Michael Simcoe, General Motors Global Design Chief, Retires

Car and Driver

2 days ago

Michael Simcoe today retired from his position as design director for General Motors. In the company's nearly 120-year history, he is only the seventh person to hold this job. As an Australian native, he is also the first to originate outside GM's Detroit headquarters. He credits his 42-year tenure with the automaker to this fact.
"If I'd been in North America all my life, I probably wouldn't have gotten this job," Simcoe told Car and Driver, seated in his stunning landmarked office, overlooking the corporate campus designed by pioneering Modernist architect Eero Saarinen in the 1950s. "I wasn't totally remote, but I was remote enough to grow differently. I was able to basically ignore North America," he smiles. "And I think that feeling was mutual."
His first big break arrived when he surreptitiously penned a rear-wheel-drive 1998 coupe concept for Australia's resurgent home market. This became the successful 2001 Holden Monaro, garnering the attention of famed GM executive Bob Lutz.
courtesy: General Motors
Lutz brought that two-door to the U.S. as a small-block V-8–powered 2004 Pontiac GTO. Unfortunately, affixing this venerable nameplate was its undoing. "That vehicle would have been a really, really good Chevrolet," Simcoe notes, "The moment they splashed GTO on it was the kiss of death."
Another V-8/rear-wheel-drive design, Simcoe's 2006 Holden Commodore (VE), became Lutz's BMW M5-fighting 2008 Pontiac G8 GT. Built on Australia's all-new Zeta platform, it fell victim to the global economic implosion and the death of the We Build Excitement brand. "But if you can find one of those now," Simcoe says, "it's a performance bargain."
Aaron Kiley
Simcoe had moved to Detroit by then, to become executive director of North American exterior design, and worked on another key Zeta car: the retro-styled fifth-generation 2010 Chevy Camaro. This vehicle marked a sea change in technological design collaboration for the company.
Tom Drew
"When I was in high school, we had slide rules—god that dates me," he chuckles. "For the Camaro, the theming work was done here. The engineering work and the design execution were done in Australia. So that was a real test of doing work 24 hours a day in real time, sharing huge files."
Contemporary GM designers now regularly utilize augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence to collaborate on global projects with colleagues in Detroit, Pasadena, Shanghai, and Birmingham, England. But while Simcoe has overseen a massive expansion and modernization of GM's home studios, as he walks us through the addition's cavernous new open-plan workrooms, the great majority of floor space is occupied by modelers working in that most analog of materials: clay.
"The beauty in the business is still working with clay," Simcoe says. 'So I built this palace to full-size models." He believes that eventually, design may go completely virtual, but doesn't see that happening for a generation or two. "It will take that long before designers operating in a virtual world have the sensibility and judgment to understand truly what they're creating proportionately," he says.
Walking through the studios invokes the literal elephants in the room: the rise of the SUV. Simcoe is characteristically blunt about the sport utility's voracious takeover. "Do I love SUVs? Not really. As a designer, an SUV is a marketing accommodation," he says. "It's a hard proportion to make work well."
However, he takes heart in recent category shifts. "The notion around what makes an SUV—what shape, what form, what proportion—is thankfully changing," he says.
He cites two factors. "First, I think people want more style," beyond the typical box, he says. "Our little Buick Envista and Chevy Trax, they're really quite a different take. They're not SUVs, but they have all the SUV qualities—higher ride, great interior efficiency—they're just not upright vehicles. And they hit well above their pay grade content-wise, and in their impression on the road." (We agree, having named both an Editors' Choice, and the Trax a 10Best Truck.)
He also alludes to a concept vehicle that will be unveiled this summer at Pebble Beach (indicating it's probably a Cadillac), that pushes shifting notions of SUV-ification in an even more radical direction.
The other element that Simcoe sees challenging the prominence of the blandly boxy SUV is the industry's adoption of electrification. "In EV architecture, the level of requisite efficiency makes traditional SUVs a bit more difficult," he says, noting that the height and weight of large battery packs, combined with rectilinear vehicles' aerodynamics, diminishes range.
He believes EV design will be liberated significantly by advances in battery technology. "If batteries are thinner or can be distributed elsewhere besides the floor, or if you can make a brick go 300-plus miles versus a teardrop, that'll affect the design of vehicles."
In the near future, Simcoe predicts that GM's core electrification focus will be on affordability. He enjoyed ushering the innovative and delightful 2017 Chevrolet Bolt into existence, meeting range and affordability targets. Unfortunately, the automaker was, somewhat typically, ahead of consumer adoption.
courtesy: General Motors
Simcoe foresees EV democratization impacting design, as manufacturers seek ways to significantly reduce development, production, and material costs. "As we move toward more affordable EVs, we're going to have to make choices about how we spend money differently," he says. "This is going to affect design, particularly interiors."
This parsimoniousness controverts one of Simcoe's career favorite projects, the Cadillac Celestiq—a hedonistic, mid-six-figure, electric flagship laden with bespoke materials. "Celestiq is a dream job," he says. "It's what the brand needed. If we're telling the world that we're serious about Cadillac as a premium brand, and creating that emotional pull internally and externally, then we need a vehicle like that that demonstrates what the brand's capable of. And what design is capable of."
Winging from the Celestiq's audacious allure, we ask Simcoe what the other GM brands would require to reinforce their proprietary equities. "Huge numbers of icon products," he says, smiling. "But that's not my reality. Every designer would love to be doing more performance-oriented, character-driven premium vehicles, layering on detail and artistic execution. But we're in a business where we exist because we make money, and any designer who gets churlish about that is missing the point."
courtesy: General Motors
After his retirement, Simcoe will return to Australia. This move may require him to reconsider his vast vehicular stable, which currently includes a 1956 Lancia Aurelia B20GT, a 1961 Lotus Mk. II Elite Super 95, a 1961 Aston Martin Series III DB4 Vantage, and a 1970 Lancia Fulvia HF 1.6 Group 4, as well as a passel of vintage motorcycles, including a 1928 Douglas DT/SW5, a 1952 Vincent Black Shadow, a 1971 Norton Commando Long Range, and a pair of 1970s Ducatis.
We note that this hoard lacks any GM vehicles and ask if there's a current or past product from his lifelong employer that he'd like to acquire. "If I could afford it, a 1930s Cadillac V16 Aerodynamic Coupe," he says, reminding us of the swoopy purple example recently procured for GM's Heritage Collection. But he has another idea as well. "When I came here, I had this desire to buy a 1963 Corvette split window coupe—manual, injected. But as I waited, they became priced out of their value as a car." He smirks. "Perhaps a going-away present, crowd-sourced?"
Brett Berk
Contributing Editor
Brett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair. Read full bio