Style council: Renault and Aston Martin designers compare notes

AC: Marek, how did you find the Renault 5?

MR: It was really good. I haven’t driven one before but I know the roads, which helped with a beast like the Vanquish behind me. In terms of its response and excitement, it’s great. If you see an opportunity, you can take it. I even managed a bit of wheel screech at one point.

AC: Do you get the chance to drive cars from other manufacturers much?

MR: We try demonstration vehicles from direct competitors, but very rarely outside of our category, so you take the chances when you can. When travelling I always book an entry-level hire car just to get the base experience.

LA: We’ll drive what we call the ‘golden car’ – the car we have as a benchmark – and lots of competitors from the class. We’re not in Aston’s league, although with Alpine it’s becoming more interesting, and we’re starting to drive cars from premium and sports car brands.

AC: Even when it’s in a different segment, are there things you learn when driving another car?

MR: Completely. In the R5 I spent a lot of my time checking out screen integration, the gap and flush of material change, materiality sections, detail changes and so on. You enjoy driving, but you spend your time looking at material finishes. But we’re fanatical, aren’t we? We go a little bit crazy. I’m looking for anything.

LA: The level of car you can get for the money now is incredible. Our idea was to get dream cars on the road. When [former Renault CEO] Luca de Meo came [in 2021], he didn’t want a difference between the promises we make and the cars we deliver. With the R5 we’ve never done a car where we’ve tried to be so close to the prototype. We really went for the last 5%. It’s like in Formula 1: those last few per cent have 50% of the impact. With car design there are now more possibilities than ever: this is a golden age for car design.

MR: Absolutely. It’s the inflection point in powertrain technologies, and there’s competition coming from all angles. There are more Chinese manufacturers and, in our world, more bespoke manufacturers coming into the ultra-luxury space. So it is a golden age, because there’s more competition and more desire to win.

LA: You need that desire to drive you.

MR: Any designer or engineer is very competitive. I’ve played football with this man: I have a scar he gave me in a match, so I know how competitive he is. And part of the design profession is being competitive. It drives us.

AC: How long have you known each other? You were at Ford around the same time 20 years ago.

MR: We’ve known each other from before Ford. I started at BMW Designworks [in California]. And Laurens was…

LA: ...at [design consultancy] SHR. I left Audi in 1993 when J Mays [then Audi’s head of design] started SHR in California. BMW Designworks was up the road. We looked up our friends in the car design business and we all ended up living in the same area. We became friends very fast.

MR: We kept moving as a group as well. I eventually moved much closer to the beach in Laguna Beach. It was learning to surf and beach barbecues, basically.

LA: California was a good time. Then we ended up moving to Detroit. I was at Ford, and Marek joined through Lincoln. I saw this army coming in with Gerry McGovern, and Marek and David Woodhouse in his slipstream, to revive Lincoln from the ground up. Later, Marek was moved to Aston Martin, and I became design chief at Mazda.

AC: Marek, you’ve ended up at a luxury firm, and Laurens, you’ve led mainstream brands. Do designers have a natural pull towards certain market segments?

MR: You go where the opportunity is, but it’s got to be the right brand. My route started with Land Rover when BMW bought it, which back then was an incredibly utilitarian product – very different from the brand it is today. But there are very few chief designer jobs in this industry.

LA: You don’t have the luxury to say ‘no, I’ll let this one pass and wait for the next’.

MR: These jobs don’t come up very often. Another friend of ours, Adrian van Hooydonk, has been at BMW for 30-plus years. If you look around automotive at the leaders in design, they’ve mostly been incumbent for some time.

AC: Someone like Miles [Nürnberger, the long-time Aston Martin designer who just returned to the firm after a year at Dacia] shows you can move between luxury and mainstream.

MR: We play tennis with Miles, batting him between us.

LA: Or ping-pong, maybe. I thought it was an inspired choice when Miles came for his brief honeymoon at Dacia. There’s quite a bit of similarity between the roles: you fight the same battles, just at the opposite end of the spectrum. High volume, low volume, high price, low price, the rules of design are the same. People say ‘Dacia must be tough because you have little money’. But I have friends at luxury brands who complain about not having enough money.

MR: With design, part of the remit is innovation. You have a budget, so how do you define it? You can spend it on a chunk of carbonfibre for a part, or a tool to make lots of plastic things. The shape is what we try to define; the materiality of that shape is set by your budget. With the Renault 5 you have volume.

