EP21 - How to design characterful cars

Drew Smith: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to looking at the podcast in which we connect the dots between mobility, design, and culture.

Joe Simpson: 0:07

My name's Joe Simpson and I am an automotive strategist for an OEM in Europe whose views I do not and have never represented on this show.

Drew Smith: 0:17

And my name is Drew Smith, and I'm an independent design strategist working through my studio called StudioPhro. And these views, of course, are all my own.

Joe Simpson: 0:28

And coming up on tonight's show, we are going to have a wander through some of the wonders of the automotive world. Namely, Mercedes S Class, Porsche 911, and the cars we love and have loved. Yes folks, this isn't another rant about some state of the industry. This is about how we do business. Connect to, become emotionally enthralled by, and generally fall in love with these things we know as cars. But as ever with us, there is a serious philosophical point, and we are going to have a muse on what it is about the design, or perhaps more specifically, the sensory elements of these vehicles that drive such, uh, emotional responses.

Drew Smith: 1:21

Now, for this show, we had another hot start, so we're just going to let the tape roll and hope you'll come along with us for the ride. Have fun. Uh, what are we are we talking?

Joe Simpson: 1:41

Well,

Drew Smith: 1:42

I don't know, Joe. I thought this was all your idea.

Joe Simpson: 1:45

I know this was my idea. So you're going to, you were going to try and talk about W140s without crying. Okay. Thank you. This, this, dear listener, is my challenge to him. I said, you've sold your W140, your second W140 V12. Uh, try to talk about how it makes you feel without crying. Sorry, it's like, fucking, someone being tortured slowly. Yes. When do they come out? 91? 90?

Drew Smith: 2:23

to start with this? Um, let's start at the beginning, right? Um, so my, my love affair with the W140 started when I was, uh, I'm going to say 12 years old, so 1994 and my 91, yeah, I think they were at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 90 and they were kind of on sale, or maybe 91, I can't remember what year they were, you know, show versus on

Joe Simpson: 2:56

But your love affair started in 94.

Drew Smith: 2:58

My love affair started in 94 and it started because I was on, um, I was very lucky. I was on a trip around Europe with my parents and the way we did trips, because obviously it was, we did them in the Australian summer holidays. So basically six weeks, my parents would lease a car through Renault Eurodrive. And so in 1994, we had a Renault 19 hatch. loaded up with all of our luggage and, uh, we landed in Frankfurt and then spent six weeks basically driving around Germany and, and France. And my parents would say, okay, well, where would you like to go? And, you know, this was back in the day when you had like a Fodors guide, like you had a

Joe Simpson: 3:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Drew Smith: 3:49

of all the places that you could go. And, um, it turns out that you could go to the Mercedes factory, uh, in Sindelfingen outside Stuttgart. And so Dad and I, whilst Mum was at the Stuttgart art gallery, um, Dad and I went to Sindelfingen and I saw these things being manufactured. And it left such an indelible impression on me, you know, going round The factory in these little sort of buses, like a little train of buses, you know, watching sheet steel kind of come into a press and then out the other side, you'd see the whole side of an S class just kind of fully formed. And you're like, Oh my God, that's

Joe Simpson: 4:32

It's still amazing. A, a, a, a roll of cold rolled, not cold rolled, but a roll of steel going into a machine and then literally the unicycle of a car coming out. It's, I saw it a few weeks ago and it's still phenomenal.

Drew Smith: 4:48

so impressive and then getting to the end of that production line and, um, I, I didn't know about rework at this point.

Joe Simpson: 4:58

Ah, yeah.

Drew Smith: 4:59

but, but watching literally kind of teams of people swarm over these S classes. Like, kind of making sure that they were perfect, right? Before they, before they left the factory. And a couple of weeks later, we were flying out of Geneva. We stayed in a hotel, um, the same hotel as the Russian Olympic swimming team who were there for some kind of competition and they were running between rooms all night and banging doors and banging one another presumably because there was this almighty racket. My parents were very unimpressed and in the morning they complained to the hotel reception. They were very apologetic and said, well, you know, look, we'll make sure you get to the airport comfortably. Um, And their version of getting us to the airport comfortably was to have a black, well, blue, black 500 SEL, um, pick us up to drive us to the airport. And I was just like, Oh my God. And you know, like dad and I hopped in the back, of course, mom hopped up the front. It had the electric rear seat option. And. I just from that point on knew that one day I wanted one of these things in my life.

