Re*Move

Jaguar's 75th Birthday bash

 

Jaguar officially celebrated its 75th Birthday on Friday. And to mark the event, a convoy of 75 Jaguars, featuring every model the firm has made since 1935, left Millenium square in Coventry on Friday morning for Wellington Barracks, opposite the Queen's modest pile somewhere in London, SW1. Having celebrated the anniversary of Sir William Lyons' unveiling of the very first Jaguar model - the SS, in the same room of the Mayfair hotel on Friday night, on Saturday morning the cavalcade resumed its journey, heading to Goodwood and the weekend's Revival festival.

What really made this event special were the owners and the untold, unseen stories behind the cars here. The cars on this run weren't just from Jag's own special heritage fleet, or examples that are molly-coddled within an inch of their lives and never used. Owners had brought examples of just about every single model the company's ever made to Coventry - and had then gone through what must have been, frankly, the unnerving process of being paired with a journalist for the trip, who they'd never met and who they then let drive their pride and joy. I travelled with Matthew Nice in his pristine 1967 3.8 S-type, who's story was quite unique. When he was young, Matthew lived with his mum and his grandad, who had bought this very car when it was just a few months old. His grandad ran it until he died, and although Matthew at the time was just 15, his mum realised the attachment and sentimental value the car held, so tucked it away in a barn rather than selling it as part of his grandad's estate. Roll forward to 1997, and Matthew began what turned into a 9-year project to bring the car up to the fully restored, concours condition you see today. The car had never been back to Coventry, nor visited London, and I was only the 8th person to ever drive it. The experience was as magical as one might expect. Driving a car without modern brakes, that doesn't have wing mirrors and that foregoes a radiator fan can prove an occasional challenge in modern traffic, but we made it to Goodwood unscathed, despite the best efforts of London's kamikaze bus drivers and traffic in Knightsbridge on a friday afternoon.

Jaguar has had a troubled existence over much of the past 30-40 years. I've always held Ford somewhat responsible for failing to develop the brand's real potential over the past 15 years or so - but talking to many (much more knowledgable) folk on this trip, changed my view somewhat. The real dispise is reserved for British Leyland; the consensus view being that Ford spent the best part of 20 years with its hands full simply trying to put right the damage done in the 70s. Today, with a fresh and competitive product line-up and under the new ownership of Tata, there is much hope and much expectation about where the brand can go. There are issues of course. Jaguar's 'beautiful fast cars' mantra perhaps sits uncomfortably in an age of apparent financial austerity and environmental imperatives, while despite the improved products, the brand still appeals to a more mature, overtly male market than is ideal. Yet the sense of occasion, together with the exceptionally well executed planning - not to mention investment - that went into this event suggests that the people now running the company have an understanding of how to take the brand forward for the next 75 years. It won't be easy - and much will depend on the investment and autonomy provided by its Indian parents - but I sincerely hope that my children will get to see this brand celebrating its 150th year come 2085.

Favourite photos from the weekend below, while at the bottom of the page click on a link to a photoset of the weekend.

E-type and XK140 await departure from Coventry's Millenium square on Jaguar's 75th Anniversary

MRT 511E - Matthew Nice's 1967 Jaguar S-type, and my steed for the weekend.

You don't see many E-types with paintwork like this... and no, before some wag asks, it's not a matte black wrap!

E-type and MKII follow S-type through the Cotswolds

Matthew Nice at the wheel of his 1967 S-type

Autumnal leaf fall dances across the hood of red E-type outside Berkshire's Vineyard restaurant and hotel

A mirror full of E-types...

Harrods, reflected in a (real) wallnut dash.

Click on the link above to see the full set on flickr.

Joseph Simpson is associate editor of Car Design News and a consultant at Car Design Research

 

Post consumerism? A crisis in design, a crisis of ethics: a time for change

I just got married. Hence have been away for a while, and why the lack of posts. It's not unknown for such activities to cause people to reassess their priorities, and begin to question stuff they previously took for granted. So, this could just be me. Yet I sense something is in the air. Something feels different...

Take the election in the uk right now. The media-spun forgone conclusion we began the campaign with has been thrown open by a number of things, including a TV debate which shook-up the status quo. Every day, social media channels are exposing the bias and vested interests of traditional publications and big business. The entire event feel not only more open, but exciting, and 'different this time'. As Gordon Brown discovered yesterday, you are never 'off record' anymore. And in all of this, among the optimists such as your author, there's a sense that we - the people - can make a difference. Our say somehow feels like it 'matters more' this time.

