Wayne Cherry, VP GM Design

Photo: GM

The Los Angeles facility and the Birmingham, England design studio, opened last year, will serve as "design trend listening posts," forming an intricate global network. They will augment GM's well established design operations in Warren, Mich., Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan and Sweden.

The L.A. studio will employ more than 30 designers, sculptors, engineers and analysts who will bring a West Coast perspective to a wide range of Design Center initiatives. Almost all staff members will come from the concentration of creative talent in Southern California. An aggressive recruiting effort is under way.

"I'm delighted that we're now positioned to fully appreciate California's trendsetting nature, " said Cherry. "The L.A. studio has been carefully located where it can monitor design and style trends and facilitate strategic alliances. "First and foremost, we are expanding our imagination base. We're adding world class design talent to an already outstanding team. And the mission is simple: To help fulfill our overall goal of delivering the broadest spectrum of modern, innovative products to our customers.

"As to the studio it is at the epicenter of design trends in fashion, furniture, consumer electronics, the entertainment industry - everything that influences design for consumers around the globe.

"Furthermore, the far-flung nature of our global network - coupled with GM's leading edge communications - brings a new dimension to project management. We're stressing the possibilities of work on a given project going forward without constraints of geography or the time of day.

"We intend to set trends in our business," said Cherry. "And to do that we must continue to attract great people who are on top of the trends that influence automotive design.

Cherry said GM has been looking beyond the traditional transportation design discipline to fill the new slots over the past several years. "As we design an ever more diverse portfolio of products, we're calling upon a wider range of talents," said Cherry. "The core of our talented team will continue to be people with transportation design backgrounds. But now more than ever, we want to complement those talents with exceptional people in other design disciplines."

(Feb. 22, 2000)