Joe Simpson: 6:18

And just to pick a little bit or scratch at this, Can you talk about, because I know you can talk about, and this is where I want to go with this podcast, some of the things about that car, maybe some of the detail things that I think are kind of a large part of the reason why you hold it so dear and are so enamored with it. I know there are many.

Drew Smith: 6:46

Yeah, I'm, I'm trying to think of like what the umbrella, what the umbrella sort of descriptive for it is. And the only way I can sort of think to describe it off the top of my head is integrity.

Joe Simpson: 7:01

Um, um,

Drew Smith: 7:04

a deep sense of integrity to Everything that you touch, especially, especially in the pre facelift cars, like post facelift cars, they'd started stripping the quality out to reduce cost, but in the pre facelift cars, like literally everything you touch feels like it's had a thousand hours invested in it and, and those thousand hours were invested to make sure that this thing. felt as serene and as quiet and as comfortable in a Teutonic way as possible and then and then when you dig deeper you realize that not only is this thing kind of the most serene most comfortable thing that you may ever ride in it is an absolute fucking beast of a car when it comes to performance and handling. And the way Mercedes managed to reconcile these two typically opposing requirements of a vehicle is just mind blowing. And you, it doesn't matter where you start. You just peel back layer after layer after layer after layer. And you're like, Who were these people? Like, how did they get the budget to do this?

Joe Simpson: 8:32

Mm.

Drew Smith: 8:34

Um, my favorite, one of my favorite things on the car is, um, what's known as the PSE pump. So, uh, The, the, the W140 of course was famous for not only having soft closing doors, uh, but a soft closing trunk lid and the little reversing sticks that popped up out the back because the sonar parking system wasn't ready, um, when the car launched and this pump manufactured by Bosch, um, sits in the trunk in its own little sort of foam uh, insulation box to make sure that you can't hear the pump and over time, sometimes they can fall out of spec. And so the pump will overrun on a particular door and then trip out. So you have to then pull a fuse to reset the pump and get it started. Anyway. You can, uh, adjust the tolerances on this thing. You can open it up, um, and there's a little thumb screw that you can use to, to adjust the, the, the vacuum preset pressure. Now, the thing that is absolutely insane about this pump is, I'm going to say there are 12 individual lines running off the pump on a 600. Has its own, um, uh, manifold that allows it to either apply pressure or draw suction.

Joe Simpson: 10:05

Mm.

Drew Smith: 10:06

Each line is individually controlled. Each line, um, has its own trip switch on it. So If you lose pressure, uh, or suction on one line, it doesn't shut down all the rest. It will just shut off that one door. And, I, I don't, I don't know people, I mean this, I find this kind of stuff absolutely delightful. Like, who, who was the Fritz or the Hans or the Jürgen? Right? Who got to spend like 10 years designing this pump.

Joe Simpson: 10:41

And, and as I, as I hear you talk, uh, not to want to cut you off, but just to interject, I think about two or three things. The first being that you said, um, who were these people? And I think Despite the fiendish complexity of the W140, what you're describing is a sense of a person or group of people behind a machine, and people who had a clear purpose, and that purpose being to create the best thing. And I think there's something deep in that in terms of our relationship with cars. The second thing, which is an extension of that is that it perhaps represents a time which maybe we will never see again, which to me, and this might be a stretch for some people, I think links it with perhaps, dare I say, projects like Concord, where the aim was just to It was, it was ambition. It was to create something that went beyond what, uh, what had gone before. In this case, in the name of, as you say, kind of serenity, uh, I think balanced against this kind of incredible performance, which seemed to, even if it didn't on paper say, but seemed to implicitly say, and to hell with the cost.

Drew Smith: 12:03

I, I, I think it explicitly said to hell with the cost. I mean famously it was 25 percent more expensive than the W126S class that had preceded it. And still Mercedes was losing money on every single one that it manufactured. Um, and, I think you're right, we won't ever see it's like again in that segment of the market simply because it drove its manufacturer to the brink of bankruptcy. I mean, famously, W140 plus, um, a sort of misguided effort at corporate diversification. at Daimler in sort of the late 80s and early 90s is what led it into the arms of the merger with, with Chrysler, right? And, and I think it's probably fair to say that by and large, Mercedes went to shit from that point onwards. Um, you know, it's, it's

Joe Simpson: 13:04

mean, they've certainly learned how, they've certainly learned how to turn a profit though.