Then take the auto show in Beijing last week. The western auto companies unveiled products that whispered of a sense of relief. The crisis is over, and now China's growing auto market will allow them to simply continue as they were, thanks very much. Ford, at least, showed a city car. Yet I haven't found many people who are impressed with Mercedes' vulgar - and dubiously dubbed - 'shooting brake concept'. Or anyone who actually needs, or cares about the BMW Gran Coupe concept. And while many were still busy laughing at Chinese 'copies' of western models, those who stood back saw a set of Chinese car designs that had a level of genuine credibility that was unthinkable just two years ago. Some even noticed the Chinese Government initiatives, and the impacts they are having on development of Chinese electric cars, which could have some interesting consequences for the old guard. Better Place gained a foothold in the world's largest country - despite being increasingly poo-pooed by some in the developed world, but Chinese firms are developing similar charging infrastructure plans of their own...

There's a sense that the more switched on people are looking, scrutinising, and questioning the status quo more than ever before. It's apparent in design and design criticism as much as anywhere else. Ultimately, the very role of the designer is being questioned. While this may be somewhat frightening, it at least means we may be moving to the next stage of the debate, beyond dubious tick-box, shiny apple-green sustainability. Rather than become all preachy, the main point of this piece therefore, is to draw your attention to a series of important articles and events reflective of this new, deeper line of questioning. If you're a designer, or design student, I'd argue they're required reading...

The underlying contention they all make, is that many designers are - far from making things in the world better - complicit in simply encouraging people to consume at an ever growing rate - messing up peoples' heads, and screwing the planet in the process. So what role for the designer?

Core 77's Allan Chochinov perhaps framed this most eloquently some time ago, in his 1000 word manifesto for sustainability in design. Now a couple of years old, it nonetheless still resonates and provides a useful starting point. More recently, Munich professor Peter Naumann's "Restarting car design" looks set to become a seminal piece, and is one all students of transport design need to read. Judging by the shock-waves it has generated, and the response to it from those I've spoken to in the auto, design and education sectors, he has hit the nail on the head. Because increasingly, it isn't just industry that's in the firing line, but design education institutions that are being questioned. For its part, the Royal College of Art is currently hosting the "Vehicle Design Sessions". There have been two so far, and both have touched on the areas I'm discussing. As Drew Smith's write-up chronicles, the panelists at the first - sustainability focused - debate, were unanimous in their view that vehicle design students should now look outside of the established industry if they were truly intent on using their design skills to have real impact in the world. Perhaps not what you'd expect from an event held at one of the world's leading vehicle design courses.

For those students of design interested in more than just the design of the next sports car, all of this raises a dilemma. How do you balance the necessity to find employment and money, without simply tramping up a well-trodden path, or falling into big-industry - pandering to whims and being emasculated from affecting meaningful change?

I doubt many will find that quandary any simpler after reading Carl Acampado's piece, but it's a necessary read nonetheless. Entitled  "The product designer's dilemma", it is bound to strike a chord with many of its readers. Acampado touches on the conflicts that the average designer - and indeed typical consumer - today faces in balancing personal desires, ambition and personal success, with the best way not to fuck up the planet. It's an impassioned piece, and just like your author here, Acampado has no real silver bullet solution to many of these problems. Yet his "dog for life/do it with love" message resonates loudly, and without wanting to sound all soppy, could be an interesting mantra to apply both as a consumer and in whatever area of design you practice. Please read the piece to see for yourself what I mean, if you haven't already. It echoes the voice of many of those I have mentioned above, and contrasts starkly with the PR-spun froth that consumers are (hopefully) growing increasingly sick off, yet which nonethelesss still dominates media 'opinion' that we are bombarded with every day. Stuff that I might add, is now the domain of much online green media, not just the likes of auto.

A final point. "Drive less. Save more" proclaims the title of the most recent email to land in my inbox, which is from the Energy Saving Trust - a UK Government sustainability body. In terms of missing the point completely, yet perfectly representing a very particular 'old way' of thinking that I'm taking issue with, I can't help thinking that it sums things up rather neatly. New approaches are needed. Thoughts on a postcard please... or alternately in the comments box below.

Image credit: "Consumption reflected" - Zohar Manor-Abel on flickr

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 29th April 2009. Full disclosure: Joseph Simpson is a visiting lecturer in Vehicle Design at The Royal College of Art. The thoughts expressed here are his own, and in no way necessarily reflect the views of the Vehicle Design Department or the wider College.

Moonlighting on Downsideupdesign... Geneva auto show Podcast #1

Still not had your fill of this year's Geneva auto show? Well then why not head over to Drew Smith's downsideupdesign blog, where you'll find me guesting on their first podcast, in which Drew and myself disect the design and strategy behind Geneva's most important production debuts (and at times, that disection perhaps comes closer to vivisection...don't say we didn't warn you!)

Click on the screen grab below to head through to downsideup's site, or here to go direct to the video on blip.tv

With thanks to Drew for conducting the podcast, and putting in all the edit time...Check back soon if you'd like to see us rake over some hot coals in the form of Geneva's concept cars.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th March 2010

Geneva auto show 2010 - some things you might have missed...

