Lanky and soft-spoken, Cherry is one of the quietest men to hold the top GM design job, a post that gained prominence under charismatic designers like Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell.
Cherry will turn 65, the company's mandatory retirement age, next September, and though it is unclear who will succeed him, the handicapping has begun. An informal survey of designers by Rita Sue Siegel, a design recruiter in New York, found no clear consensus, but names frequently mentioned include Chris Bangle of BMW, Asensio and Ed Welburn, 51, who headed development of the Chevy SSR.
But the best bet may be Nesbitt, who has the advantage of having worked on the PT Cruiser with Lutz, who will have much to say about who gets the job.
Good vibes
The SSR, Welburn said, was built on research into the appeal of Chevy trucks of the past; it "is all about making an emotional connection."
Emotion is also important for Nesbitt, who is working in the Chevrolet studio. He says buyers' emotional demands are high even for inexpensive cars. "The idea of the basic car has changed," he added, thanks in part to vehicles like his PT Cruiser.
"At all levels, people want and expect emotion and excitement. The new rule is: Too much is not enough."
Pontiac planners aiming at young buyers found that their customers had a long wish list: lots of cargo space, sports-car handling and SUV toughness. From those imperatives rose the ungainly Aztek.
But now the same brief has produced the promising Pontiac Vibe, a car-based wagon due out next year. Unlike the Aztek, known around the water coolers as the "PT Loser," the Vibe combines its disparate specifications into a strong, visually unified shape.
The Vibe is an example of "deep branding" because, Pontiac says, it redefines performance. "Performance doesn't just mean a sports car," said Phil Zaks, 35, who heads Pontiac's brand character studio. "It's an athletic brand style."
Cadillac's art and science look gets a new interpretation with the Cien, a design study for a V12 supercar. New Cadillacs try to capture the "spirit and moxie and attitude from the cars of the past without taking the actual shapes," said Tom Kearns, the division's brand character chief designer.
"If you do something distinctive," he said, "it is going to be polarizing."
Cadillac seems willing to offend some people, a first step toward innovation.
Too often, institutional inertia has strangled innovative ideas before they mature. "There is a cold, wet blanket of assumptions about what a car is, and this hyper-masculine attitude," Hirshberg said.
Asensio's presence may provide a counterbalance to the sometimes macho style of many GM designs. But she views brands at a very abstract level.
"I am a kind of mirror," she said, reflecting the identities of GM brands from a fresh point of view. "Chevrolet is like Levi's," she said -- famous brands that suffered after their images became muddled.
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