Interview: Polestar Design Director Max Missoni on the Future Look of Volvo’s Premium Electric Brand. 9027
“It’s
not just styling.”
Angus MacKenzieWordsManufacturerPhotos
Aug 5, 2020
For most
automotive designers, taking their CEO through a design review can be a fraught
process. The auto industry is mostly run by accountants and engineers, number
crunchers who rely on systems and processes to produce something that sells on
emotion. Polestar design director Max Missoni has a
slightly different challenge, however: His boss, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath,
is himself a designer.
When
Ingenlath left Volkswagen to become head of Volvo design in 2012, he brought
with him to Sweden the Austrian-born Missoni, who'd worked for the German
automaker since graduating from London's Royal College of Art in 2002. Missoni
was made vice president of exterior design for Volvo in 2014, and in 2018 he
became Polestar's design director after Ingenlath was made CEO of the premium
electric vehicle brand.
Missoni has
been involved with Polestar since the beginning. The concept coupe he drew
became Polestar 1, he's overseen the design of
the new Polestar 2 and the forthcoming Polestar 3
SUV, and his sleek, clinically crisp Polestar Precept concept shows where he wants to take
the brand in design terms over the next decade.
What's
it like doing a design review for a CEO who's a designer himself?
I think the
big difference between a design review with a CEO who comes from the
engineering side and a CEO who used to be a designer himself is twofold. One is
you know that he knows. You don't have the advantage of experience where you
can say, "What do you know? I know this better than you." But you
don't have to explain so much. You can just say, "You know what I mean,
right?" Thomas totally gets that, and that's the big advantage. There's
much less complication.
In
terms of its design language, the Polestar Precept is quite a step-change
from what we've seen from Polestar so far. Why?
Polestar 1
and 2 were partially rooted in the Volvo design language that we all came up
with seven years ago. Those cars found a home in Polestar because they were
quite extreme to start with and didn't really fit into the Volvo lineup. But it
is now time to say, "Look, this is our plan for the future. This is how
pure and how progressive we want to look like." And all the design
features in the Precept come from aerodynamics and technology. They're not just
styling.
You're
trying to communicate the Precept's technology and capability through
design rather than just making a pleasing shape for the hell of it?
Big
innovation in design normally happens when there is technology innovation. In
the periods in between it's mostly for the hell of it. You try something else
because, "Hey, we have a successor, it's pretty much the same spec as the
predecessor, we just have to get people excited about that car again." And
the more you can stick to the system solutions of the predecessor, the better
your margins might be. We had the chance to create a new design language for a
brand here and said, "OK, let's embrace those things." In other, more
legacy-driven companies, you don't want to alienate anybody who has liked you
the last 50 years.
Is
the world ready for a new aesthetic? How difficult is it to lead rather than to
follow?
I
personally don't believe in doing a very new or different proportion just for
the sake of it. If it's not driven by any technology, we shouldn't make it
different. We also know that as a small challenger, we need to give people a
reason to get excited about us, and apart from technology, design does that. We
really believe in inspiring people and not necessarily following
recommendations. The consumer electronics-inspired design language is what
gives the Precept freshness.
You're also still
working on Volvo exteriors with the Volvo team. That's a very different mission …
At the
moment I'm this split personality. I have the clean sheet business going on
with Polestar, and I have to evolve Volvo, to take what we have created into a
next generation. It's a hell of a ride, but it's great. It's exciting to do
both things at the same time, to try to carefully move a 100-year-old,
90-year-old brand into the next generation while at the same time I have a
clean sheet and can go, "OK, now if we could do what we wanted to, what
would we do?"
Source: MotorTrend.com
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