Designer interview: Luc Donckerwolke on wheel design

Luc Donckerwolke has headed up design at the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) for several years, proving so successful that he has now been appointed president of the group. It’s a significant step in a career that also includes design director at Volkswagen Group brands Bentley, Lamborghini and Seat as well as designer of the original Skoda Fabia and the iconic Audi A2.

“I am very honoured by this new responsibility,” says Donckerwolke. “I would like to thank the Group for the trust it has shown in me, and I recognise the Hyundai, Kia and Genesis design teams for their consistently outstanding performance. We have together challenged the status quo and we will continue to promote a creative, challenging, and positive attitude within our Group.”

His new responsibility comes in the same year that he was voted World Car Person of the Year 2022, an award he sees as recognition for the hard work of the whole design team and the vision of the company.

“It’s always a bit funny to receive an award like that because actually it is a result of the work done with all the team and with the management,” he told Car Design News. “It just shows that we have managed to change something in the last years, and it is the result of the trust I had from the management when I was hired six and a half years ago. I was basically told to put design upside down and this is what I did.”

Donckerwolke has certainly achieved that at Genesis in both the production cars and the stunning Genesis X Concept models, but we wanted to talk about something more specific that caught our eye, wheels, a subject which he is very passionate about.

“I’m a wheel fetishist,” he says. “In my compound where I have all my cars, I don’t know how many wheels I have. Normally, before I buy a car, I have already bought the wheels for it.”

These circular components of a car are often not given the recognition they deserve, despite their obvious importance, not only in terms of their mechanical function, but also their key design role. The wheels on the new Genesis GV60 for example are dramatic and intricate, demonstrating not only superb design, but also how wheels are more important than ever when it comes to things like aerodynamics.

“I consider wheels one of the most important things on the car because you judge the proportions of the car, the masses, the volumes, in relationship with the wheels,” he says. “If the wheels are wrong, the car will not look appealing. The main thing we start discussing even before we talk about the wheel is the wheel size, because the overall diameter of the wheels influences the proportions of the car. So, it is a really important point, and we just don’t design the car and then design the wheels after, it is a really important, if not the most important starting point for the design of a vehicle.”

For many the starting point is the classic five-spoke wheel, which Genesis combined with a honeycomb design for the G-Matrix wheels on the GV80 concept shown in New York in 2018. The five-spoke is still a favourite for Donckerwolke, but he says sometimes people are too reliant on it.

“I love five-spoke wheels because they seem to be the exact number of spokes needed and the strength you need to take on the body,” he says. “The only thing is you cannot carry on always doing five-spoke wheels. We do from time to time and maybe the Fuchs wheels from the Porsche 911 is the best example of the design, but the five-spoke wheel has always been kind of the tradition: if you get lost, do a five-spoke wheel and it will save you.”

That’s essentially where the design began for the 21-inch Technical Deconstruction wheels on the Genesis GV60. Donckerwolke calls it the most extreme version of the five-spoke, with a broken geometry inside the wheel. Of course, it’s not just about aesthetics; he says the wheel is as aerodynamic as a dish design, which brings up the topic of how much influence the engineering requirements have over a final design.

“We integrate quite soon,” he says. “From the first concept that we design where we decide the kind of geometry, the second time we look at it, it’s already in 3D so immediately we integrate the size of the brake caliper and the strength of the spokes needed. Then there are hardly any modifications required later. The main problem is when you design a wheel in two dimensions, or you don’t take those parameters into account, then the wheel changes dramatically.”

The need for more aerodynamics and lightweight properties is also pushing wheel design. One way many OEMs are approaching this is with a return to using plastics, either as inserts such as those on the Audi E-Tron GT or even as a full wheel cover over an alloy wheel, a strategy adopted by MG and others.

There’s a trade-off here though says Donckerwolke. Covers often lack emotion as with the original Toyota Prius and the Audi A2 3L and so you have to market the technology aspect of the wheel rather than its design. He says engineering departments are pushing a reduction in weight and improvements to aerodynamics and sometimes a decision is made to allow a computer to design the most optimised wheel rather than a designer. The wheel is then not aesthetically pleasant and so a wheel cover is designed to improve the car’s looks. This has significant cost benefits, but he doesn’t see a time when people won’t want well-designed wheels.

“It is difficult to imagine that people in the future will not have the same fascination for wheels as they have today,” he says. “I do believe that the most important thing is to make an attractive wheel and try to balance it with the best possible compromise between aerodynamics, weight and and aesthetics.”

If you don’t then customers will turn to aftermarket wheels and that not only loses money for an OEM but implies that they didn’t get the overall design right in the first place.

Donckerwolke is a big Porsche enthusiast, and he cites the different wheel styles across the 911 range as a way to get it right. From the standard 911 to the GT3, there is differentiation in wheel design, something that not only works aesthetically and for model identity, but also provides a fascination for the wheel design and the advanced technology used to create it.

One area that he feels isn’t addressed enough though is how a wheel looks in motion. The design still needs to fit with the rest of the car, but also it needs to provide visibility of components like the brake disc and calipers. This was a key area of wheel design in the 1980s, a time which he refers to as the “golden years of the aftermarket wheel.” It allowed for more personalisation, along with body kits and decals, but today Donckerwolke wants to provide that individuality in the cars he designs.

“All the cars will be different,” he says. “All the models have their own characteristics. I hate the Russian doll concept where you design one thing and you scale it down and you scale it up and you end up with the same design design offered to everybody.”

“If cars have applied the same design, a cookie cutter or Russian doll system, you’re going to asphyxiate the customer and yourself. This is why I always make sure that all the cars have their own character.”

That’s evident in everything from the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and 6 to the Genesis models, but it’s fascinating to know that for Donckerwolke, it all starts with the humble wheel.