SUCCESS BY DESIGN

Stellantis chief design officer

Ralph Gilles has been responsible for many iconic American cars of the past 30 years – and he’s also an M1 Concourse garage owner

It started with an enthusiasm for cars before I even knew much about design. As a six- or seven-year-old, I just noticed the difference between vehicles that made my heart beat and others that were boring. If I had a visceral reaction towards the car, I tended to look into it – to understand who made it, why this one was making me feel this way while others didn’t.

I grew up in Canada, in an era that had a lot of cars as heroes on television and in the movies. The automobile was almost like part of the cast, a personality: Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazzard, Condorman, Magnum PI

In the 1970s, designers were going through a transition. Everything was shrinking into more economic sizes; the boxy look was in, there was front-wheel drive, muscle cars were dying. So as a young person, I’m like: “What’s happening? All my favorite stuff is on the chopping block.” So that makes you even more appreciative of it. I started doodling and asking my parents to buy me car magazines. I loaded up on feeding myself as much information as I could. I was in love with the engineering aspects and the technical part of it, as well as the styling.

Long story short, I saw car design as a hobby more than a career path. I thought I’d go into, say, engineering or physics, because I always loved to tinker. Like a lot of young enthusiasts, I would make plastic model cars by the dozen – and I’d also destroy them!

We grew up in a great time and, of course, being in Montreal the Formula 1 circus would come to town every summer. The town would just be teeming with activity, and then all the supercars from the northeast would end up in downtown Montreal. Just walking the streets, you would be overstimulated.

So all that was swimming around in my brain. And I’ve never stopped sketching. I was always drawing cars, just to relieve all this excitement somehow. I spent summer breaks in New York at my aunt’s house, and one time she saw me passing time sketching. She said: “You really like to do this, don’t you?”

I was 16 or 17 years old at the time. The company that was on TV the most happened to be Chrysler, doing car commercials. My aunt said: “We should write a letter to Lee Iacocca.” So she did, on my behalf, and they answered it [suggesting Ralph attend one of three design schools]. So that’s kind of where it all started.

I started at a local school, and actually dropped out. I wasn’t good at physics as it turns out, or that level of calculus and trigonometry [laughs]. So I dropped out, and I started working at a local hardware store, unpacking, unloading semi trucks, thinking that would be my life.

But then my brother came home and met me on spring break – he was in med school – and asked me where this letter from Chrysler was. I’d kind of just put it to the side. After a little bitch slapping – excuse my French! – he had me do some homework and call the design school.

This was in 1987, I guess. There was no internet, so we called the school and they said: “Well, you need ten pieces by March 15.” And it was literally a week from that time. So we stayed up counting coffee, my first series of coffee drinks in my life, and then we sketched and sketched, and overnighted it to them, and they accepted me – and then it was exciting. Wow, I get to actually go to the US! Detroit at the time seemed like it was on the other side of the world.

My parents dropped me off that September, after I’d worked all summer at the hardware store. When I landed, it felt like going to the X-Men mansion and seeing all these quirky artists – not just car designers, but all kinds. I felt so at home, like these are my people. And for the first time, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

You joined Chrysler in 1992. Is it true you soon got involved in some big projects?

Yes! For that, I have to give credit to Tom Gale, Trevor Creed and John Herlitz, even the great Bob Lutz. The company was very open minded at the time, very flexible – we were doing the cab-forward designs. And while I was in school, the Portofino concept car came out and Chrysler was really showing where it was headed. It really was trying to change the look and the proportions of vehicles.

They threw us – all the young hires – in at the deep end. Chrysler had gone through a bankruptcy, and it just hired a batch of fresh minds. They wanted to see what we could do, so I got thrown into some pretty big programs. I did the Dodge Intrepid concept’s interior, then a Jeep Jeepster and the Concorde LHS.

By 30, I was director of the rear-drive studio. I’d joined full time when I was 22, so just eight years to become a director was unheard of then. I thought: “What is going on?” I felt a bit overwhelmed by such an opportunity... Actually, I didn’t see it as an opportunity, I saw it as a scary moment in a way. It was exciting, but I felt a little unprepared. However, they surrounded me with good people, which has always been the case.

Which projects are you most proud of?

Well, I like the ones that people collect. I call it the car-club effect. You know, we have people who join clubs for the vehicle that they choose to own, drive and enjoy. And those would be models such as the Challenger, Magnum, 300 and Viper – all that type of performance car that has real presence on the road.

I found that working on Jeeps, too – there are a lot of Jeep clubs! I love this dynamic that a car is not just a device that gets you from point A to point B, it’s something more. It’s those vehicles that punctuate a culture, punctuate a time and create friendships.

Now, as the company has grown and merged with several other great brands, we have an incredible portfolio. I have always loved Alfa Romeo, I have always respected Maserati, and to know that these brands are within our quiver is just amazing.

Are you able to work across all the brands?

I design, with my team, all the North American brands, so Ram Truck, Dodge and also Maserati – which was from when I had Maserati when we were FCA. I had all the Italian brands for eight years or so. It was amazing – I got to work on the new generation of Alfas, the new 500Es, some other Fiats – but when the companies merged, it became quite big, so we decided to cut it down the middle and divide the workload.

What do you think of current car design?

It’s bonkers! I mean, first of all, our industry has never been more competitive. There really is no such thing as a bad car. They have become very reliable, very well engineered and well made. So the brand’s story is ever more important. It’s something we have always respected, but it’s even more important now that as we design a car, we’re trying to build on that je ne sais quoi, the brand manifesto.

Every time you create a new model you have to think of continuing this. It’s almost like a DNA string that goes back, in our case, 100 years or whatever. You don’t want to break that chain, you have to make it stronger. These great storied brands have a lot of very adamant owners who are watching the scenery closely.