By now, you'll no doubt have read all about the cars and concepts that you were interested in at last week's Geneva auto show. But if you've still apetite to digest and cogitate, Drew Smith - of the Downsideupdesign blog - and myself are producing a two part podcast with pics to cover all of the major production debuts and concepts, which you'll be able to see/hear in the next few days. For now though, you might be interested in some of the details, elements and irreverant bits and bats that I noticed in the Palexpo last week. So without further ado...

Citroen reimagined the ReVolt from Frankfurt as a racer for the road in the form of the SurVolt (above). Only Citroen could get away with painting it gloss blue, matte grey, pink and orange. But they did. Note these graphics - they were quite fun, a play on PCBs - used to signify the electric drivetrain.

Meanwhile over at Mercedes (above), they'd got wood... (sorry, couldn't resist). The use of wood laminates in this interior was fantastic - it vied with the Pegueot (see below) for concept interior of the show, and previews an altogether more 'light of touch' future Mercedes interior design language...

Peugeot marked its return to form with the SR1 (although special note to the glorious bike also on the stand) - which previews the brand's altogether more acceptable new face (thank god the rictus grin's gone). But it was the interior that really stood out in this car...great work Julien et al:

Speaking of gorgeous things, here's a shot of the superb little Pininfarina Alfa Duettotanta that makes me go a little bit weak at the knees...

Can we stop using car clinics now please?

You may remember us raving over Citroen's C-Cactus concept from Frankfurt 2007, some time ago. It wasn't just the design we liked though. Parts reduction, light-weight tech and pared, basic simplicity-of-thought got us fired up too. But it was the fact that Citroen said they were actually going to production-ise the thing that really got us excited.

After the marketing-led disappointment that is the DS sub-line (at least in its initial, DS3 form), the production Cactus was what we holding out for from Citroen.

While we weren't expecting the Cactus to make it to market in unfettered form, we'd hoped the principals and ideas behind the concept would win through. However, a report in autocar this week suggests that some of the pared back simplicity of the concept vehicle will now be junked in favour of more kit, and greater complexity for the production version - because the stripped concept was "too radical" for customer tastes:

"The Citroen C-Cactus concept car will reach production in a different form, after customer clinics questioned the car’s back-to-basics interior.

Research has uncovered aspects of the car that potential buyers were not happy with. The lack of dashboard and the way its instruments are clustered around the steering column were said to be particularly off-putting.

Citroen is also considering fitting electric windows instead of the concept’s wind-up units, which reduce complexity."

I wonder when car makers are going to give up on these types of customer clinics, which only ever seem to produce 'negative' responses resulting in radical design and ideas rejected in favour of conservatism? At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, to quote Henry Ford: "If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse"...

Understanding the customer's needs, aspirations and desires is a critical part of launching a successful product, but if the car industry really wants to inovate; to move beyond the current mess it's still in, then can we politely suggest that they ditch clinicing like this? BMW, Ford and others claim to have. So why are the original innovators - Citroen - still at it?

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 4th February 2010

New Jaguar XJ - The Designer Overview (with video)

The cat's eye - new XJ features slim, elongated headlights reminiscent of the C-XF

Pity Jaguar. More specifically, pity Jaguar’s design team. Working for one of the most evocative, well-loved car brands in the world, with a rich history of producing sporting, luxury – but most of all beautiful – cars, might seem like a dream job. Yet when every man and his dog has an opinion on what a Jaguar is, and should be, it’s a tricky task. But after the years of retro style mis-adventures (the X-Type and S-Type), Jaguar is returning to form. But while most commentators seem settled on the view that modern Jags are the equal of the German triumvirate for ride, handling, performance and quality; styling and design are somewhat thornier issues.

The last XJ - the best car in its class in many areas - was still more Bexhill Pavilion than White Cube in the style stakes. It was a shame, because this mis-matched terribly with the car underneath – one that was constructed largely out of aluminium, and out-rode, out-handled, and out-MPG’d most of the German opposition. Come the XF, Jag went modern, but then whispers about it being Lexus-like and even not Jaguar enough reared their ugly heads. The company can’t seem to win.

The XJ is the final chapter in repositioning the company in terms of design, completing a job that started with the XK, and continued with the XF. It’s also the most daring, and the most shocking piece of design of the three. No one’s been criticising Jaguar for overt-retro style references this time around. Mark came away from the Saatchi gallery launch in the summer highly impressed. And last week, I got an exclusive two hours with the car and its lead exterior and interior designers, Adam Hatton and Mark Phillips - see the two videos below the photo. 

