Holden advances on design centre

A HOLDEN plan to establish an advanced design centre has gained strength with acknowledgment from parent General Motors of the need for such a facility.

The push for an advanced studio Down Under was first reported in GoAuto e-news more than 12 months ago as an idea that then design director Michael Simcoe was going to push up to Detroit.

Since then the idea has gained momentum, coinciding with a study for a much expanded Holden design centre.

“GM has acknowledged the need for an advanced studio in Australia,” Mr Simcoe said. “It hasn’t agreed we’ll have one, but it’s agreed that we need one.

“What we haven’t got yet is the money to go out and build the facility.”

The new design centre is expected to be based at Holden’s Fishermens Bend site, close to head office and engineering – although not in the redevelopment currently underway.

If the current study goes to plan and is approved by the Holden board, it should be open within three years with at least twice the floor area Holden Design currently uses.

But the advanced studio could be in another Melbourne location or even interstate. It should also be operational in that three-year timeframe.

“Wherever it is located you have to have the ability to lop it off from the rest of the organisation,” Mr Simcoe said.

“If you could do it as a clean sheet of paper, you would do it in a location that gave you some cultural benefit.

“For instance, maybe picking up the Australian beach culture or alternately Sydney.”

Informally, Holden has already set up a small advanced team to work on the proposed medium car – or “Torana” as it is commonly known. This team works separately from Fishermens Bend, in another Melbourne suburb.

Mr Simcoe, who is now GM executive director Asia Pacific Design, continues to push for the Holden advanced studio, which would be one of few in the GM world.

The drive for the expansion of Holden’s design facility and the creation of an advanced studio derives from the international adoption of the architecture for the forthcoming VE Commodore.

Known as the Zeta architecture within GM, it is a highly flexible set of components that can underpin both rear and all-wheel drive, left and right-hand drive as well as a multitude of body styles.

Wheelbase, overhangs, H-point height and powertrains are all independent of the Zeta architecture.

In the US, both Chevrolet and Pontiac are expected to employ Zeta, while Opel and Saab are both considering it for future large cars – in Opel’s case the production version of the proposed Insignia concept, and for the Swedes, the next generation 9-5.

American media reports quote GM Europe boss Hans Demant as saying that building the big Opel in North America, or even Australia, is an option.

“The cause for an advanced studio in Australia has been heartened somewhat by the fact that GM Design in North America is being asked right now … to put together a case for bolstering advanced design around the world, because it is pretty clear the amount of advanced design that happens around the world is not enough,” Mr Simcoe said.

“And when you think hard about it, you actually need to have an advanced design facility anywhere you have ownership of a platform, otherwise you don’t have a future for that platform.

"So that very squarely means that Australia owning a platform needs to have an advanced facility, by all things that GM has set up as a measure for who should have and who shouldn’t have."