At last week's Los Angeles auto show, we had an opportunity to sit down with GM's vice president of global design, Ed Welburn. The man steering the styling of the General's products talked about the future of Cadillac and the Elmiraj concept, why Lincoln's no longer a competitor to GM's luxury brand, and, well, cup holders. Read on for the full Q&A.
Car and Driver: In a market where companies like Kia are hiring top designers to bring style to economy cars, what does that do to the landscape of designing a really beautiful car?
Ed Welburn: [For] beautiful cars, there really isn't a price point to entry. Beautiful cars can be in all categories. At the end of the day, I think the more attractive vehicle will win, everything else being equal. I feel fortunate to work for a company that has made design a very high priority. Design is very important to the car.
C/D: A lot of your competitors are redefining their priorities. Do you see companies like Infiniti as a competitor in luxury and design?
EW: I see competitors coming from everywhere. To some degree, [Infiniti is] a competitor. From a design perspective, I can't say they're not a competitor, because we have to keep an eye on everyone. We have to stay the course that we are on. We know that we need to push hard, whether it's the full line of Cadillac or sub-brands like the Platinum or our own V-series, we need to be faithful to our brand. I think every brand has to do that. In the luxury category, everyone is looking for designs that evolve over time, that don't shift the design language radically every few years. Customers in the luxury category don't respect brands that change their spots every few years. They want a design that has deep roots, that they can respect for the long term.
C/D: Do you see the renewed styling effort at Lincoln as a sea change, or is the company going through a period of—
EW: I should probably ask you that question! No, I'm not going to comment on Lincoln design. But I don't consider Lincoln to be a competitor for Cadillac.
C/D: Why is that?
EW: They're not a global luxury brand. I don't consider them a competitor. Are they a competitor for Buick? Quite possibly. But not for Cadillac.
C/D: You recently made a change to the Cadillac badge, but the new CTS still wears the old one. Is that something you're looking to phase in mid-cycle?
EW: You will gradually see them appear on Cadillacs. When? I'm not going to say. But this whole thing is moving very fast.
C/D: You mentioned V-series being important. A brand-new Corvette just came out. Will we see a performance tie-up, like a follow-up to the XLR?
EW: We have a lot of cars that we're working on for the Cadillac brand. The XLR is not one of them right now. If there's a list of vehicles that we'd like to do, yeah, we'd do one. But I think there are quite a few other Cadillacs that have a higher priority.
C/D: Is there a segment that Cadillac isn't in right now, but one where you'd like to see Cadillac play?
EW: Yes.
C/D: Can you tell us which one?
EW: I think Cadillac needs to be a full-line luxury brand. There are categories that we don't participate in, presently, that we will in the future. We have more vehicles under development today than at any other time in the history of the brand. But I'm not going to tell you which ones we're going to do. There's a lot that we're working on. And we're certainly looking at that [points to the Elmiraj] for production.
C/D: As a two-door?
EW: Yes. But there's a lot of other vehicles that we're doing, some of which would be an even higher priority than this. I'm very interested in it. We're very interested in bringing it to production, if possible. But I'm not announcing that we are. Just to be clear.
C/D: Does diesel make a car less attractive?
EW: I don't think so. Not today's diesels, or what diesels may evolve to in the future. If anything, it can make them more attractive—not aesthetically—but diesel can, in fact, help.
- Comparison Test: 2014 Cadillac CTS 3.6 vs. 2014 Audi A6 3.0T, 2014 BMW 535i, 2014 Mercedes-Benz E350
- First Drive: 2014 Cadillac ELR
- Instrumented Test: 2014 Cadillac CTS Vsport Twin-Turbo V-6
C/D: Tell us about the motorized cup-holder cover in the new CTS.
EW: I'm responsible for the aesthetics of every GM product globally. There are a couple of different schools of thought: One is that a cup holder should be covered unless you're going to use them. I'm of the opinion that you make the cup holder look very attractive. You do a gorgeous one, and you can leave it open. You don't need the cover, or a motorized one. Just an honest [holder], well executed, with a chrome ring around it. For most people, it's open; they use it as much for storage than for cups. It's more of a stuff holder. Make it attractive, because it's going to be open most of the time. The motorized one is probably going to be open most of the time because people have stuff. I think the motorized door is an intriguing thing to do. If you're going to put a cover on it at all, why not?
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com
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