The XJ, with interior design manager Mark Phillips (left) and exterior design manager Adam Hatton (right)

Watch Adam Hatton talk through the exterior design of the Jag XJ in the video below

Watch Mark Phillips talk through the interior deisgn of the Jag XJ in the video below

The car they – and the rest of Jaguar’s team – have conceived, is now altogether more befitting of the car’s high-tech, light-weight aluminium structure than its predecessor. It looks and feels modern – yet slightly quirky - in a way that sits well with Jaguar’s aspirations to be a dynamic, modern, but still quintessentially British sporting luxury brand.

The video interviews reveal a more in-depth, detailed overview of the design, as told by the designers.  Watch and see whether you think they've succeeded - we'd be interested to hear your comments. I'm not going to pass judgement on the design until I've seen the cars on the road and driven one. Only then will I be able to make up my mind on this car’s two most contentious elements – that blacked-out pillar, and the fully virtual TFT instrument display. Many will have already made up their minds on these aspects based on the pictures – in which there’s a heaviness around the rear three quarters, and over the wheel arches, that feels a tad un-Jaguar-like. Equally, many will dismiss the virtual screen, saying it’ll never match the classiness of a well detailed set of ‘real’ dials. Those doubters may be proved right. 

How my EOS 400D sees the XJ's virtual instrument panel

Yet in the flesh, there’s a presence to the XJ that sucks you in. No, that rear-pillar doesn’t truly work when the car's static, but this car grows on you, and keeps you attention by asking you questions. For all the Citroen C6 / Maserati Quattroporte references made post its summer launch, the cars that the XJ reminded me of most, after a few hours in its presence, were the Audi A5 and A7 Sportbacks. Maybe that sounds like damning with faint praise, but it’s meant more in relation to a sense of modernity - than style or surfacing - and as a compliment.

It’s a different, modern piece of work the XJ, and undoubtedly brave in a class that is probably the most conservative of all automotive segments. Yet in many ways it makes sense. It’s less clear than ever who the luxury car customer actually is. The sector has been shrinking faster than most, and is under great pressure for image and environmental reasons.

Rather than simply aping the S-class/A8 model, Jaguar’s done something different – and positioned this car slightly apart from that market, doing something that fits both with the brand, and the high-tech, green construction method. Whether this will prove to be a smart move, only time will tell. But that Jaguar has the confidence to do this at all, tells you all you need to know about the spring-in-the-step of this grand old marque as it prepares to celebrate its 75 birthday.

Published by Joseph Simpson on 2nd February 2010

Goodbye SAAB

We're not going to act like it is a surprise, but we're still shedding a tear or two this afternoon after confirmation from GM that it is to shut its Swedish sub-division SAAB. After years of new product starvation and the collapse of talks with Koenigsegg and now Spyker, the brand from Trollhattan - beloved of sensible professionals the land over - will shortly close its doors.

The death of SAAB saddens me in a way that - I'm sorry to say - the demise of MG Rover didn't. I can't entirely put my finger on why, but perhaps it's a personal thing. My piano tutor throughout my formative years had a fabulous green 900 that I regularly used to ride in. I've known many architects who drove, and raved about, SAABs. Sarah's dad used to have a 9000 as a company car, and her mum runs a current generation 9-3 convertible, which to me is much cooler than its competitors from BMW, Audi or Merc, even if by any objective measure it's somehow 'less good'.

How it's come to this is well documented, and not worth raking over again - but what happened is a good example of why mergers and takeovers can be a bad thing. Prior to GM's investment, SAAB made sub-cool, idiosyncratic cars, which while rarely regarded as class leaders, were at least different. The aforementioned 900 run by my piano teach was bought in 1990 - largely thanks to it having a vast boot, needed for transporting her husband's paintings across Europe to their native Hungary for exhibitions. Back then - to the 9 year old me - a car whose ignition barrel was on the transmission tunnel, which wouldn't let you turn the car off unless you locked it in reverse, and which had a turbo boost gauge, was the height of excitement. 

A real SAAB - in Detroit. Oh the irony.

It's testament to what SAABs were then that she still drives that very car to this day, and that as far as I know it's still running as sweet as a nut. Its qualities - safety, solidity, spaciousness, ergonomic intelligence and an image that was resolutely different to BMW, Mercedes or Volvo, was what attracted so many of the professional classes to the brand. Nice, smart people - doctors, architects and teachers, drove SAABs. In my view, it's to GM's eternal shame that they couldn't capitalise on this. They kept the looks, the funny ignition barrel and the good dashboard ergonomic, but started basing the cars on platforms that were far from in their first flushes of youth. The 90s 900 based on the 80s Vauxhall Cavalier/Opel Vectra being the classic example. That was fine for a while; the people who bought SAABs weren't bothered.

