July 25, 2003 - There are some curious, obviously well deserved but nevertheless curious, movements among the top designers at GM and Ford at the moment. We had Peter Horbury move from Volvo to a loosely (at least to outsiders) defined position as Head of Design at Premier Automotive Group. His name had been popping up in connection with discussions about Wayne Cherry’s successor at General Motors.

Then we had last week’s announcement of J Mays’ elevation to the exalted position as Group Vice President at Ford. He had been mentioned frequently in connection with Wayne Cherry’s successor. In March this year, Anne Asensio (ex Renault) and David Rand (ex GM do Brazil) both executive directors reporting directly to Wayne Cherry, suddenly changed jobs. Asensio was tipped by many as candidate to Cherry’s job.

Then we had Michael Mauer up at SAAB, who had obviously asked for more responsibility. Suddenly we saw him as Director of Advanced Design for GM Europe, a newly invented position, based in Gothenburg, under overall control of GM Europe Director of Design Martin Smith – who was also mentioned as one of the Cherry-job candidates.

I’ve never heard Mike Simcoe mentioned as the future GM Vice President, Design, but something happened to him too. Very natural, I’d say, having watched the two Michaels in Detroit recently. Especially the one memorable event with Mauer driving a 4x4 through and over the enormous fields around the Technical Center in the middle of the night, navigated by Simcoe – who had recently spent some months there, trying to morph his Holden Monaro into a Pontiac GTO with sad results. He must have spent a lot of time charting the local terrain, because when I say Through and Over I mean through and over. Local construction work forced the two to take routes that cannot have been officially sanctioned, but the fun these two had together, suggested that they should share lots of other things too. Like job levels for instance.

So now we learn that Michael Simcoe (45), Director of Design at Holden since 2001, has been named GM Executive Director Asia Pacific Design, effective September 1. This is a new position and means that he also will be responsible for the management of collaborative projects with alliance partners like Daewoo, Suzuki, Subaru etc – which he effectively already had – he even had the title, nearly: because he was also the Director of Design for the Asia-Pacific region, it was only the “Executive” part that was missing. Suzuki's YGM-1 from Tokyo 1999 is one example of his former duties, and when I talked to him in April he was on his second visit to Daewoo this year so that part of his new job isn’t very new either.

Simcoe joined GM in 1983, became Senior Designer in 1985 and Chief Designer in 1987. From 1990 until 1992 he was US-based and will be remembered for the Buick Sceptre concept car. His history at Holden is much more impressive, the company has expanded into something bigger than both Cadillac and Saab and is aspiring to become a global player. The stunning Commodore Coupé (Sydney Motor Show 1998) and Neil Simpson's HSV version, the Cross8 concept, growing into the soon-to-be-released Adventra, and the design department's flexible attitude to production (creating 28 'V-car' versions from one single platform, soon to grow into 35) demonstrates that Simcoe and his team are well equipped to take on bigger challenges.

Which brings me to another impressive aspect. Here is a design boss not afraid of naming his crew and giving credit where credit is due. Max Wolff, Warrack Leach and Kirsty Lindsay are names frequently mentioned in his descriptions. The esteemed editor of this web site has also been a colleague of Simcoe, and another Holden designer Rikard Orell left Australia for Sweden where he now heads Volvo Truck design and corporate identity work.

Mike Simcoe holds an Associate Diploma of Art Industrial Design from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, is married with two daughters who have to fight for attention with a Lancia Fulvia HF and a Lancia Aurelia B20GT (a selection that spells style, taste and a certain amount of petrol-headedness) that always are in a state of restoration. His feeling for old cars was strong enough for him to send the wedge-shaped 1970 Torana GTR-X concept (which came very close to production before being cancelled at the last minute) in for a total restoration so that it could take part in the celebrations of GM's 75 years of design. He even found two craftsmen interested enough to remember the car, one with the original brochure among his most prized possessions, Gary Baker and Miles Johnson, to get the car presentable again.

And when you hear him talk about the ground breaking Monaro Sports Coupé aka Pontiac GTO you are left in no doubt about how outspoken an Australian can be. “Of course I prefer the original design, because that’s what we designed in the first place” is the polite essence of what he is actually saying.

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Holden unveils new Monaro
Holden SSX Design Concept