Drew Smith: 13:09

I've certainly learned how to build things down to a cost. Um, Um, and, and I guess this is the other thing that's fascinating because it is, it is a, it's a marker of hubris as, as well. Um, famously it, it, it landed like a turd sandwich in the European market at launch, um, because it,

Joe Simpson: 13:39

Timing was great, wasn't it?

Drew Smith: 13:41

coincided with, um, sort of a real strengthening of the green movement. I think it was the first time that Greenpeace had, um, protested outside a manufacturer's factory. I seem to remember that Greenpeace was protesting outside Sindelfingen. Um, it, uh, you know, there was a recession in the late 80s, early 90s. Um, the Japanese bubble was about to pop. The car was so wide that it didn't fit on the traditional car trains that rich Germans took to summer on, on the Baltic. Right? That's why it introduced electrically folding door mirrors. So it could just get on the train. Loaded up with four people, um, It looked like it didn't have sufficient luggage capacity, um, in terms of weight for those four people. So there's a whole bunch of things that was also really kind of wrong about it for, for the time. And, you, it's just hard to imagine, um, any manufacturer taking that kind of risk.

Joe Simpson: 14:53

yeah,

Drew Smith: 14:53

It doesn't, it doesn't look like a risky car.

Joe Simpson: 14:56

No! It's like the

Drew Smith: 15:00

Um,

Joe Simpson: 15:01

of it. But, but I, I don't really, uh, not, not to be too dictatorial. I don't actually want to take the podcast in, this podcast, in that direction where we go down a, oh, and this sort of thing will never happen again, and isn't the currency terrible, and we'll never have nice products, and blah, blah, blah. I wanted to, to actually sort of talk to you more about how, um, how to phrase this. But the The power of things, the meaning that, um, design and engineering creates, and then the relationship between the person. How do they, how do they drive emotion? Because to, to key listeners into this conversation, this conversation started, the whole point of, sorry, side, sidetrack. Looking out is supposed to be a If you like a sneak peek behind the, uh, our iMessages and our sort of conversations. That's how it started as the, the newsletter. Let's start sharing this with people. It, maybe they'll find it interesting and hopefully some of you do. And this started in two ways. It started with something we mentioned in the last podcast, which was Ryan McManus of Ford on, I think, threads. Holding up the fact that Porsche had replaced the, um, uh, I'm going to get this wrong. I wrote my song last time, I'm going to get it wrong again. The, into the IP. key that Porsche have had for donkey's

Drew Smith: 16:40

on the 911,

Joe Simpson: 16:41

they replaced it with a sort of Volkswagen alike starter button. And then I amusingly saw, um, Adrian Clarke saying that he'd nearly mistook it when he went to the SMMT test drive and drove it, he mistook it for, I don't know, a heated seat button or something. It was that sort of, you know, comically sort of just like, what, this is how I start a Porsche now, really? Um, and then that tipped into a conversation about, um, Cars that we'd owned and the, um, the impact they'd had on us and certain little things that they did, uh, that made you feel a certain way. And then, and Drew had been trying to sell his W140 in the Netherlands. He's obviously now back

Drew Smith: 17:17

For over a year.

Joe Simpson: 17:20

Yeah, I've been trying to, and then I got this text one morning where I was just like, oh, the W140 is sold. And I said, how do you feel about it? And he said, to be honest, it's tipped me into a bit of a dark space. And then you said, I was just recalling to Chris that if I close my eyes, I can hear the whir of the starter motor.

Drew Smith: 17:40

Oh Joe, you've said it!

Joe Simpson: 17:43

and you can continue this conversation.