Yet the upper echelons of the car industry were changing, and GM starved SAAB of the ability to keep up. While GM were completely failing to get the appeal of SAAB to a predominantly European buyer, BMW and Mercedes were inventing and filling niches left right and centre, that were changing those buyer's perspectives. What they did was create demand among those very classes who once-upon-a-time had driven SAABs, for small premium hatches (1 series, A-class), SUVs (X5, X3, ML) and small lifestyle wagons (3, 5, C, E, A4, A6). Worse still for SAAB, while GM was dithering, Audi hauled itself out of VW's shadow, and turned itself into a premium brand that (until very recently) became what you bought if you wouldn't be seen dead in a Beemer or Merc. All the nice, design-aware people were suddenly driving Audis.

By the time GM admitted defeat, the 9-5, once the mainstay of SAAB's range, was 13 years old, and had acquired a pair of bizarre Dame-Edna Everage spectacles on its snout. Find another mainstream car in the industry that's anywhere near that age and I'll eat my hat. Its age alone sums up where GM went wrong. But there was so much more. The new 9-5 - reputedly signed off years ago, still isn't here - and probably never will be (at least as a SAAB). It was still running around Millbrook proving ground on final validation tests when I was there in September. A great shame, because even though the new 9-5 was unlikely to ever be a 5 series-beater, it was an impressive enough car, which priced right, might have hit its target quite well. Combine that with the fact that Anthony Lo and team in Russelsheim had knocked out some fantastic-looking, authentically SAAB-feeling concepts over the past few years, and one starts to think that had GM only had big enough balls and deep enough pockets, the story might have been very different.

In the cold light of day, SAAB clearly no longer stacks up. Sales are too low, and it's a European niche brand. The American's never really got it - certainly not well enough to own it - and GM needs to save money. So shutting SAAB is the only thing it can reasonably do now.

But stop for a minute and consider these things. The topic du jour in the car world (actually, with Copenhagen, just make that the world - full stop) is green issues. SAAB, thanks to its Swedish roots and early implementation of things like catalytic converters, has long been thought of as a green, clean brand. So when everyone else is busy inventing new faux green 'sub-brands', GM is busy killing a fully authentic one. Smart.

Continuing on the green theme, if we look to current and future gasoline engine technologies, today's talk is largely about turbo-charging. Ask anyone in the industry which company is synonymous with the word 'turbo charging', and I guarantee they'll give you one answer: SAAB. SAAB practically invented the technology, it has for years used it on its cars, and I think I'm right in saying every car it currently sells is turbo-charged. So just when you want to talk turbos, and how you’ve years of knowledge and history building them, you go and kill the world's most famous turbo-charged brand. Welcome to the world of GM.

Finally, design. In an era when people will pay - frankly - silly prices for an Arne Jacobson chair or table, and have more design ‘literacy’ than ever, Swedish design ought to be a major selling point. SAAB's design foundations, and design language feels apt for our times. Retrained, sophisticated, clean, pure, and non-showy. There's depth in SAAB's design too. The seats in SAAB's cars have long been regarded as some of the best in the industry, and to this day are still paragons of ergonomic comfort. Likewise the dashboard. Everything is ergonomically right, and falls to hand. And if you've ever been to a motorshow on press day, you'll usually find us folks from Car Design News down the SAAB stand, bathing in the cool white lighting and Swedish chairs, partaking in the best lunches and cappuccinos at the show. Cars like the Aero-X concept show that there are people working for SAAB/Opel who understand what good, Swedish, SAAB design is about too, and how it could be used as a selling point. And I haven’t even touched on safety. Yet now it’s all academic. 

The 9-X concept. Which people like me would have automatically bought ahead of the default Audi A3

In years to come, books will doubtless be written about bad management, which will use GM's handling of SAAB as case studies in how things shouldn't be done. Such thoughts make us sad, so we'd prefer to remember some happier things about SAAB. Stig Blomqvist flying through a rally stage in a SAAB 99 Turbo, the comedic torque-steering power of various Viggen models, the theatre of the Aero-X concept’s lifting cockpit canopy, and lazy summer afternoons, wind-in-the-hair in the back of a top-down 9-3 convertible. They might not have been perfect, but SAABs had this way of making you feel deeply secure, happy and content. In a world where so much is changing, and so much is uncertain, we still think there’s room for that kind of car. It's just a pity that GM never saw it. So goodbye SAAB, you will be missed.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 18th December 2009

Related reading: 

On Saab's Passing (by Ben Kraal, on his blog).

Report from Detroit: We Bear Witness (Firebird Man).

Five Trends for the Tens

There are some really important changes going on that will shape the process of designing cities, and how we move and interact in them, over the next decade. Here's Mark's shortlist:

1. Huge cuts and a focus on the essential

Everyone - from entrepreneurs to public administrators, needs to adapt to a world where innovation "culture" is no longer focused around the bleeding edge, the piece of the economy that is the "growth" market. Instead, the most important innovation will focus on achieving dramatic cost savings or improvements in the usefulness of essential services - stuff that absolutely has to happen, rather than 'nice to haves'. In other words, the target market will be the "decline" market. Don't be scared. This is surprisingly good news, because we'll focus on solving big problems, instead of peripheral ones.