LA: Which means we can do things you couldn’t do.

MR: You’ve got to find innovation. You’ve got to have a core component – which the consumer doesn’t see and which is based across everything. 

LA: Today, the level of design that you find in both premium and popular cars is nearly equal. It used to be that if you made a B-segment hatchback you’d see compromises everywhere. But look at the Renault 5: it’s parked next to an Aston Martin Vanquish and you can still appreciate it. Obviously we don’t have the power, but on a design level every aspect is treated with as much love.

AC: As a designer, do you learn from other cars on the road, regardless of class?

LA: For us, Aston Martin is a benchmark in design: it’s the whole brand experience. We’re learning a lot from Aston in how they position the car, how they advertise, how they use branding.

MR: You asked if we get inspiration from other cars: it’s everything, whether it’s fashion, product design, architecture, furniture – you’re constantly looking and absorbing. I spend my time saying ‘I knew you could do that’. If someone has told me you can’t do something and then I see someone else has done it, I will be such a pain in the ass.

AC: Do you recognise the work of other designers when you look at a new car?

LA: I hope so. You want a signature. You want it to be on-brand, and you want to see the imprint of the designer. There needs to be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ [a specific designer]. Obviously a car needs to reflect brand values, but you’re not going to design something you dislike, so you have a personal expression.

MR: With that personal expression we’re also defining the brand’s DNA as it changes over time. Like with your children, it’s a chain of DNA but they’re all different. So our role is to evolve that DNA through time and technology. As Laurens says, hopefully you see it. To me, Renault, Alpine and Dacia now feel more – and I can’t express the word in any other way – designed. They are more considered, there are more consequent things in those products than before. 

LA: Popular cars need to be flexible. We now have future icons and legendary icons, and they can live together. The brand is broad enough.

AC: Laurens, have you ever fancied trying your hand at designing ultra-luxury cars?

LA: Of course. Marek designs the cars that made us all start. If you looked at my bedroom walls as a kid I had Aston Martins and Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Pininfarinas on them. These are the cars that got us into design. Then you evolve, and now I enjoy doing an R5 or a Clio as much as I would do a sports car, or even a van.

MR: Or a Twizy…

LA: Yeah, a Twizy. We have four brands, and I love the diversity. But give us a sports car package and this would come naturally, it would be a dream. Luckily, with Alpine we have a chance.

AC: And the Renault 5 can hold its own: it has been parked next to a Vanquish and people have been taking photos of it.

MR: It has a fan base. Something like an R5 embodies an emotional reaction to some prior existence when you may have been five years old and sat in one, or you saw one being rallied.

LA: There is a reservoir of sympathy for these types of cars. But when you do one, you need to do it right. When people ask me what’s difficult about doing a new Renault 5, it’s that people know when it’s right and they know when it’s wrong. If we do a new Mégane, there are no rules. With a Renault 5 or an Aston Martin, people will tell you if it’s not right. If we do an R5 and we miss it, we’re screwed.

AC: Since Aston does relatively few cars, Marek, do you feel that pressure every time?

MR: Absolutely. In terms of our total sales volume it’s very few, but in terms of product I’m on car number 55 or 56 in 20 years, and with what’s in the pipeline now I’ll easily be at 64. That’s a lot of cars, especially because some are one-offs or limited runs.

AC: Would you like to design a mainstream model, though?

MR: I love the art of design, so the idea of doing something like a Renault 5 or a Twizy really appeals. You get to solve a very different problem.

AC: Laurens, is there anything you’ve ever wanted to ask Marek?

LA: To borrow his cars more often? No, from my perspective Marek lives the dream life. But he has seen Aston Martin go through all kinds of upheavals, and designers incarnate the brand, so we always have to put up a good face even in the darkest of times. So my question would be: how did you keep up the motivation?

MR: Do I have to answer that?

AC: Of course…

MR: It goes back to passion and pride. We become designers for a brand, and we have to imbue the brand. Sometimes my budget has been slashed and it’s mayhem in my head, but I’ve got to walk into a room of customers or journalists and represent the brand. But creatives are very fortunate – we can compartmentalise. It might be crap today, but designers live in the future.

LA: Whenever we’ve had a crisis, I tell the executive team the crisis is already done for me, because I’m working years in advance. For me there’s no chip crisis and trade barriers are long gone: I’m designing cars for when life is good.

MR: Right, what would I like to ask Laurens?