And in our case, we’re striving for the future as well. We don’t want to be beholden to our past so much that we are stuck by it. But how do you cherry pick that and augment what you’re doing towards the future? So it’s a constant balance of respecting your past but forging ahead with this electrification story. We’re trying to create EVs that you want to drive, not that you feel you have to drive. There’s a big difference.

How do you do that; it’s not easy, is it?

No, it isn’t. First of all, you surround yourself with people who love what they do. A good car starts at the foundation. If you don’t have good fundamental proportions, you’re dead in the water. Style all you want, but it won’t age well.

So we work hand in glove with engineering. I consider myself probably one-third engineer the way I think, so I can speak their language, and I’ve trained my team to also almost know the boundaries better than the engineers, so you can design around them instead of fighting them. That all started with Tom Gale being head of design in the 1990s. He was an engineer.

What are the biggest challenges now?

It’s multipronged. Part of it is the ever-changing regulations. We’re okay, we know them, we have a really good team that keeps us abreast of what is going on. It’s more the fact that as we design we’re considering sustainability more than ever. It’s not just styling a cool car anymore, right?

Stellantis’s carbon-neutrality goals start in earnest in 2030; we hope to reach carbon neutrality in 2038, a bit ahead of even the Paris agreement. And that comes with a huge rethink; how do the components get upcycled? How can you upcycle materials that have gone through a few cycles? A designer was once just styling oriented. Now we are considering materials, setting up all kinds of upcycling techniques… you have to be aware of many dimensions.

Which aspect do you most enjoy?

I like the ‘innocent’ phase; the ideation phase. Sometimes we start off with napkin sketches, scratchy doodles. They can start off the size of a coaster; we blow them up, put them up and that might be the one which wins. Why? Because it just makes your heart beat faster – something about it has character.

So the ideation phase is understood. We want the designers not to be too obsessed with all the rules, just to sketch what feels good, and we go from there. And, of course, that first time you show it to the public is always fun. When we revealed the Ram concept, it was wild to hear the oohs and ahhs – and you get feedback instantly on your social media.

Were you expecting to receive the EyesOn Design Lifetime Achievement Award?

No, not at all! All my heroes are in there. It still shakes me to the core to think about it. First of all, I feel young – like it’s something that would happen ten years from now maybe. So that part is shocking. Also, it’s hugely meaningful to me that this Lifetime Achievement Award is voted in by the previous winners – it’ll take me years to really come to terms with.

The awards always take place somewhere different, so we are happy that we’re going to have it at the Conner Center [the old Viper production plant]. It’s fun – a great place. We developed it right before Covid, but we weren’t able to really exercise it, so this will be a good opportunity to show it off.

What do you love about historic cars?

I’m an honorary judge at four of the US’s major concours. It’s interesting, because on one side you have much older people reminiscing about the cars they love. And you’re also starting to see a younger crowd – and people who look at cars as investments, almost like trading art.

What really shakes me to the core is realizing that we’re creating valuable things. They are not disposable items. People will own these vehicles for decades and hopefully centuries. It’s amazing – some of our vehicles now operate in that ilk. That’s definitely eye opening.

I’ll go to, say, The Amelia and see everything under the sun from the brass era to cars that are only 20 years old, and they’re all relevant to someone, they all matter to somebody. Being exposed to that passion is amazing.

Do you have a favorite era and kind of car?

Well, that’s a tough one. I have a thing about the 1960s, because it was right before the regulations got really tough. The technology was starting to get interesting and the times were still in a romantic phase. You had the Lamborghinis, and some of the cool angular design overtones that were trying to be futuristic with these very edgy looks. It was kind of a free-for-all. And then you had the muscle-car era, so we had a lot of interesting things happening – and the Brits were still there with the E-type. A lot of neat things were going on.

The ’68 Charger is a favorite. It still stops people dead in their tracks, yet it’s more than 50 years old; older than me.

Can you tell us more about your own cars? Well, I have got a lot of Mopars, because I’ve worked for the company. A Viper, and I’ve had Challengers. I have a Peugeot 205, which I restored, and I’ve got Alfa Romeo GTVs – a ’68, a ’69 and a mid-1980s race car. I’ve got a Lancia Delta Integrale rally car, and I’ve got others... but I can’t tell you about those, because they’re other brands [laughs].

And you also have a garage at M1 Concourse? Yes! I’m very lucky, it’s literally a ten-minute drive from where I work and 15 minutes from where I live, so it’s a really good place to let loose, especially in spring and summertime. There’s always something interesting going on; the garages are open, people have their toys out… it’s the coolest country club in the world. I don’t play golf, so this is a great way to build a network. There’s probably two degrees of separation in the entire community, so you kind of get to know people very quickly and you’re all connected somehow.

My garage is a diorama of my life. It’s a place where I can put memorabilia, trophies, art… I love automotive art, especially from other car designers. The garage has a lift, so I can do minor repairs. And it’s going to have a video simulator for training. It isn’t a bachelor pad, though, because I share it with my family. I drive the Alfa race car on the track, and I have a Radical, too.

There’s something about this car-enthusiast space that I find very peaceful, when you look at all the things that surround us in modern times. Having cars in common has been a great equalizer; something that has allowed me to integrate into new places quickly. No matter what your walk of life may be or who you are, if you love a car or design, it overrides everything else. It’s incredible. If the rest of the world was like the car community, it’d be an amazing place.

So when a venue like M1 is constructed that basically creates a cauldron for that dynamic, a place for it to happen more readily, more easily, more often, it’s just awesome.

For more on Ralph’s Lifetime Achievement Award, please see www.eyesondesign.org.