2. The gulf between skills and jobs

While today's corporates and governments meet at "Cloud Computing" conferences to debate how to put their boring, dated processes online in new ways, a new generation of digitally-empowered workers is approaching over the hill. These people need jobs, and already have, on their own laptops, far more flexible, powerful, communicative tools than almost anything that exists in the firms they're applying to work for. The result is going to be a crisis - new skills and new tools that many firms will resist adopting until it's too late. Young people will be hired into environments, start using 'enterprise' systems, and conclude that everything is lame. Successful firms (and governments) will attract the talent, harness these people and embrace the constantly evolving set of tools these people bring for themselves.

3. Big office space becomes obsolete

We all need somewhere to work - but what most organisations don't need is large buildings with big reception areas and "working" floors packed with desks and computer workstations. Yet today, the office is the definition of modern business and modern cities. This is about to change. Expect great confusion as developers and property owners resist the change (and the resulting fall in building values), while others see the opportunity to create larger, more flexible living and working spaces, possibly made available in completely new ways. You'll also see networks of people who came together digitally move into physical environments for the first time, in a big way. This will be exciting. Remember, New York lofts used to be warehouses and factories. Throughout history, new communication networks, from ships to railways to cars, have always led to the creation of new physical communities built because of them.

4. Consumerism in crisis

This one deserves two paragraphs. A couple of questions will dominate debate over the next few years. Will we expand or reduce the gap between rich and poor? Is a society whose wealth is measured based on the production and consumption of things, or the manipulation of their on-paper value, actually sustainable (economically, not just in terms of resources).

The dramatically changing ability of people to share what they do and think has the potential to reshape the way we decide what to buy, and how we articulate the experience of using those things. We're not saying you won't buy stuff - it just won't be the same hierarchy as it's been for decades. As the ripples from the financial crisis continue, fundamental questions about what wealth is, what it means, and how it should be demonstrated, will make for an interesting era. Notions of ownership have been in flux ever since most people stopped buying music, as an object to own. In an era when an iPhone is now a more useful, cheaper, social vehicle than a Ford Fiesta for many (especially young) people, an "Apps" culture means we are likely to buy lots more virtual stuff, rooted in software, where the emphasis is on doing rather than just having. The authenticity of objects, and the connections and associations they imply, is also likely to become ever more important.

5. Open versus closed

London's teenagers are likely all by themselves to generate and organise far more data than London's public authorities will over the next ten years. As the power of open source collaboration stretches beyond software, as the masses rush to share updates, pictures, and video of what they're doing and what they think, we're going to hit some nasty issues. These might be about security, privacy, lifestyle, even thought. But a lot of them will be about people defending existing approaches, who seek to undermine and discredit those who believe that by sharing ideas, knowledge and resources, we can create more wealth and better cities. Watch this space.

Joe and I would love to talk to people who have views on any of this. Bounce us a note, leave a comment, or please share this with others who may be interested. If you're in London, drop by and we'll film your comments. Or if you want to write a nice guest blog, we'll post it.

Mark Charmer is a researcher at The Movement Design Bureau. He's also a co-founder of Akvo.

The 2009 Ford Hedge – A Review

Like a prized suburban garden, Ford is cleaning up in the neat-and-tidy-American-car-company stakes. Joe Simpson pushes past the perimeter and asks, is it enough?

Last week, 100 ‘agents’ pulled the covers off the 2011 Ford Fiesta at the LA auto show in the climax of the six month-long “Fiesta Movement”. Just a couple of weeks before, Automobile magazine named Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally, their man of the year, which must be all the sweeter for Dearborn considering GM promptly lost its second CEO in eight months.

Yet there’s another way of looking at where Ford currently stands, a viewpoint that throws away the rose-tinted spectacles. Ford is lauded in America because it has avoided the traps fallen into by Chrysler and GM. But is that enough to define success? As someone who has just spent the last year looking at Ford’s approach to sustainability, I should be well placed to do that.

One year ago, the company quietly opened its doors to us, two British researchers armed with video cameras, and said “go in, ask questions and poke a camera where cameras haven’t been poked before, let people see how Ford is changing”. They had no control over what we said - a potential PR rep's nightmare. Yet it was just one part of Ford’s strategy to communicate more openly, and be more social. Crucially, it also wanted to show the world it was going green – Ford was changing.

"Poking a camera in.." in this instance with Nancy Gioia and the Plug-in hybrid Escape

Standing up

So what’s changed? Last December, we found a company reeling from the fallout of the auto bailout debacle. Auto CEOs were just one rung down from bankers in the evil stakes, and many commentators had wrongly lumped Ford into the same boat as GM and Chrysler, saying it needed bailout money to survive. It didn’t, and wanted to let the world know, so then newly appointed head of social media, Scott Monty, spent the next few months contacting and correcting every blogger, analyst and media commentator on Ford’s position.

