GM Pins New Design Hopes on Global Cooperation
May 16, 2005 | Levent OZLER
In the future, General Motors Corp.'s designs for Saturn will have more of a European flavor, says one of the company's top designers, while Buick will reflect influences from growing markets in China and other cultures of the Pacific Rim.
Bryan Nesbitt, director of design for GM Europe, said during a recent interview that company designers are collaborating more than ever across regional boundaries to develop new products that capture the attention of vehicle buyers around the world.
"This is a big agenda," added Nesbitt, as he perched on a low-slung couch in his ground-floor office at the Opel Design Center just behind Opel headquarters in Russelsheim, Germany, outside Frankfurt.
In the future, ideas will move inside GM Design from one part of the world to another with relative ease, he added, thanks to a structure that emphasizes cooperation across the globe and is supervised by a single group of executives.
The 36-year-old Nesbitt said that when he was sent to Russelsheim by Ed Welburn, GM's vice president of design, he was given responsibility for Opel and Saab.
"Ed placed me with Opel and Saab, specifically. Then I connect quite a bit with Saturn," he added. "What's unique with Saturn is that you see a distribution channel in the States that is intentionally designed to become relevant with import buyers.
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