His eye for detail is impeccable. It is evident in the sleek, smooth contours of his designs, which he scans incessantly.
“Can you straighten out the wheels, please,” Ed Welburn asks a helper. “I hate that,” he says, watching the vehicle inch forward on the showroom floor per his directions. It is the cadillac Converj Concept, a breathtaking new eco-friendly electric car he helped conceive. As Vice President of Global Design at General Motors, Welburn, oversees the design of every GM vehicle worldwide. He is the highest ranking African American in the automotive industry, but more impressively, he is only the first head of the global design market, which is also the largest in the world. With his eye on such a sprawling fleet, BET.com caught up with Welburn at the 2009 D.C. Auto Show to get the word on the future of the auto industry, what’s hot on the street for ’09, and what he’s done to go green.
Tell us a bit about your background as a designer, and the path you took to get there. You started out at Howard…
I started out at Howard University, and the thing that was so great about being at Howard was that my instructors there knew that my goal was to be a car designer, and they did everything they could to help me do what I needed to do to reach my goal, which is terrific. I will never forget the attention I got at Howard.
At General Motors, up until about 2005, it was a series of about five or six different companies under one umbrella that did not work together, and in 2003 I was named Vice President of Design for General Motors, which is really Vice President for North America, and the other areas of the world just kind of worked their way around. In 2005, the decision was made to consolidate all of them, and that I would run all of the designs at General Motors globally. Every GM product that is designed on this planet is done under my direction. I’m only the sixth person to run design for GM, and the first to do so globally in the 100 years of the company.
I love what I do. I visit those other design centers around the world, in Michigan, and California, and Germany and India and China and Australia and Brazil, and I’ve been to them all on a regular basis. I like to give the design team, which is around 1,500 people, a lot of room to work. I don’t like to micromanage. But I’m very aware of every single project in development in GM. My way of leading is by giving people a great deal of responsibility. Basically what I do is open the door and allow them the freedom to create. And vehicles like [the Converj] can happen quickly when you fit the right environment for your people to work in.
You are the first African-American head of design.
Welburn: Yes. You know, I never celebrate that because it also means that for many years there wasn’t one. I was the first African American hired as a designer at GM 36 years ago. I’ve had an amazing career working with some amazing people along the way, and when I stepped into the job it felt natural, it was right, it was within the right environment at the company. I get incredible support from everyone I deal with. At times I still have to pinch myself when I walk into a design review in Brazil or in Korea or China or Australia, and the teams have made incredible efforts to prepare for my review. I never take it for granted. It’s a responsibility I have both as the leader of design organization and as a Black man leading this international design organization. It is the largest design organization in the world, automotive or nonautomotive, and I don’t dwell on it, I just enjoy it. It’s a challenging auto industry, but I thoroughly enjoy what I do.
Tell me a little about this concept car, the Converj, and in general what types of designs we can look forward to?
Welburn: I don’t like boring cars. I like bold designs. I like very creative designs, striking vehicles. The Escalade is a vehicle that I was very much involved in its design. There’s a very strong direction for the Cadillac brand. But we also need to look at how we can do that, and do it in a responsible way. This car [Converj], is very dramatic. Very dramatic presence, every line is absolutely right. It even has a hint of a fin on the back, like the Cadillac of old. It’s also a guilt-free car because it’s an electric vehicle, and particularly in an urban setting to have a vehicle with this technology, if you drive less than 40 miles a day, the gasoline engine doesn’t even start. It’s purely electric and I’m very excited about that. And I think it’s a very relevant vehicle for any urban setting.
The big thing to me is that I don’t think African Americans have any one particularly type of aesthetic, or can be placed into any one particular mold. In our company we have a number of brands that allows everyone to find something that is different and that fits their needs. The Buick LaCrosse is part of a whole renaissance of Buick designs. It’s a very striking, very bold, powerful design. Maybe the strongest Buick design since some of the old Buick designs of the 1960s.
You mentioned the Escalade, a favorite in the hip-hop world. Rattle off a few names of the designs that you conceived.
Welburn: Chevy Camero, Malibu, Corvette, this new Chevy Beat (small car). Small cars don’t have to be boring, they don’t have to be something you apologize for. A small car can be just as dramatic, just as cool as any other vehicle. So we developed a concept called Beat, it’s a small car. It’s going into production and the excitement and energy surrounding the car has been so great we’re going to produce it and we’re going to sell it in all markets around the world. Cadillac, not just the Escalade, but the CTS, CTS Coupe, CTS-V.
Is green the new black?
Welburn: I think it is, and I think we’re going through an understanding that there’s a lot of green and there’s a lot of “faux” green out there. There is a display [at the 2009 D.C. Auto show] of a lot of green technology, some of it works, some of it doesn’t work. And it’s hard to know what really works. There are a number of hybrids, you know, a lot of people are saying, ‘Gotta have a hybrid!’ Some of them really work, others really do not. If you’re going to make a drive from Detroit to Washington then a hybrid isn’t going to do much for you. But it may be good around town. The next couple of years we will all sort through what works and what doesn’t work, what’s real and what’s just smoke and mirrors. And then we will see what is really green.
Lastly, what is on everyone’s mind is the economy. Money is tight right now but folks still want to support the American auto industry. How has the recession affected auto design and in what direction should budget-conscious buyers be looking?
The economy has affected not only General Motors, but everyone. It has affected every auto company and every industry in different ways. I think that as we come out of this, it is an eye-opener. Frankly, there have been people who have been leasing some very high-end vehicles they probably never should have been. And this is kind of a slap in the face and a reality check that they probably should have been getting a nice Malibu LTZ and not that high-end car that you were getting. And when they come back to reality, they will see that the new Malibu is a very smart vehicle to own. It’s got great accommodations inside, very premium look, Chevrolet in particular really has developed a whole new family of vehicles that look far more premium than they actually are and look far more expensive than they actually are. The Malibu, the new Equinox and the new Terrain. And I think people will find that they can be more comfortable than they may have been with brands X,Y or Z.
I think we need to do a whole lot more to connect with Americans and communicate and listen to America as we develop these products.