Come January’s Detroit Auto Show, the wind was changing direction. The Lincoln C concept proved Ford was in touch. A downsized, premium vehicle for Ford’s limping upmarket brand, based on a Focus platform, felt very of the time. More importantly, Ford’s self-titled “electrification” program got underway in the form of a Magna-built Focus Battery Electric Vehicle, and a commitment to build two electric vehicles (EVs), more hybrids and plug-in hybrids by 2012.

Ramming home the point about Ford’s seriousness was an actual car – one available to buy right now. The Fusion Hybrid could not only run fully electric up to 47mph, but it bested the Camry Hybrid’s EPA figures and wowed critics at how ‘right’ Ford had got the powertrain. It also featured a driver interface that in a nutshell encapsulated what the new Ford was about. Developed using ethnographic research techniques, in conjunction with Ideo and Smart Design, ‘Smartgauge’ was a reconfigurable, four-level coaching interface which helped drivers to ‘learn’ their Fusion Hybrid, ‘grow’ with it and become more efficient drivers over time. Developed by engineer Jeff Greenberg and his team using simulators in Ford's incredible ‘Virtex’ lab on its Dearborn campus, when we got to drive it, we thought it was proof Ford was truly going places on the eco front.

Mark Charmer 'driving' in Ford's Virtex lab simulator

Sitting down

Yet it’s a sign of how fast things are moving in the green car world, that today we no longer feel Ford is level pegging with the front runners. We know Ford possesses some world-beating engineers, who are developing things entirely cogent with what other car companies are doing, yet the company’s strategy feels conservative and the message isn’t clear.

In September, at Frankfurt, John Flemming pulled the covers off a euro-spec electric Focus and announced a trial fleet of 10 cars for the UK. Sadly, no one noticed because in the very next press conference, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn stood up, said that the auto industry had until now been merely tinkering around the edges, pulled the covers off four Renault EVs which will all be on sale by 2012, and effectively bet Renault's future on electric cars. Meanwhile, BMW's quietly built 600 Mini Es already, GM’s letting anyone with two legs drive a prototype Volt, and come last week in LA, VW showcased not just another Up! variant – but one that will do 96mpg. What did Ford do? Launched a car we’ve been able to buy in Europe for 18 months…

Ford's strong corporate culture has shielded it from accepting reality. I sense that within the corridors of power in Dearborn, there’s a frustration and lack of understanding as to why people don’t see Ford as green, and why there doesn’t seem to be the same level of interest and excitement in Ford’s electric cars as there is in – for instance - GM’s Volt.

But having watched Ford and the wider industry through this period, it’s clear to me that one reason for this is that Ford’s proposed ‘clean’ vehicles don’t have the same design-led, risky, visionary, ‘exciting story’ elements to them as the current crop from GM, Renault or BMW. The electric Focus and Transit Connect simply look like regular Focuses and Transits. Compare that with BMW's Vision Efficient Dynamics, which is a design and materials–led radicalization of a future coupe. Or Renault’s Twizy – a small car/scooter cross which feels ideal for the world’s growing number of mega cities.

The BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics - an all together different look for the car

Indeed Ford's green future looks more conservative than GM’s Volt – which while nearly three years old, is a fundamentally different car to anything GM has produced before, and one which – thanks to the company's ‘troubles’ – has a bet-the-company, edge of the seat, ‘will they won’t they manage to make it’ PR story wrapped around it, which has the world gripped.

Don’t scare the neighbors

Part of the problem could be J Mays, Ford's global design chief. Asserting to me this summer that "I have this crazy notion that an electric car should look like, shock horror, a car" Mays' view that electric cars shouldn’t look weirdly different might be a major weakness. Of course, in times of economic uncertainty, and when consumer acceptance of cars with radical new powertrains is far from assured, this may turn out to be a safe and sensible approach.

Yet it is just that - safe. And I can’t help but say that if Ford really wants to go green, and have people believe it is green, then it has to stick out its neck. It needs a halo, a vision – a car and a story – that grips, wows and inspires people. Because I suggest to you that in the next five years, there will be more change and upheaval in the automotive world than there was in the past 100. And that those who dare most boldly, will be rewarded most handsomely – with long term profit.

There’s a strong sense of history and tradition at Ford. In recent times, that tradition – the Ford family tradition specifically – has provided the firm with a backbone to cope with the horror scenario that has engulfed the US car industry, leaving it as the only one of the big three not in bankruptcy. But that strength could stifle the company, too. Dearborn, Ford’s home, resembles a suburban estate, with still carefully trimmed gardens and a freshly painted fences. But beyond are derelict lots and empty streets.

