who moved from Renault’s design center in Romania to the Korean unit last October, revealed during an interview with Business Focus that from now on, the Korean studio would be fully responsible for designing all the evolutions of the existing lineup and have a lead role in developing all-new models.
The Korean unit with 45 designers is already the second largest of the French automaker’s studios.
“Four to five years ago, we were not strong enough to be a leader in designing completely new cars. Today, we are,” Lonay said, citing Renault Samsung’s existing infrastructure, relatively easy access to well-trained designers in different fields and growing
importance as an exporter to neighboring Asian countries. Korea is also one of the largest markets for mid-size sedans which are losing their allure in Europe.
“We still have much more potential to expand,” said Lonay.
Becoming a leader in car design means a lot in the automotive industry. Design has become nearly every automaker’s top priority in order to stand out from the rest as the levels of quality and technological advancements have become even. For instance, Hyundai and Kia share the same platforms for their key models but their designs are developed completely separately.
“There is no longer a very good car or a very bad car in terms of general quality. To develop a great engine technology requires long-term research and a huge amount of investment. Design can lead to much more visible, quicker and cheaper innovations,” Lonay said.
Growth engine
The Korean automotive industry started out in 1950s by hand-assembling imported cars. In 1962, Saenara Motor imported parts of the Nissan Bluebird and assembled it in Korea in a modern manufacturing plant, renaming the vehicle Saenara. The automaker eventually became GM Korea after a series of mergers and acquisitions.
Hyundai Motor was set up in 1967, but didn’t make its own car until 1973. The firm had been assembling the Ford Cortina, but after the partnership with Ford soured, it sought to manufacture its own model and developed the Pony. The Pony’s design was by Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italidesign Giugiaro, who was named the Car Designer of the Century by the Global Automotive Elections Foundation.
Afterward many Korean cars were designed by famous international designers, especially Giugiaro, or based on foreign cars ― for example the design of the Daewoo LeMans released in 1986 was rooted in that of German automaker Opel.
But different automakers’ dependence on a few designers resulted in similar looking cars developed both at home and abroad.
Hyundai decided to design its own cars, the first model of which was the Hyundai Scoupe, the country’s first coupe that preceded the Tiburon.
In the meantime, domestic designers became more aggressive in getting their voices and ideas heard.
Kim Tae-wan, the vice president of GM Korea who heads its design center, recalled the top management’s initial distrust in Korean designers observed during his stint at Daewoo Motors between 1995 and 2000.
In choosing the final design for a new car, various designs compete, and the selection process requires the names of the designers removed from the submissions for fair competition.
Kim Woo-choong, the founder and chairman of Daewoo Group, however, would ask which was designed by Giugiaro. Once the Italian legend’s work was identified, the chairman wouldn’t even give a glance at other designs, he said.
When Kim asked the chairman how Korean designers could improve, he was told to learn more. In 1997, Kim took 27 staff members to Giugiaro’s studio.
“At the beginning, Giugiaro was doing everything and our designers, modelers and engineers were just looking. There was a long, flat pencil which we used to draw on a plaster model. I broke the pencil in half in front of Giugiaro and walked out of the room,” Kim reminisced.
Kim suggested to Giugiaro’s team that the Korean team and Giugiaro design half the car each and submit the better one to the competition.
When the design was to be presented to the chairman, Kim said that the Italian designer chose the Korean team’s work that was developed into the Magnus sedan.
“Giugiaro must have chosen a better model because it would carry his name. The second model we worked on together was the Matiz, and he again chose ours,” Kim said.
Kim moved to Italian carmaker Fiat in 2000 and came back to GM Daewoo in 2006. He noticed the change in the design status within the automotive firm as well as that of Korean designers. “The design unit used to belong to the engineering department. Now engineering supports design,” Kim said. GM Korea’s Spark mini car and the Cruze compact vehicles were designed by Koreans in Korea and are now exported and produced across the world.
Korean designers often make design proposals for the segments that are their main responsibilities. For instance, the square-shape tail-lamps of the Malibu mid-size sedan resemble those of the Camaro sports car and came from the Korean design team.
The more recent evolution of car design seems to have taken place overnight. The improvement of design was indeed made swiftly, but it only followed an unprecedented emphasis on design by the domestic automakers.
Kia Motors, which made a dramatic comeback with the Soul MPV, announced “Design Management” in 2005 after considering various routes to overcome the firm’s sluggish growth.
Youn Seon-ho, the head of Kia Design Center and senior executive vice president of Kia Motors, recalled that the slogan of design management was everywhere including in the advertisements, on the walls of the manufacturing plants and on the back of every Kia employee’s business card. Youn shows his own bright red business card with “DE?I (in the a shape of a light bulb) GN” written in the middle.
Around that time, Kia’s own design studios were built in the United States and Europe and the top management took care of design on a daily basis. Youn said that the Forte and the Soul were developed and released to the market amid such an atmosphere.
“The older generation of designers couldn’t imagine they could win over Toyota or other European companies. The younger generation has a different goal. At motor shows, they pick what they want to see, leaving out those they regard inferior to Kia,” Youn said, pointing out confidence as one of the biggest changes among the staff.
Establishing design philosophy
By the early 2000s, Hyundai Motor was among the top 10 global automakers by sales. It could no longer follow trends set by other companies, and Hyundai began seeking its own design philosophy.
Oh Suk-geun, the head of Hyundai Design Center and senior executive vice president of Hyundai Motor Group, drew an analogy between the company in the past and a racehorse that has its eyes shielded from looking to the sides so that it can gallop only forward.
“When we were a follower, we set a goal, identified current trends and picked our competitor,” Oh said. “But the paradigm changed. We had to find our own direction. If we chose a wrong direction and worked hard toward it, that would result in a great loss.”
