Korean Car Designers Make Their Mark On the U.S. Auto Industry

[pow]

A glimspe into the designers behind the Camaro project... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1213115275...=googlenews_wsj

Korean Car Designers Make Their Mark On the U.S. Auto Industry

Growing Influence in Detroit and Beyond Is Evidenced by Sangyup Lee's Camaro

By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU

July 22, 2008

These days the Motor City seems to have a Korean accent.

In a bid to reconnect with consumers, the Big Three auto makers have been emphasizing bold designs that hark back to Detroit's glory days. But some of the most eye-catching "American" vehicles they've created are actually products of a growing cadre of auto designers born and raised in South Korea that is gaining influence in the auto industry.

Sangyup Lee with the Chevrolet Camaro concept

Take the new Chevrolet Camaro that General Motors Corp. unveiled Monday. This revival of the iconic late-'60s muscle car is the product of Sangyup Lee, a 38-year-old designer who was doodling in kindergarten in Seoul the last time Carmaros were hot in Chevy's showrooms.

Last January, GM unveiled a concept design for a luxury mid-size SUV-car crossover called the Cadillac Provoq. The lead designer was 38-year old Hoon Kim, also a Seoul native.

The Chevy Volt, the sleek and heavily hyped plug-in electric car GM is working on, was masterminded by Young Sun Kim and In Ho Song, both Korean nationals who came to GM via Hyundai Motor Co.

Over at Ford Motor Co., Amy Kim and Joann Jung, Korean-born designers who attended design school in California, help style the Lincoln MKT, a concept luxury crossover.

Korean designers are also exerting their influence on the products of auto makers beyond Detroit. Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. both have Korean designers overseeing key new models, such as the Nissan Forum, a stylish minivan concept, by Joel Baek, a Korean-born designer at a Nissan studio in southern California.

The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro production model is unveiled at the GM Design Studio in North Hollywood, Calif., on Monday, July 21, 2008.

The rise of Korean designers at GM and around the industry is "just phenomenal," says Dave Rand, GM's chief of global advance design.

Mr. Rand says that less than a decade ago it was still rare to see an Asian face in the corridors of GM's main studio in Warren, Mich., a Detroit suburb. That began changing when GM took a controlling stake in South Korea's Daewoo Motor in 2001. Now there are 43 South Korean natives among the 200 designers working in Warren.

"To assemble the best design team…and to tap diverse ideas, we're going international, and Korean designers are a most critical part of the puzzle," Mr. Rand says. Aside from Mr. Lee, the two other principle designers for the new Camaro were Vladimir Kapitonov from Russia and Luciano Nakamura, a Brazilian of Japanese ancestry.

Bumsuk Lim, a Korean-born design professor at the Art Center college of Design in Pasadena, Calif., attributes Korean designers' rise to the country's increasing societal emphasis on external beauty.

Mr. Lim points out that petite nip-and-tuck cosmetic surgeries like quick nose or eye jobs have become so popular in Korea that parents give them to sons and daughters as high school or college graduation gifts.

"We're not unlike Brazil and other Latin America countries," which are also a hotbed of petite plastic surgeries, Mr. Lim says. "Call us vain, but we like to look good and be cool and trendy."

The growing power of South Korea's automotive industry may also be behind the surge of Korean designers. Stewart Reed, chair of transportation design at Art Center College of Design, sees in his Korean students the same "drive" displayed by the wave of Japanese students of 20 or 30 years ago – who were often sent in by Toyota and Nissan.

In a typical Art Center class of 12 to 15 students, often half of them are Asian, and an overwhelming majority of those Asian students are from Korea, says Mr. Reed. "Koreans are in overdrive."

Mr. Lee, the Camaro designer, joined GM in December 1999 after a stint at Germany's Porsche AG and Pininfarina, an independent Italian design studio. He helped style the current Chevrolet Corvette sports car, as well as several of the most-talked about concepts GM has presented in the last few years, including the Buick Velite convertible concept and the Cadillac Sixteen.

Mr. Lee and many of his Korean colleagues witnessed a cultural renaissance where art and music, often with an extremely modern undertone, blossomed.

In the 1980s, economic growth was the country's top priority, while art and design took a backseat as Korea shed its third-world status, says Joo Hyun Chung, a professor of car styling at Hongik University in Seoul.

Creative Designers at GM Global Design (from left): Hankyoung Ji, Creative Designer; Inho Song, Creative Designer; Joseph Choi, Creative Designer; Min Young Kang, Creative Designer; Sangyup Lee, Design Manager and Steve Kim, Design Manager.

"But over the years, as Korea became fully developed, the country began turning its eyes on other aspects, such as design," he said.

The Simpsons, a popular American cartoon series, employs artists in Seoul to produce the series. Korea also is the center of Asian hip-hop and has a growing presence in the fashion world.

In Korea, pop culture also inspired many design students. Especially influential was a long-running comic book series called "Man from Asphalt Street" and a TV drama based on that series, which glorified a car designer, played by a Korean heartthrob-actor. The story became a huge hit in the mid-1990s.

"That was a very cheesy story, but there was a lot of passion in it, and it inspired a lot of kids like me," says Mr. Lee.

Korea's emphasis on education also may help out designers. GM's Mr. Lee went to regular public schools in Seoul but also attended after-school "art cram school," starting at age 12, with an aim to get into Hongik, a top art school.

He found himself ahead of most of his classmates in drawing and other fundamental skills when he began studying car design at the Art Center in Pasadena after completing a degree in sculpture at Hongik.

Mr. Lee says the bigger challenge was that he "hadn't grown up in a family with a big garage full of hot rod cars" like some of his classmates, and that he lacked (car) culture.

In many ways, the character of people in Korea also gives its car designers the "ideal temperament" for the profession, says Shiro Nakamura, Nissan's global design chief. "They're emotional and hot-tempered, and their dispositions make their design that much stronger and expressive; they're like the Italians of Asia," the Nissan design chief says, referring to another country which has shown excellence in car design.

That's why Mr. Nakamura has made Korea – Hongik in particular – a primary recruiting ground for Nissan's design staff.

Write to Norihiko Shirouzu at [email protected]

[CSpec]

Cool! GM needs all the talent it can get right now.

[ZL-1]

Take the new Chevrolet Camaro that General Motors Corp. unveiled Monday. This revival of the iconic late-'60s muscle car is the product of Sangyup Lee, a 38-year-old designer who was doodling in kindergarten in Seoul the last time Carmaros were hot in Chevy's showrooms.

OMG the new Camaro is a Korean-designed POS! :rotflmao:

Sarcasm mode off

[balthazar]

The ethnicity of a particular designer has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the designs he/she produces. So much so, I see no point whatsoever in the race-centric angle of the above, tho no doubt it plays well with koreans who value such generalities.

[ZL-1]

The ethnicity of a particular designer has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the designs he/she produces. So much so, I see no point whatsoever in the race-centric angle of the above, tho no doubt it plays well with koreans who value such generalities.

It wasnt race-centric, hence the sarcasm mode off comment at the end. I just find it extremely amusing that a Korean had such a role in bringing back the Camaro when on these forums most people automatically see anything out of Korea (car-wise) to be a POS.

[balthazar]

Sorry ZL; I was addressing the article, not your post.

[ZL-1]

Sorry ZL; I was addressing the article, not your post.

My bad