Now ought to be Ford's moment to be truly inspired by its past. To look back to the man who started - and risked - it all, Henry Ford. Because Ford needs its Model T for the 21st Century. And it needs to remember what the great man said: “If I’d have asked people what they want, they’d have said faster horses”.

Joseph Simpson is a researcher at The Movement Design Bureau, a think tank.

Posted on the 7th December 2009. Full disclosure: Ford has sponsored The Movement Design Bureau's research in 2009.

The pitfalls of sustainability

 
An image from The Paper City exhibition and Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of speaking at the Miniumum...or Maximum Cities event at the University of Cambridge, which was organised with Blueprint magazine and the Paper Cities exhibition, which moved up to the famous university town having been at the Royal Academy for the past few months.

Tim Abrahams has produced an excellent write-up of the event over on the Blueprint site, which I’d urge you to check out if you’re interested, because I think he raises a series of important points about where we find ourselves in relation to the sustainability debate.

For some time now, Re*Move has proposed an agenda where sustainability was the context rather than an end in itself, and like Tim, alarm bells rang in Cambridge, because we were left with a feeling that the only reason anyone is doing anything today is in an attempt to be “more sustainable”. When it comes to movement and transportation, this approach of sustainability first is clearly causing problems, because it seems to be preventing us from envisioning and demanding the future that we actually want to have, and instead pushing us towards something influenced primarily by guilt over past excess.

For example, a lot of transport debate in the UK today centres around whether or not we should be building a high speed rail line to the north of England. Anyone who suggests this is a daft idea is right now likely to labeled both unprogressive and anti-sustainability . Yet anyone who dares suggest a third runway at Heathrow is a good idea, is obviously hell bent on seeing the planet rapidly burn.

Yet the pitfalls of high-speed 2 are multifold. We can already get from Manchester to London in two hours, so should we really prioritise spending billions on reducing this by half? And while it’s automatically assumed that getting the train is better from a carbon perspective, throw real-world load factors into the bargin, and the reality is that a modern, full Airbus is comparative. Meanwhile, the car (which has apparently lost its number one spot to the airplane, in the planet mauling stakes) has improved so much in the past five years that if you’re driving two-up in a Golf diesel, you’ll definitely produce less carbon than going on the train. For me, the biggest issue with High Speed 2 is that an idea which is fundamentally two-hundred years old seems to be stopping us from pushing the boundaries of imagination about what we might do instead, that would be palpably better.

So some of my talk at Cambridge bemoaned this sense that we’d got stuck with a handful of transport formats, and that – with cars and trains at least, they were monocultural. We’ve sized everything to fit them, and one of the reasons we aren’t all riding round on things like Segways in cities, is that cities are fundamentally designed, and sized, for people to use cars. This might sound like I’m suggesting we simply have to keep using cars – as they are - to get around cities. I’m not, but what I’m pointing out is the need for a systems level approach. Will you enjoy trundling up the A40 in a Renault Twizy? Or would you be altogether more tempted by the idea of La Regie’s concept scooter/car cross if you could zip up and down one of Chris Hardwicke’s Velo-City cycle tubes on your way to the office?

Sustainability is the context we now work in. And we’ve little doubt (and are very happy with the notion) that in 5-10 years time, our cities will all be full of things like electric cars. Which will be great for local emissions, but highlights the problem with today's short-sighted sustainability focus, as it won’t do anything to stop us from spending half of our lives sat in traffic jams.

If we simply focus on sustainability as our end point, we’re likely just to end up with a mildly de-carbonised version of what we have now. And the likelihood is that we won’t even achieve that, because when people know they’re saving carbon, they psychologically feel (and often financially are) able to do more and just end up ‘reusing’ what they’ve saved.

Sustainability has created a psychology of fear, where we fear to dream of real improvement and hesitate to think big. What do we mean by improvement? Things which work more quickly or get us places faster, thus providing us with more free time or time with our families and friends. Things that are measurably more fun, or more exciting to ride in or drive than what we have today. Things which cost us less money to use, own or run. Better means thinking about how we link up travel – so we might spend more time in one place and combine trips – rather than rushing from one short hop flight destination to another. Better might mean finding a way to link leisure and business travel together.

But better also means new. New ideas, new products, services and concepts. In essence, we need to dream, and be allowed to think big. If we think of the figures who created some of our totems of mobility – people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Andre Citroen, Frank Whittle – we still admire and count on the inventions and contributions they made for our mobility backbone today. On Re*Move, we try to highlight and showcase the work of people we hope or think might become modern day IKBs or Whittles. But there are precious few of them around. I’d go as far to argue that the contributions and inventions made by these famous figures, would never have happened had they been around today, working in this world constrained by the fear of sustainability. We are not simply going to solve the predicament we are in by attempting cut, after cut, after cut. We are going to have to dream, and dream big.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 1st December 2009