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A SWEET CAR NAMED DESIRE
Cars are sexy again. A sense of daring has infiltrated the staid world of automotive design. And the car companies are starting to treat their designers like stars. Say hello to Ralph Gilles.

Text: MIREILLE SILCOTT

AT THE 2002 NORTH AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL AUTO SHOW IN Detroit, the future is now. It is a press day, two days before the public will get to witness next year’s shining bodies. The formerly utilitarian Jeep shows the new Liberty, which looks like it’s been conceived to scale video-game screens. The Ford GT40 has been revived from the flame-sided muscle car showroom of the 1970s. And in the BMW gallery, the once hokey Mini Cooper has come out to play for the first time in North America. This phenomenally tiny car will surely be the sweet sixteener’s wheels of choice in the coming year.

Journalists, schlepping canvas NAIAS 2002 bags full of freebies and press packs, are crowding around one of the latest specimens in the Chrysler corral. It is a mean-looking sports car called the Crossfire, packed with the kind of gut-busting emotion not seen in the American automotive industry for what seems like forever. Car designers and engineers mingle with the masses. One designer, Ralph Gilles, a 32-year-old former Montrealer who is now a senior designer at Chrysler, looks down from the floating DaimlerChrysler press area. "Just look at that car," he smiles, caressing the spiny gleam of the Crossfire with his eyes. "I would say that right now is one of the best times to be a car designer. Actually, I can’t remember a better time."

In 1998, the unveiling of a single automobile at the Detroit auto show revealed the future of automotive design. By then, the aerodynamic, all-rounded jellybean style had shaved not only every angle out of car aesthetics, but also, most of the character. Safety had repeatedly shown itself to be the number one concern of the overriding Boomer market, and, as a result, car design had played it safe. Mercedes coupes were beginning to look like Honda Civics. Civics looked like Ford Tauruses. And Ford Tauruses, which looked like long, lumpy pills, were not sexy.

But Volkswagen’s New Beetle screamed something new, and its legendary waiting lists would buttress the point. Embedded in its zany shell were all sorts of commentary about its driver – young, iMac-using, designer-sneaker-wearing and definitely not a Boomer. Macho fiftysomething car critics immediately slagged the cartoony Beetle by imagining that it was aimed, horror of horrors, at female drivers.

"You loved it or hated it," says Ralph Gilles, who joined Chrysler just in time to witness the company turn itself around through young, novel design. "It was the first car in a long time to get that heavy emotional response. I mean, think of all those well-loved cars from the 1950s. Those were also cars made with youth and emotion in mind."

Other automakers could only hunker down and try to figure out the mysterious forces that lay beneath the New Beetle’s bonnet. In the fall of 2000, Bryan Nesbitt, a senior designer at DaimlerChrysler, was interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. He had designed the exterior of a new Chrysler car, which whizzed from concept to production with unprecedented speed and which coolified the image of stodgy Chrysler (inventors of the minivan). The automobile in question was the Chrysler PT Cruiser, a car that looked like a classic London cab, a 1930s roadster or a hearse, depending on your point of view.

"Some people say it is the ugliest car they’ve ever seen!" said the host. "Yes," said Nesbitt, "and most of those people are over 30. Which for us is great. There is a new demographic shooting up now." An automotive analyst interviewed on the same show agreed: "They don’t drive cars – they wear cars, like a suit of clothes. And so they care about design more than any generation in recent memory."

Some call them Millennials or Echo Boomers; some call them Generation Y. They are today’s under-24 crowd, steeped in the 21st-century principle of stuff-as-identity. They are the largest generation in North America since the post-war Baby Boomers, and analysts say they will be more affluent than even their Boomer parents. Generation Y will be buying new cars at a younger age than any group that came before. And they just love the PT Cruiser. He would never admit it himself. But Ralph Gilles, so humble at the auto show, is clearly being honed by DaimlerChrysler to become one of its next celebrity designers.

