VW Design Chief Wants to Add 'Sensuality'

WOLFSBURG, Germany April 25, 2004; David McHugh writing for the AP reported that Volkswagen's new design chief Murat Guenak wants to add more curves and emotion to the automaker's famously functional German designs. But tweaking tradition can be a tricky matter.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Guenak explained the balance he has to strike in both updating and safeguarding a venerable automotive heritage -- a legacy some describe as clean and classic, others as verging on dull.

"We have a very strong design language already," Guenak said. "And we want to use this base to rebalance a little bit, by bringing a bit more feeling and sensuality to the product."

For a company that symbolizes solid German values, the 46-year-old Turkish immigrant represents change simply by not being a longtime Volkswagen insider. His predecessor, Hartmut Warkuss, retired at 63 after 36 years at VW.

Guenak, vice president for group design since the start of this year, faces a fiercely competitive mass auto market in which other carmakers are increasingly using provocative design to set their cars apart.

Renault's Megane features an abruptly chopped rear window. BMW went even further by bringing in American designer Chris Bangle to shake up its sleekly conservative designs. He added a controversial higher rear end on the luxury 7-series and slanted an eye-catching metal crease down the side of the Z4 roadster.

Don't expect such departures from Guenak, who strongly discouraged any expectation that Volkswagen will toss out its design history with future models such as its remade Passat, coming next year.

"We have to find the right balance where we keep all these base values of our brand, which are important and which are what makes Volkswagen," Guenak said in his office at Volkswagen's development center, part of its sprawling Wolfsburg, Germany, headquarters complex.

"And now we have to catch also the people who are a bit more trendy, a bit more lifestyle, more open to discover," he said. "What I want to do is find this new thing, without losing the other one."

Volkswagen turned to Guenak at a testing time, reflected in a 58 percent profit drop last year. Worse, sales of the redesigned Golf mainstay got off to a sluggish start, prompting VW to toss in free air conditioning -- a reversal for a company used to charging a premium over competing makes.

Like other top designers these days, Guenak has moved around. He worked for Ford, Daimler-Benz before its merger with Chrysler, France's Peugeot, then at DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes division.

His design credits range from the successful Peugeot 206 and 307 mass-market cars to Mercedes' SLR sports car and the superluxury Maybach at DaimlerChrysler.

Guenak arrived at VW in April 2003 as design head for the Volkswagen, Skoda and Bentley brands. He has since moved up to take responsibility for VW's remaining brands: SEAT, Audi, Lamborghini, and Bugatti.

He came too late to have a hand in the new Golf, but in time to make contributions to the new Passat and the Concept R.

New designs will follow two subtle approaches, he said.

"The first is how we sculpture the sheet metal to visualize the qualities of our cars at Volkswagen," he said. "The shaping of the cars was very clear, very straight, very architechtonical, very German if you like -- but this is not a good word."

"What we want to do now is, we want to go back a little bit in our roots of sculpturing the shape, the sheet metal, turning it," he said. Light plays on the car's curves as it moves "and you can bring a very strong sensual feeling by the shape of the surfaces," he said.

One place to look for ideas, he said, are the curvaceous cars from the company's storied past: the old Beetle, the Karmann Ghia sports car and the microbus of the 1960s and 1970s.

The second part of the plan is the front end. Guenak points to the new Golf's sporty GTI version, which has a V-shaped black mesh grill and slightly hooded headlights to give its "eyes" a racier look.

He suggested people who want to know where VW design is headed should take a look at the grille on the Concept R, the two-seat sports car unveiled as a concept vehicle at the Frankfurt Auto Show last fall. It has a deep "V" marked out with long curves that cut through the grille.

Guenak dismisses styling merely to surprise.

"My question is, 'Would you buy that car?'" he said. "Would you be seen in it?"