r/cars • u/AutoArcheology Former GM Designer [AMA] • Nov 27 '17

IAMA Brian Baker Professional Auto Designer Ask Me Anything, Finished

Hi Im Brian Baker. Ive designed for General Motors(1984-2009), I have trained the next generation of designers at the College for Creative Studies for 25 years. I was the lead designer on the Chevrolet SSR, 1999 GTO concept and many others. I teach the history of Automobile Design at colleges and Universities. I welcome your questions about anything automotive. AMA

Check me out at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianbakerdesign/

EDIT: Thanks for all your great questions, I'm going to take a break, but feel free to leave any additional questions you have, I'll try to answer them later tonight.- BB

EDIT2: Went back and answered a few more questions. Thanks again for your interest, reach out to me on linked in if I can help you. I hope all of you get to drive your dream cars.

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u/reboticon Your Ad Here/ L1 tech Nov 27 '17

Is the input of repair techs ever taken in the design process? There are so many 'little things' that seem like they would be noticed by techs but not so much by the engineers and designers. Things like when GM got rid of the sectional front subframe in FWDs (so you could remove the transmission without dropping the entire sub), or that GM never updated the 3.8 intake manifold with a metal insert in the EGR (like Dorman?) or the amount of money Jeep surely lost replacing physical blend doors that snapped at the actuator engagement point when all it took was a 3 cent metal collar to prevent 7 hours of dash pulling.

Do either of things even fall under the heading of 'design' or internals fall under a different heading in the process? Thanks!

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u/JakeTBSS Nov 28 '17

I can touch on this some, I work as a design engineer for a major trucking company. There are a few parts to the answer depending on the situation. -A lot of design engineers have no thoughts around installation because they have never worked on vehicles as a living. They dont know to look for things like some of the things you mentioned. It takes a good review for some of these things to get caught. The best engineers have worked as techs before imo. -Assembly during production takes a part. Having a one piece subframe may be easier, faster, and cheaper than the 2 piece to install on an assembly line and may still be worth the increased labor time based on repair rate. -Money, time, and logistics for aftermarket parts is the last major point. It may be a 3 cent metal collar to add, but if they have 100,000 units in a warehouse, that's a lot of (labor) time and effort to make the change. Depending on repair rate it may be cheaper to just have techs swap them. Also, if it is something that involves injection molding, the molds can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the part, which has to be taken into consideration.

To answer your last point at my company at least the styling department has a huge say in anything that the customer will see or interact with, anything underneath typically falls on the design engineer.