Sun, Apr 27, 2003 page11

• Nissan bursts back onto the market

  AUTOMAKERS CEO Carlos Ghosn snatched his chief designer, Shiro Nakamura, from Isuzu in an effort to jazz things up at Japan's once floundering car manufacturer

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Shiro Nakamura, the chief of design for Nissan, plays classical music on a cello and jazz on a bass. His tastes run from Bach to Bill Evans, and in each genre he finds different ways to express himself.

  "Jazz is innovation, creating advanced music; classical is more established," he said last week at the New York International Auto Show. "It's the same in cars. How do you balance the two things? You must find the best path between the classicalness and the newness."

  

  Nissan has broken out of the staid image of Japanese automakers with some of the most talked about and exciting new-car designs in the industry. The 2003 Nissan Altima.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Three and a half years ago, Nakamura, 52, was hired away from Isuzu by Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's aggressive new chief executive. Ghosn, a Brazilian-born Frenchman of Lebanese descent, has so radically revived Nissan's fortunes in four years that he stars in his own comic book in Japan.

  While Ghosn cut costs, Nakamura -- a short, deliberative man who favors dark suits and oval glasses and wears a goatee -- has moved Nissan design from backwater to cutting edge, shaking up perceptions not just of Nissan but of Japanese car design itself. He has re-imagined Nissan's cars and trucks, as well as those of the company's Infiniti luxury brand, with a design approach markedly different from the company's nondescript recent past, one that reflects his dogged modernism. Few other automakers have re-imagined the designs of an entire lineup in so short a time, though whether the vehicles are loved or not depends upon whom you ask.

  Nakamura's approach tends to favor largely unornamented sleek steel bodies offset by a few details, such as distinctively designed headlights, that revel in complexity. Like the work of modern architects that Nakamura takes as an inspiration, the new Nissans have clean surfaces undisturbed by the plastic cladding that has been fashionable on many American cars or by extraneous bumps or edges.

  The redesigned Altima, a sedan for middle-of-the-roaders, and the new Titan, a big, swaggering pickup truck, are vastly different in their appeal, but they share a dramatic presence rooted in a sweeping angle that elevates the rear of the vehicle.

  Generally, the long tradition of sophisticated and identifiable Japanese design in architecture, art and ornamentation has not extended to cars. The designs of Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans have mostly been "very derivative," said Bryon Fitzpatrick, the chairman of the transportation design department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Now, he said, "the perception in the design business is that Nissan is changing the face of Japanese design."

  Another person who has noticed is Robert A. Lutz, the vice chairman and chief of product development at General Motors. When asked last week to pick a competitor that had caught his eye at the auto show, he said, "All of the new Nissans are nice."

  More specifically, Lutz said: "The Z cars are good. The Altima I like a lot." (The Z-Roadster is Nissan's new two-seater.)

  He added that sales of the idiosyncratic new Nissan Murano would be "very interesting to watch" because it is part of the new crop of vehicles blending the traditional station wagon with the SUV.

  Nissan has referred to the Murano as a vehicle for "on-roading" and has built a similar, if more oddly proportioned and muscular, version for Infiniti, the FX-45.

  The company is also entering the full-size pickup and SUV markets for the first time, and it is showing no lack of restraint in naming them the Titan and the Armada.

  This week, Nissan reported a record profit of US$4.1 billion for its fiscal year that ended in March; it now has the widest operating margins in the industry. Ghosn is given most of the credit, but Nakamura's designs have clearly had a role in redefining the company. Ghosn told him that he and his designers should "build very simple, good designs -- nothing more than that," Nakamura said. "Design-wise we have a lot of freedom."

  One expression of that freedom can been seen in headlights and taillights. Nissan designers use them in much the same way that Apple exposed the innards of some of its iMacs, treating the circuitry itself as a piece of sculpture. Many of the Nakamura-era lights are transparent; instead of looking at a headlight and seeing a flat plastic surface, h the bulbs, which often resemble projectors, are visible. Most notable are the Altima's roughly triangular taillights that expose three jewel-like bulbs -- red, yellow and silver.

  "This shows the technology," said Nakamura, standing in front of a Z-Roadster, which has a similar approach in its headlights. "This is a very simple surface, but the inside of the lamp is very complicated because it has a lot of technology. We don't want to make a complex surface outside, but this, the interior, these things are very Japanese. Simplicity with lots of detail."

  He also pointed out the back of the car's steering wheel, usually an afterthought, but here the curves appeared deliberately crafted. Nakamura likened it to the back of a nice watch. "It's for your satisfaction," he said. "You say, 'I have a nice watch,' and this is a nice car."

  The son of an Osaka businessman, Nakamura began doodling cars as a young boy and remembers being inspired when he encountered an MG, the British sports car. "It was, to me, an unusual car to see," he said. "Very exciting. It was the 1960s, and we had very few sports cars in Japan."

  He went on to study at an art school in Tokyo and at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, the training ground for many of the world's top car designers, including J Mays, Ford's design chief, and Chris Bangle, the American who is now BMW's chief designer.

  Nakamura is staunchly anti-retro -- "Nissan no retro," he said -- and cites among his influences the architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Tadao Ando. Ando designed the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, two concrete rectangles encasing a busy interior, and is also known for the Church of Light outside of Osaka. The church, which has been described as a concrete box, is notable for two bisecting slits cut into a wall to create, when the sun hits at the right time, a shimmering cross.

  "It is very simple, and it is very advanced," Nakamura said of the church. "I took a lot of inspiration from that kind of architecture."
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