Martin Smith is standing down as head of design for Ford of Europe but ahead of his retirement at the end of this year his work is far from done.
Next week he begins a six month trans-Atlantic brainstorm with the blue oval brand’s design boss Moray Callum.
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Together they will pull together ideas that will create Ford’s vehicle designs far into the future with Smith based in London and fellow Brit Callum at company HQ near Detroit in the US.
The carmaker last week held a design conference in Irvine, California to discuss strategy and all the new technologies that will be going into vehicles, including driverless cars.
Of that event, Smith said: “Design is not just about replacing a car every five or six years, we have to look further ahead than that.”
Smith and Callum will be crystallising the views and ideas coming out of Ford’s ‘futuring’ teams based in Shanghai, California and London, trying to predict what will be happening in the industry, what customers will want and translating that into what is best for the company.
“Our futuring teams are constantly researching what is going on in the world, not just in terms of technology, but in all aspects of design – architecture, fashion and furniture. We also need to look at the powertrains of the future, such as fuel cells and electric motors and how environmental legislation will affect design.”
Will the look of cars radically change over time? “It’s an interesting question,” said Smith. “If you have an autonomous car that drives itself, to many people it might not matter what it looks like, what’s more important is perhaps what the interior is like.”
Tribute to Smith
Speaking at the global unveil of the new Edge SUV in Cologne, Ford Europe chief Stephen Odell paid tribute to Smith “whose fingerprints are on an array of the company’s products. Martin has made an immense contribution to Ford over the years.”
Smith hands over the design reigns at Ford of Europe to Joel Piaskowski.
