GM’s Sharon Gauci on the evolution of Buick

With two decades at General Motors under her belt, Sharon Gauci is well placed to understand the strategic role design plays within an OEM. Gauci, who is executive director global design at Buick, GMC and GMC Hummer, offers her thoughts on where the Buick brand in particular is heading.

Car Design News: Tell us about how the ’sculptural beauty’ design language is evolving.

Sharon Gauci: We’re in an important time for automotive design as we start to understand what our product looks like in an all-electric future. I think specifically for Buick, the brand isn’t about being trendy and being in the moment with something that’s really visually controversial.

Very deliberately, what we wanted to do was understand what is at the heartbeat of the brand and that is that timelessness – design that is easy to love but continues to offer discoveries as you live with the car for a period of time. The challenge is to take the essence of that and translate it into where we need to be in the future.

And so the Wildcat concept vehicle really was a pivotal point in the studio where we wanted to create something as an internal concept to begin with that was truly expressive. Something we could really rally behind from a design point of view, but then also use it as a beacon for everything in the portfolio to come.

Sculptural beauty is not something that we coined as a term that we would have for a period of time, let it go, and evolve or recreate something new. No, we’re very deliberate about sculptural beauty being part of Buick’s DNA, something that we need to evolve and keep relevant for the brand.

CDN: One of the most striking aspects of the Wildcat is the grille treatment. Why was that important to retain?

SG: It gives proportion and graphic to the front face, but also it allows us to be expressive. What you see first are great proportions and great stance for the vehicle, which is so important. And then you see the visual volume of all of the surface detail in the sheet metal, and then it’s about the discovery of the details.

And that’s the lighting signature, the jewellery and the textures in the front face. Without a grill, you don’t necessarily get all of those beautiful details. So we still think that that’s important for the brand and we are still holding true to that as a statement for Buick.

And even without the need of a grill per se, still having that real estate on the front face allows you to integrate a beautiful essence that may imply a grill, or it can be gorgeous textures that allow that space to be utilised a little bit more.

CDN: Where are you at the moment, do you think, in terms of design language? Because there’s going to be a transition as we move further towards electrification.

SG: We haven’t revealed everything that we’ve been working on that takes inspiration for Wildcat. And as you know, the studio is always working so far ahead. At the moment, we have started with ICE and you will see design cues on the Encore GX and the Envista.

We’re at a point in time where we’re discovering how we even evolve it in some way, but still recognising that for a period of time we’re going to have a showroom of products that need to relate to each other globally. And they need to relate to each other under the brand irrespective of the size of the vehicle. So it’s a really exciting time because the portfolio is going to be so defined and so aligned from in terms of design language.

CDN: With the Wildcat itself, are there any plans to put that or something like that into production, do you think?

SG: You know I can’t answer that. Are we exploring? We always explore.

CDN: GM has a strong presence in China with Stuart Norris heading up the Shanghai studio – how will that studio inform design that is tailored to the needs of that market?

SG: We will have adaptations, for sure, and we need to consider the needs of our biggest market for the brand: China. The beauty of being in a global design organisation is that the studios work hand in hand together. So there is nothing that’s happening in China that I don’t know about, for example, from a strategic point of view or a design language point of view.

We are having weekly global design calls where we’re shepherding strategies, where we are shepherding the looks, but also understanding the needs of consumers in China that might be slightly different to the needs of consumers in North America.

And understanding how we balance both. But it is an aligned strategy, which is really great. And having the intellectual design power to be working together on strategy in two large global regions is really phenomenal.

CDN: How has that relationship evolved or developed? How do you keep everyone moving in the same direction?

SG: Relationships matter, for sure. And in previous roles, I’ve had the opportunity to, for example, work out of Australia at a regional level where I had at the time China, Korea, India and Brazil to bring on a global journey. And you’re still working with the same people in the studios.

When we are talking about strategy, we’re not bullish in saying, “Okay, it must be like this.” No, we want to understand. We have specifically a global advanced studio in China that Stuart leads which really is the pulse point for what’s happening in China. So through their insights, we’re able to understand how we incorporate some of those ideas, how we incorporate those needs into strategy.

CDN: How much of an appetite in China is there for a more sustainable approach to car design?

SG: We very much understand that a change towards sustainability is necessary, and we’ve actively been working on that. And we have a strategy in place for the brand specific to China. We are seeing the signals of change now, beginning with fashion. At very high levels of fashion where they are very actively communicating out, not just physical change in their product, but what they’re doing from a business point of view.

And there is no doubt that that will start to infiltrate automotive in China as it has everywhere else in the world. So do we see a shift to sustainable materials in China happening sometime in the future? Yes.

CDN: Fashion seems to lead the way on this, doesn’t it.

SG: I think it’s easier for people to understand it when they see that change in fashion. The level of detail and the level of performance that the customers will expect in terms of how things feel and what it looks like and how it wears over time will be critical.

And that we will maintain, for sure. I think as it starts to change in fashion, it’s when it becomes mainstream that it’s easier to understand. And actually prior to fashion outside of China, we saw a shift – a long time ago actually – with how food was being spoken about in addition to some signals of change in the high luxury brands in the fashion world.