Drew Smith: 17:47

So, so, so, if you've, I mean, Jason Kamisa and Derek Tamscott on the Kamajan Show recently did a show about V12s. And how V12s are, in many cases, uh, the most surprising engines that many people will ever experience, simply because there is so little drama, right? Um, And that was absolutely the case with the M120, um, V12 in my 600. As a technical achievement, it's, it's, it's incredible. It's 48 valves. Uh, it's got variable inlet cam timing. Um, in my car, it had 408, or my cars, because yes, that's right. I had two of them, uh, 408 horsepower. It had this amazing thing called wide open throttle enrichment. So when you've floored it, um, you'd kind of hit the end of the throttle travel and then go a little bit further and and you could just watch the fuel gauge go anyway the engine itself and the way it delivers the performance is is it feels so uneventful you just kind of you're going slow and then all of a sudden you're breaking the speed limit and it feels like nothing has happened in between So not super exciting, but the starter motor,

Joe Simpson: 19:12

Mm.

Drew Smith: 19:13

I'm going to cut some noise in from the starter motor.

19:23

Mhm.

Drew Smith: 19:36

Every time I turned that big chunky switch blade key, my heart would anticipate the sound of this starter motor and skip a beat. Because it's just so fucking cool. The other thing that I loved about it, tiny little detail. So coming back to the soft closing doors and that bloody pump, you would just have to push the door to, and then pneumatics would silently latch the door and it would pull the door in just a little bit tighter than it needed to be closed. And then, one of those valves on the pump in the back would release the suction on the line and you'd see the door just come out, like, two mil.

Joe Simpson: 20:24

almost, yeah.

Drew Smith: 20:25

The door basically exhaled back onto its latch. And, and it's, It's these tiny little details that I think, Okay, for somebody like me. I notice them, I can articulate them, I can talk about them. You know, I've talked previously about how, you know, the memory, the seat memory panel in the door. So, there's a different radius on, um, the memory buttons 1, 2, and 3 to the memory set button. So, you can feel the difference between these buttons without looking at them.

Joe Simpson: 21:02

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Smith: 21:03

these things, but I have absolutely no doubt that even for somebody whose job is, is, is not to be able to articulate this stuff in words, is going to be picking up on all of these tiny little details, which are helping them form an impression about what this car represents and what was running through the minds of the people that developed it. And that's why taking away like that very physical interaction point of the key, even though it was simulated, you know, for the last couple of generations of 9 11, you know, this is a car that you're meant to like, take by the scruff of the neck. You're meant to put it in your hands and enter into a very physical relationship with it. So, to take that away and replace it with a, you're just like, what?

Joe Simpson: 21:54

there's a physicality to it, and I think this is where I keep coming back to this idea in my head of, um, ritual, and the idea of a multi sensory experience. Do you remember when Patrick Lecomte was at Renault and he coined, uh, what was it called? Shit, I'm saying it and I can't remember what it's called, where he, uh, the, um, Uh,

Drew Smith: 22:19

talking about the big handbrake in Megane 2.

Joe Simpson: 22:23

Yes, but there was,

Drew Smith: 22:24

of thought.

Joe Simpson: 22:26

yes, before that there was this kind of whole, uh, thing about the sort of, like, sensors and how you, I think, anyway, I might be talking shit here, but I feel like he's talked about It's a while since I've read his book, but I also remember it being talked about at the time when introduced at Renault, it's like multi sense or multi touch design and how the senses were actually very important for how we felt about design. And when I, if anyone who drives a modern car regularly, and then you get in an old car, probably the first thing you notice is the smell. When you open the door, because it's a mixture of often fuel or oil and that sort of actually Quite high quality materials, typically like leather, that's kind of in a state of, of aging. But aging in a good way, and these things are kind of, and the carpets, and these things are kind of fusing together to create quite a powerful smell. Whereas in modern cars, anybody who works in the industry knows, Which he's spent quite a lot of time trying to kind of eradicate smell and have almost like a zero smell thing because that's seen as good. You don't want a stinky car when you've got a new car because material's off gas when they're new and you don't actually want that sort of plasticky smell. Um,

Drew Smith: 23:44

Am I, am I remembering correctly that, um, like Lexus LS 400. So when it was sold as a Toyota Celsior in Japan, um, with a leather interior, there was literally no smell whatsoever.

Joe Simpson: 24:00

The

Drew Smith: 24:03

400 in like North America and Australia, like it actually smelt of leather. Uh, and, and the, and it was actually just a, basically like a, a cologne that had been sprayed into the vehicle.

