Word: forde
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...Mays is pushing toward taking that risk. He and his associates at Volkswagen/Audi and lately at Ford have started a movement among designers to stop listening to focus groups and start thinking about how their creations connect with real people. There are a few more inspiring cars out there these days - the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Audi TT, and now maybe the Nissan Altima. But when will this be translated to the mass market? The really emotive mobiles - the '49, the GT40, the new Cadillacs - are priced beyond our reach. Toyota is trying. But with all the production technology...
...there's change afoot, and that was signaled this week by no less than the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which presented its annual Excellence in Design award to J Mays, the 48 year old (CHK) Oklahoman who has been in charge of car design at Ford since 1997. This is mainly a school of architecture, and they've been trying to get away from the stodgy Harvard image for years (previous award winners include product wiz Phillipe Starck and conceptual artist and theatre designer extraordinaire Robert Wilson). Mays is a guy whose world is actively about more than cars...
...Mays made a name for himself as the guy behind the cuddly Volkswagen New Beetle, which is both mod and familiar (the Old Beetle); the Ford Thunderbird, which is...also mod and familiar (the '56 T-Bird). He takes his cue from the notion that you can't move forward without looking over your shoulder, and his popular designs in recent years have ignited a chorus of "Retro!" Which he argues misses the point. It's not just backward, it's about forward...
...right. It's more complicated than Retro. It's really about emotion, and getting us to say Wow! or Gee! or more when we see a car. Among the six cars on display at the Design School is one even more inspiring, edgier, riskier, than the T-bird - the Ford '49. It's a dramatic black coupe with a glass roof that is supposed to hark back to the car Henry Ford introduced in 1949 that actually saved the company from post-war extinction...
...maybe Mays' real coup is the GT 40, a redesigned (mod!) version of the Ford Le Mans race car that won big in the late '60s. Ford introduced this new GT40 as a concept car at the Detroit auto show in January and it drew rave reviews and a cascade of calls and emails from interested buyers, including the gang of small businessmen from the east coast who flew their jet out for a private viewing...