Internally Hyundai felt a strong need for design principles that could help some 300 Korean and foreign designers, each of who has a strong personality as a designer, toward the same goal. After five years of meetings, research and reviews of various designs, Hyundai’s design philosophy called “Fluidic Sculpture” was born.
Many consumers identify fluidic sculpture with the YF Sonata’s slender headlamps, strong character lines and wing-shape grill, but Oh corrects this, saying that it is a design philosophy that goes beyond the so-called family look.
He explained that fluidic is a word for aerodynamic design that easily incorporates into the environment. Coexistence with nature is its hidden meaning.
Sculpture implies Hyundai’s wish to make a vehicle a work of art as well as new procedures in designing cars. While clay models are usually built strictly according to predetermined proportions and sizes, Oh said that Hyundai’s designers work relatively freely with clay as though they are sculpting. He added that it is an unusual technique among automakers and can bring out emotion in design that couldn’t be achieved through quantitative methods.
Under the design philosophy, Hyundai began unifying new models’ exteriors in the segment. The Sonata, a mid-size sedan, and the mid to large-size Grandeur shares similar looking grills while the compact Avante and the subcompact Accent adopted hexagonal grills.
While Hyundai’s design is perceived as flamboyant, Kia’s design philosophy is temperate beauty. Youn said that taking out elements regularly to make a design simpler is a challenging process that requires a great deal of concentration.
Kia’s family look is almost synonymous with grills that resemble a tiger’s nose ― the grill is seen in most models launched since the beginning of design management ― but Youn said that the company won’t strictly stick to the family look.
“Nobody knows how Kia’s design will look like in 10 years although we won’t change what our customers like. We are agonizing over where our family look is heading and researching separately on that issue,” Youn said.
In the case of Renault Samsung, Lonay said that the company is in the middle of redefining the identity, which will soon be revealed to the public. New vehicle models will increasingly resemble each other, especially in the front, although Lonay does not want the cars to look the same.
He stressed that the principles of Renault Samsung’s design is in line with the firm’s core values, “superior quality, superior comfort and excellent drive,” ― a design that does not cut too much headroom for a spacious interior while the design would become more emotional and fluidic in the future.
Future
Financial investment alone cannot make a fine-looking car. Good design comes from designers who are given the freedom for more creativity but disciplined to endure endless teamwork.
Lonay of Renault Samsung spoke highly of Korean designers’ dedication and excellent level of education. One concern he has about the Korean studio, however, is that all the employees are Koreans except Lonay, while staff at the design center in France come from some 20 different countries.
In addition, Korea is yet to have a strong car culture. In Europe, vehicles from every imaginable brand are found on the road as well as classic cars.
“We don’t have classic cars here. You cannot refer to history easily,” said Lonay.
Renault Samsung’s solution is to exchange more designers across Renault’s global network of studios. Sung Joo-wan, the designer of the new SM7 sedan, is currently in France for a year.
Lonay said that such a program will allow Korean designers to have international experience and pass on new skills to their colleagues later. At the same time, it gives the dispatched designers the opportunity to promote Korea within Renault.
GM Korea also believes that seeing and experiencing more leads to better design. In 2010, the company opened a design studio in Nonhyun-dong in southern Seoul ― a district filled with showrooms of foreign automakers and fashion boutiques ― to help its designers to get out of the research center in Bupyeong, Gyeonggi Province, and experience the latest trends on a daily basis.
Kim of GM Korea said that Korean designers need to have a deeper understanding of cars inside and out rather than just drawing well.
While he studied automotive design at Brigham Young University in the United States in the late 1980s, he found his classmates had been interested in cars since they were very young. Not only had they seen and driven various vehicles belonging to their grandparents, parents and siblings, many also disassembled and reassembled cars as a hobby.
Although Kim had early access to an automobile ― a Fiat 124 which he secretly drove on the sports field of his elementary school with his father’s driver ― his knowledge in engineering was limited compared to his American classmates.
During the summer vacation, he bought an MGB GT sports car that was about to be scrapped and rented storage under a bridge. He rebuilt the car, replacing the carpet, filling the holes and repainting the body.
Before he left for the United States he sold his car and rented different American cars for two months, four to five days for each car.
“It is extremely challenging to work with engineers if you don’t know much about cars. If you do not want to compromise your opinion, you need to learn more about cars,” Kim said.
Hyundai and Kia have benefited from expanding their global design studio network and hiring world-famous designers including Peter Schreyer from Audi and most recently Christopher Chapman from BMW.
While chief designers decide the basic shape of the vehicles, Korean designers at the Namyang Research and Development Center fine-tune the designs, closely working with engineers.
Oh of Hyundai Motor said that Korean designers are probably the world’s best in fine tuning designs, which is an arduous, time-consuming process but leads to a perfectly built car. He added that the synergy between creative U.S. designers and their meticulous Korean counterparts have been Hyundai’s strength.
“It isn’t difficult to make an awesome drawing, but turning it into a perfect model for mass production can’t be done overnight,” Oh said.
But fostering local design talent remains the firm’s key strategy. Oh said that Hyundai sent a group of designers to the Antarctic and to Patagonia in South America this year. Last year, they visited Egypt and South Africa.
“If just one of them gets inspired by the miracle of mother nature, that will result in a huge amount of profit,” Oh said.
Kia also sent the design team to two places of contrasting civilizations ― Madagascar and Dubai. For Youn, creative design isn’t enough. He encourages the designers to imagine the future.
“I ask them to imagine what society will be like in 2020. I ask them to make a scenario, a story and eventually the car design to suit that future,” he said.
“Our strategy is developing together with our consumers. Surveying and satisfying their needs are important, but we are also interested in taking a step ahead and leading them to find out what they can enjoy in their cars.”