Joe Simpson: 24:18

funny, isn't it? Because there's many luxury brands of, of introduced actually, uh, smell and scent, and you can even put little cartridges in, I think Mercedes do this now, to create different smells and scents. But I guess the point I, right. I guess, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there are many, there are many facets to this. That we, I mean, okay. Typically when we talk about design, what we are largely talking about is something that is visual. And I think in the large part, what you're talking about with the W 140 and a lot of my strongest, most visceral, most memorable, or, you know, sort of Um, car moments, and then the car things that sort of matter to me are ones that are actually not visual. So,

Drew Smith: 25:21

because you, you talked about, you've, so you've owned a, uh, abortion 9, 9 7 series nine 11, haven't you? Yeah.

Joe Simpson: 25:28

And there is,

Drew Smith: 25:31

did you have, have you ever driven a 9, 9 2?

Joe Simpson: 25:35

uh, I've not driven a 992, I've driven two gens of So 997s have keys. A key with a blade and a fob end. 991s have a The I think it's actually a Panamera shape that Porsche did. The sort of funny sort

Drew Smith: 25:54

Like the jelly bean key. Yep.

Joe Simpson: 26:00

on if you paid Porsche more money to match the color of your car.

Drew Smith: 26:03

3, 000 for

Joe Simpson: 26:05

Yeah. It's quite cheap, Porsche. Um, and then you sort of stuck it in a slot and still turned it. Um, I think nine, maybe 9912s or maybe 992s then, Moved to, I think, a sort of nubbin or something that you still twisted. I'm not 100 percent sure on this. And then

Drew Smith: 26:27

it was like, it, it was a sort of a, if you imagine just the, the, the, the, the grabby end of the key kind of stuck out of the dashboard,

Joe Simpson: 26:40

Yeah.

Drew Smith: 26:40

And it was permanently fixed, but you could just kind of like twist it in the dash.

Joe Simpson: 26:46

Yeah. I mean, I don't The There's a thing to this where, for me When I bought my, sorry, this is like a wanker. I bought my 911 when I started commuting here, before we moved here. And I used to leave, um, KLM changed the flights and then I had to go from a different airport and fly on a different airline. And I started having to get up at three in the morning. And I kind of thought, well, if I'm going to get up at three in the morning, I may as well have some, or go in something that I want to go in to the airport, rather than something generic. And, you know, what's a pension fund anyway? Um, because I was self employed, so I, by 9 11. Um, and, um, There was a thing where I'd walk out of the house and there was just, this is what I mean by rituals, I can still deeply remember every, every morning I would leave for Gothenburg, I'd get up about like 10 to 3 and I'd be in the car by 3. 15 and I'd walk out and I walked towards the car, which I used to park around the corner so it didn't wake my son up because it was like under his window.

Drew Smith: 28:01

you have a Sport Auspuff? On

Joe Simpson: 28:04

had PSE, yes. Um, so,

Drew Smith: 28:09

Mit Sportpaket!

Joe Simpson: 28:11

Um, sport packet, yes. Um, and, I woke up to the car, you press the button And it flashed the indicator lights, and then you woke up and you'd pull on the door handle on a 911 or always used to be, they weren't heavy things, but they have a certain action, which to me is like the first point of interaction with a Porsche, which then is kind of carried through every interaction you have with a car and the window glass drops a bit. And for me, there was. You then get into the car and there was always this moment where I had, where it almost like ritualistic, like, take a moment, look around and I'd stick the key into the ignition and in a 997, when you stick the key into the ignition, what happens is there's a click as the steering column unlocks and then the little, they're not very digital, the little display in the speedo, which is the time and the speed comes on and just shows the time. Yeah. And it used to say like three, 12 and I'd almost take a moment, look around and then you dip the clutch and then I'd turn and the, uh, not people who've had old nine 11s will know this. And I think they changed this in the nine, nine one. They, they turn over quite slowly. So there'd be half a moment, which adds to the drama where you'd go, Oh, is the battery flat and it'd kind of be like, and then, and then they, they. turn quite slowly for slightly too long behind you, which is also a kind of like slight weirdness, if you're not used to it. And then there's just this eruption as it catches. And that was almost a moment before, as I, just before I turned the key for me, it was like, I'm kind of, I'm going, I'm ready, I'm leaving my family, I'm going to go and do my job and go and drive and get on a plane and be this kind of professional person. And it really is sort of like this moment, but the things that that made it were the touch points and the sounds and the Like the small ways that like lights would turn on and then you'd set off and then the gear Manual and when until it's warm the gear stick is quite knobbly. So you're having to be quite deliberate And this is all getting into the realm that i'm uncomfortable with of sort of evo like kind of helmsmith And that's not the point i'm trying to make at all. It's that there's this thing where These interactions that we have, which are to do with the senses, often to do with sound and to do with smell and to do with touch, rather than just purely to do with sight, are what actually create, I think, emotional bonds and lasting memories, which then deeply link you to products. And I think that's what I'm trying to get at with the 9 11, what you're talking about with the W140.

