The Hindu Business Line : `Fear is the driving factor in auto design'

The car designer and head of DC Design Pvt Ltd, Mr Dilip Chhabria (left), in conversation with Mr Roberto Piatti, Managing Director, Stile Bertone, at a seminar in Mumbai on Monday. Stile Bertone is among Italy's leading automotive design facilities. - Shashi Ashiwal

Mumbai , Feb. 23

THE Managing Director of Stile Bertone, Mr Roberto Piatti, is an antidote for designers not yet weaned from the profession's habitual cloak of flamboyance. Though his company has to its credit noted automotive designs worldwide, Mr Piatti supports the suspicion that with the next big thing still inaccessible to the market, the automotive world has begun tasting like old wine in new bottle.

In 1968, Bertone brought radical form to the industry with its `Carabo,' a wedge-shaped sports car. Asked what the current drivers were in automotive design, on the sidelines of a seminar here, Mr Piatti said, "The driving factor in today's automotive design, in many cases, is just fear. Being afraid of doing something strange that can be rejected by the market." Simply put, the bearish phase of the global economy, the consequent market focus and stiff competition have left their imprint on the industry's appetite for experimentation in design. "In the end, a majority of car designs are quite normal, very conservative. That is because the investment on a new car is high, and if you make a mistake you can compromise the life of the company."

Further, Mr Piatti added: "The car business today is very tough — little profit and thin margins. It is good business for the final customer but not for the people in the car business." And radical design may yet be delayed in full-fledged commercialisation, because alongside the industry's ailing traditional markets and its impact on design evolution, the centre of gravity of the global automotive industry has shifted to Asia. Core markets there have needs that are not exactly a continuum of design trends set in motion by the West.

Does the shift in market importance towards Asia imply changed design sensibilities? "Even Asian manufacturers are following the general trends. We sometimes propose specific inputs from Asian culture, a good design being also one that investigates local culture for inspiration. But because of the current perception of risk, clients are following more the general trends. They are afraid to pursue a regional trend," Mr Piatti said. "I used to say, you can make good work with good customers, in the sense that the client's brief also affects good design. The top management at OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) is really the key group deciding the future of design. Today's OEM briefs are on the conservative side."

The intellectual stillness is disturbing. "The biggest fear in car design today is this fear of taking any risk." What price could it carry? "When you are not taking any risk, maybe you are also following the biggest risk. The first manufacturers to introduce new themes can eventually turn out to possess a big competitive advantage."

Which is why Mr Piatti defends Stile Bertone's radical products, like the fly-by-wire technology car `Filo.' "Our customer is not the public, but the OEM. My idea in making concept cars, such as the Filo, is to stimulate OEMs. If we are not advanced, why should they come to us?" he said, justifying the contrast between the Filo and market needs like that of Asia's.

"We showed the Filo to GM and they said, it is great, we would like you to work on the Hy-Wire project. That's why we make show cars. Each requires 30,000-40,000 working hours on the average, and the Filo cost 100,000-120,000 working hours. You don't invest such amounts just to make the customer say, that's good style." Still, reducing the drag co-efficient through wedge shapes appears easier than tackling the economic worries of design. Even as Indian designer Mr Dilip Chhabria last year nudged open the business of outsourced prototyping (an assignment from Aston Martin, later from Noble), Mr Piatti feels that is not the way ahead for Stile Bertone.

According to him, there is potential synergy between Indian OEMs' development engineering skills and Italian design houses. But, "to use a metaphor, if you have somebody at home preparing food, you don't buy it from a restaurant even if it is cheaper. ... So, we must face out the situation of being a company with 2,000 people and my main target being to find work for all these people. We cannot put 2,000 people on the street just to say that India is cheaper. That is not our social task."

It has relevance, as for instance, with why design despite its radicalism hasn't smashed the centrality of huge assembly lines to auto manufacturing.

"The point is, the car business involves so many people at the OEMs that even though there are some convenient things, they are not easily done. The car business also has a social role. Many OEMs today cannot close plants, not because they don't want to, but because they are obliged to keep that employment going."