To a designer hemmed in by the stagnant atmosphere of Detroit in the late 1970s, the offer was too good to be true: A caller was telling Buick chief designer Jerry Hirshberg that an international auto manufacturer wanted him to build an independent design center in any U.S. city he liked.
Hirshberg was sure the call was a prank by Len Casillo, chief designer at Oldsmobile.
“Go to [heck], Lenny,” Hirshberg said, hanging up.
But it was Nissan Motor Corp. calling, courting Hirshberg to establish a groundbreaking U.S. studio that would break free from Nissan’s internal politics and conservative, Japanese-flavored designs.
Nissan Design International, the studio Hirshberg built on a hill near San Diego, wasn’t the first California design shop (that was Toyota’s Calty), but it was the most ambitious.
“You are being created to rock the boat, to shift [Nissan’s] design course, and you will not be loved by all,” Nissan President Takashi Ishihara told Hirshberg. Nissan chose the right person when it came to boat-rockers.
With training as an engineer, industrial designer, painter and musician, Hirshberg believes in “drinking from diverse wells,” to borrow a phrase from his 1998 book, “The Creative Priority.”
To stimulate thinking, Hirshberg hired employees with conflicting styles. He encouraged the designers to pirate sketches from each others’ desks. And when all else failed, he shut down the office and took everybody to a movie, the bloodier the better.
Unconventional, yes, but within a few years Nissan Design International had gained international attention with designs such as the rugged 1986 Hardbody pickup, the muscular 1987 Pathfinder, and the modular 1987 Pulsar NX.
But there also would be failures. There was an extended dry period when NDI’s designs fell out of favor in Tokyo.
Hirshberg’s designs were considered too flamboyant for the Japanese market. When the company’s home sales were slipping badly, Nissan executives felt they needed to focus on the home market.
For most of the ’90s NDI’s designs were passed over or so modified the studio didn’t take credit for them.
“It hurt,” Hirshberg says. “It hurt plenty. It was very frustrating for us.”
Nissan’s U.S. sales slipped from a peak of 830,767 in 1985 to 582,874 in 1992. Even after an infusion of cash from French automaker Renault last year, U.S. sales were 677,212.
“Japan pulled away at precisely the time that you could make a fortune here,” Hirshberg says.
To keep up their spirits, Hirshberg and his team designed racing ski boots for Salomon, kindergarten furniture for the Angeles Group and a high-speed boat for Turkish yacht-maker Yonca Teknik.
They kept trying to convince Nissan that the path to recovery was based on reinjecting passion into its very competent cars.
In 1998 Hirshberg ordered three concept cars for the 1999 U.S. car shows. There was a sport-utility truck, a utility sedan and a hot little sports car that evoked the spirit of the original 1970 240Z.
“We just got tired of waiting,” Hirshberg says. “We decided, you can educate the company or you can educate the public. The Z Concept was our way of saying: `It’s time to get back into the soul business–soul on wheels.”‘
The Z Concept created a huge stir at U.S auto shows. Four months after it was unveiled, Nissan executives agreed to bring back the Z car.
NDI designers are at work on what they hope will become the production version of the new Z.
Hirshberg is working with his designers to play down the new Z car’s ’60s design cues, worrying that “retro” will read like “antique” in the 21st Century.
That’s a warning other car designers might want to note.
The new Z car will join the NDI-designed Xterra SUV and the Maxima in a revitalization of Nissan’s U.S. image. According to Carlos Ghosn, the former Renault executive who is now Nissan’s president, the new Z will provide the power behind Nissan’s new brand image.
Hirshberg chose July 1, the day he turned 60, to retire from Nissan.
He turned down an offer to become Nissan’s international design chief, saying he wants to spend more time painting and making music. But Hirshberg will retain an advisory role.
“There are people out there who say, `Just give us washers and dryers and don’t make them too ugly,’ Hirshberg says. “The [Honda]Accord and [Toyota] Camry don’t have an ounce of imagination, and they sell fine.
“Nissan cannot take that route. If we do another bland car, we will be punished again.”