Drew Smith: 31:00

And I think, I think, you know, if we take a step back, essentially it's, it's an orchestration. It, and, and whether by, whether by design or by happy coincidence, right? The cars that we think of as being characterful, Uh, examples of this very masterful orchestration of all of our senses, right? And, and to come back to, to sort of the W140 case, if I think about that experience of getting into the car, Um, Again, it's this balancing of serenity and, and, and, and performance. Everything sort of had It's almost impossible to describe. Like, if I think about like the door pull on that car, at first you think, because it had like these big nylon, um, kind of pull grips, uh, to, to open the door. And your first impression of it is, oh, that's, that's weird. It's plastic. That doesn't seem quite right for a Mercedes. But then the back of it is cold chrome.

Joe Simpson: 32:23

yeah,

Drew Smith: 32:24

Um, and the way it balanced, communicating heft with that door feeling like absolutely nothing to open, but then the door would stop solidly kind of any point on its

Joe Simpson: 32:42

on the hinge, yeah,

Drew Smith: 32:43

But then when you pulled it shut, then you've got like this communication of solidly again. So it's kind of like this pendulation back and forth between ease and, and, and strength.

Joe Simpson: 32:54

where I wanted to kind of, I wanted to just like round a little bit on this point and sort of, I suppose, wonder out loud a bit in a philosophical way, whether Some of this has come from small and tight teams, uh, working together, sort of, or singular even people working on things. And that now in, in large organizations where, Things are sort of siloed and things are run in certain ways and things are efficient and you're sort of almost just all delivering into a funnel to kind of make something pop out of a factory at the end. It's harder for designers and engineers to, to kind of achieve this and sort of really, when we, when you talked about that, it was about creating this, um, sort of orchestrated multi sensory experience. I'm trying to think about how. We might get that because I, I don't fully buy into the fact that this is just, we're taking this stuff away because of say ADAS. So we're taking this stuff away because electric cars. I think it's, there's something else in here. If you just move away from the sort of dry, the, the, the broom, broom to tooty part that is actually to do with how we design. experiences, how we choreograph and orchestrate, orchestrate is such a great word of yours, this for

Drew Smith: 34:30

here's a question.

Joe Simpson: 34:31

a lot about end to end experiences and it's this for me.

Drew Smith: 34:35

What is the role of, what is the role of kind of the supply chain or suppliers in this, right? And how, how the relationship with suppliers has changed over the years, right?

Joe Simpson: 34:51

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

Drew Smith: 34:56

in many cases, so much of the R and D, That once upon a time, a company like Mercedes might have done in house has been externalized, To a set of suppliers who are also supplying everybody else. And so the opportunity to impose sort of a, a total philosophy on how the subsystems of a vehicle are being developed, uh, is diminished.

Joe Simpson: 35:29

that's true to an extent, although I think there's still the I mean, a number of things are still the, um, I think there is the, the kind of the in house push to say we want this. Um, there's still the, um, there's obviously like more in housing actually going on now. I wonder whether it's not so much to do with the changing relationship of the supply chain, or maybe it is to the point you're making about Mercedes engineering and stuff, but I think to some extent it's more about, I think this stuff takes, Sort of a combination of time, as you said in one of your earlier points, it feels like a thousand hours have been sweated over this. And in some cases, that is absolutely true. That is what has happened.

Drew Smith: 36:25

Well, I mean, the, the, the 140 was in development for 10 years.