They’ve even used his mug in ads. It’s no surprise: He’s a hunk. He’s got amber cat’s eyes, a footballer’s shoulders and a magnificent way with an interview microphone. He’s not yet on a par with Freeman Thomas (who designed the New Beetle and then the Audi TT roadster – a car with almost as much power to polarize dinner parties) or Trevor Creed, the Chrysler hotshot who led the super-successful redesign of the Dodge Ram. But good looks aside, Gilles’ undeniable talent is leading him to the top. In 1999, he was made one of the youngest ever directors of design at Chrysler Corporation’s digs in Detroit (he was 30). It was then that People magazine named him one of the "Sexiest Men in the City," pudding-proof that "car designer" could hold the same kind of romance as "rock star" and the same sort of hushed respect as "architect."

Gilles was just another Montreal college dropout living in his parents’ basement, when his brother, a med-school student, sent his younger sibling’s sketches to Detroit’s Center for Creative Studies. "My brother was like, ‘Come on, do something with this!’" says Gilles, the son of Haitian immigrants. Along with the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CCS churns out most of America’s top car designers. Gilles was hired by Chrysler straight out of CCS, where he created a full-sized auto interior for his graduating thesis. The project was so impressive he had to fend off offers from two other automakers, including Ford.

"Chrysler was a risk," says Gilles. This was before Chrysler’s success in the late 1990s – before it shed its modest image with models like the imposingly massive Dodge Ram or the PT Cruiser, and its modest size by merging with German behemoth Daimler, makers of Mercedes. "It wasn’t romantic! Chrysler was making the K-car! I only chose the company because the year before I graduated, they had shown the Viper at the [Detroit] auto show."

The snarly Dodge Viper is a sports car with a two-seat cockpit, scooped side vents and a lowdown lustiness that would give the Batmobile a run for its money. With a base price of $115,000 and with only about 1,500 manufactured every year, it’s the sort of image-building car that proves just how "Holy Toledo!" a Chrysler car can be. In the past year, Gilles has been made director in a couple of design studios, including Premium Vehicles and the Viper. The young, cool guy working on the cool, young car. "I guess the package is good," shrugs Gilles. And a marketer’s dream come true.

It’s good for DaimlerChrysler that Gilles can appear in slick Saatchi & Saatchi-designed ads. It boosts credibility that Trevor Creed is a known name among the trendy set. But as any car designer worth his salt will tell you, there is no such thing as a car designed by a designer – only one designed by many heads crunched together.

"People in general like a hero, especially young people. The press like to have a name," says Gilles. "But every car has to have a huge team. I mean, I may be on the cover of a magazine, but I am just the tip of an iceberg."

Yet with the dawning of young people "wearing" cars, not just driving them, even this is changing. Traditionally, seasonal with-it-ness couldn’t keep afloat in a process that involved hundreds of millions of dollars and that took at least four years from drawing board to showroom. Now car manufacturers have set up what they call "boutique studios." The cutting-edge Viper studio, for instance, is located far from the regular design offices at DaimlerChrysler’s Auburn Hills facility.

"There’s much less red tape," says Gilles. "If you want something done, you ask the guy next to you, and you get it done. The Viper happened much faster because of it. People are given more freedom. I think the landscape will become a lot more cutting edge."

The change was already well in evidence at the 2002 Detroit auto show with the unveiling of Chrysler’s concept cars. These are not yet production cars but more like pointers to what the roads could look like if the public likes what it sees. A flurry of Y-kids zoomed along the stage on silver Razor scooters, accompanied by videos of snowboarders slashing down slopes on big screens. Greying automotive journalists were given bright pink Popsicles and forced to endure beat-heavy electronic music. Short of unravelling a big banner stating "Old People Suck!" Chrysler pulled out every stop to align itself with the future money of America – the hip kids.

Then came the cars: the Jeep Willys2, which looks like a Playskool toy blown up large; the Dodge M80, which looks like a bright yellow Tonka truck; and the pièce de résistance, the Dodge Razor, a sports car so boombastic it seems to have come straight out of a rally-racer video game.

The car journalists with their ice l

ollies looked more bewildered than anything. "Jesus Christ," said one Texan with a handlebar moustache. "Welcome to Disneyland!" By his side sat a boy of around 13 – one of the kids who had scootered onstage before the cars came out. "Kid, do you like this stuff?"

"Yeah," said the kid. "These cars are really cool. They look like the future! I would definitely buy one."

And in a few years, he will. As Ralph Gilles puts it: "Today, these cars may not be for everyone, but one day, they will be."

It’s a long way from the jellybean. "But then," concludes Gilles, "the jellybean was designed a long time ago."