Core77

Female auto designers

By Rain Noe - February 27, 2008

in Object Culture

Your correspondent was getting into a rental car with a well-endowed female friend. From the passenger side, I heard the sound of her opening the driver's side door--followed by a sharp expletive. "What's the matter?"

"I guarantee you a man designed this car," she said, hand on her chest. "Did you ever get in a new car, pull the door open and hit yourself in the tits?"

Female car designers are definitely few and far between, with a few standouts (Chelsia Lau has been a chief designer at Ford since the '90s, and Nissan's Dianne Allen was lead designer on their Titan pickup), but that may be slowly changing. At next month's Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York, Lincoln will be pushing "auto chick power" by introducing Joann Jung, Amy Kim and Jennifer Hewlett, three rising design stars who worked on the MKT Concept on display at the show.

Designer Jennifer Hewlett added a plush, hand-knotted rug made from banana silk covering the floor and complementing the contrasting Creamy Pearl chromium-free leather seats, while Amy Kim, in charge of the elegant metalwork, contributed sculpted door handles with sparkling, curved dimples reminiscent of beadwork.

Joann Jung was responsible for the instrument panel and crystal-inspired center consol that runs the entire length of the vehicle to create a feeling of continuity between the upper and lower portion of the cabin, as if all the occupants of the cabin were sitting together in a living room. A patented solid-state lighting technology allows first-ever 3-D projection on a contoured surface and displays information using intuitive shapes and spaces on the center stack.

via auto channel

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sarah

14 years ago

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i am glad to see your Designs , i would like introduce one of my favorite auto designer Bushnak his web site is .................... http://bushnak-ali.skyrock.com
his futuristic creation i am sure impress you.
your designing is super i love too
sarah
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Tara

14 years ago

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like it or not women do excist in this field we are smart well educated and yes we definitely know what is preety. deal with it. they will be plenty of us around soon. And also we are housewives and smart enough to multi task. Ask your mother
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Annie

15 years ago

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tsk tsk tsk, feeling threatened, boys?
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josecruz

16 years ago

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I concur with Hagarty. Must be a bunch of housewives at ford Public relations thinking their clever! What a "FAT" waste.
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James Hagarty

16 years ago

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I don't see why so much fuss is being made over hiring female designers. When the Big 3 announced they would be designing automobiles for obese drivers, did they only hire designers that weighed over 300 lbs? Having a personal understanding of your customer's needs is certainly helpful, but that doesn't necessarily make you the best person for the job. It comes down to clearly defining requirements and doing comprehensive testing.

In the case of this Lincoln concept vehicle, if these designers' only contributions are limited to finishing touches like hand-knotted rugs and dimpled chrome, then they haven't contributed anything of substance to the car, nor anything inherently female. Congratulations Lincoln, you've finally caught up with the 20th century and hired talented women, only to give them the "make-it-pretty" jobs. You might as well have contracted Martha Stewart to do the interior design.

Hire the best person for the job and leave the politically expedient, self-congratulatory back slapping aside.
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