Joe Simpson: 36:29

right. Right. And now we're trying to hit, you know, the Chinese are hitting development of like 18 months. So the reason, there simply isn't that time to develop and finessing. But I think perhaps more, more powerfully or more problematically is to your point that you were making about, um, People and you weren't making this point, but people and is it worth it? So I think the view is this maybe is becoming less and less important to people. What's important is to have this latest feature, be able to show off certain things or to do kind of novel tricks. Because this long lasting stuff is what builds up over time and creates that bond of the car over time, but it doesn't give that immediate pull to buy in the first place necessarily, all that kind of instant gratification and the kind of autogifugal show off on Instagram. Um, and therefore I think it's tricky for brands, people working in those brands, to actually be able to dedicate time to this stuff. And it takes a sort of singular, it takes singular vision as well. If you're Porsche, you kind of know what you're trying to be. I think other brands don't. And even Porsche, obviously throwing things away here that, that keep part of this.

Drew Smith: 37:49

I, I think. You've, you've touched on something really important here. Um, it comes down to, I believe, all other things being equal. Somebody or a, a group of people within the organization having strength of conviction and a fucking point of view.

Joe Simpson: 38:15

Yeah. Right.

Drew Smith: 38:17

With all my years of working in management consulting and design consulting, one of the things that so many leaders of organizations are bereft of, frankly, a strong point of view. It's, it's taste, it's discernment, it's a willingness to say, No, we're not that. We are this.

Joe Simpson: 38:48

Yeah. And, and I think. This is not a topic to open up towards the end of a podcast, but we can see when we talk about design, the, that is exactly what we know is going on at the brands that are bringing out. the type of products which we hold up again and again. What is happening at somewhere like Kia? What is happening at somewhere like Hyundai? You've got people like Sangyup Lee, you've got people like Luke Donkevolke, and you've got people like Karim Habib, who are strong people, who are pushing things through, who have Conviction who have a view and who I think are selling and convincing this to management It's what happened with people like thomas ingenloff when he first came to volvo and you You have individuals like that who have conviction and they're not They're not spending their time uh trying to If you like prove things out, they're saying this is a direction I want to go. And they, through their skill determination, wit, experience, they convinced the people around them in the C suite to do that. And then you get these, uh, visions, these products and a brand that is moving in a strong direction with products that people, I think. If you like fall for and become emotionally connected to in the ways that we've been describing on this podcast, it feels weird to be trying to implying that a electric Kia might have similar qualities to a Mercedes W140 or a Porsche 911. But there you go, folks. I just somehow managed to do that. Well done, Karim.

Drew Smith: 40:39

Well, have we squared this circle, Joe?

Joe Simpson: 40:44

Squircle the square. I don't know. It feels like maybe it's a good place to leave it.

Drew Smith: 40:49

I think you might be right, because I think one of the things I would love to dive into on a future show, and maybe we might be heading in this direction, people, we'll let you know, is like diving into what it actually takes to be that kind of design leader. Right. And, and, and frankly, just how difficult it is as well. Right.

Joe Simpson: 41:15

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if I sound pithy in any way, it's not meant because these people, I have a huge amount of respect for on the work they're doing is, you know, they, they deserve their money. It's not easy. Um,

Drew Smith: 41:31

note, um, that brings to a close episode 21 of looking out the podcast. Uh, thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed the show and, and our ramblings. I didn't cry, Joe. I didn't

Joe Simpson: 41:45

well done.

Drew Smith: 41:46

I'm sorry for everybody

Joe Simpson: 41:47

very happy that you didn't cry. I would have felt immensely guilty if you didn't end up blubbing.

Drew Smith: 41:53

It's all right. I cried with my therapist. It's fine. Um, if you like the show, uh, please share it with somebody. If you like the show, please share it with somebody else who might like it. Uh, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe, hit the like button, do whatever you have to do to. Spread the love. Please spread the love. Um, looking at the podcast was not written, uh, but presented by me, Drew Smith.

Joe Simpson: 42:21

And me, Joe Simpson.

Drew Smith: 42:23

This is looking at the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching.

Joe Simpson: 42:30

Why? Why would you do that to yourself?

Drew Smith: 42:34

Because I've realised just how fucking potent it is. And I had

Joe Simpson: 42:43

coffee in the area the other day and Jeremy came in and had some and was like, Fucking hell, who made this? I was like, hi.

Drew Smith: 42:50

Well, I used to be the kind of person that could drink, like, a six cup plunger. And be like, Well, that didn't touch the sides.

Joe Simpson: 42:59

Yeah! I like that. Still.