The Designers Pt 8: Stefan Sielaff, Bentley
“Working on a luxury product is fascinating. You might never be able to afford it but it gives you the opportunity to live a little bit in that world”
“Working on a luxury product is fascinating. You might never be able to personally afford it but at least it gives you the opportunity to live a little bit in that world”
I prefer to design a luxury product more than a volume product. You have more freedom. First of all we have to consolidate the Bentayga and it is no secret we are working on the next Continental and cabriolet, the Flying Spur and a few others that are not yet official. Is there room for a Porsche Macan-sized Bentley? We still have to investigate what are the right sizes for our products. I don’t think it should be too small. We need something in a curious dimension but more sporty and that idea works more with sports cars for Bentley, like the Speed 6. I think it should be really a rather solid statement.
Bentley EXP10 Speed 6 concept
After three-and-a-half years in Potsdam doing wide-angle concept work I appreciate my new role as director of design at Bentley. I still hold the position of head of interior design for the VW Group and was involved on the 2015 Speed 6 concept interior and the Bentayga production SUV, so when I arrived here in Crewe in July I wasn’t really a stranger. It was a surprise when Luc Donckerwolke left [the role of Bentley design director]. I’ve known him for almost 23 years – we did the Audi A2 show car in the mid-90s – and we’re friends. One day or another you have to do these things. I went away to work for Mercedes-Benz and was then asked to come back. You never know what’s going to happen.
Born in Munich, I’m a real Bavarian. But Great Britain is somewhere I really love. I lived here before when I did my Masters at the RCA. I fell in love with everything: the people, the humour and the car culture. I’ve always loved British cars. My first car when I was 18 was a Triumph Spitfire. I learned a lot about mechanics because it was always broken. Obviously, Bentley is one of the greatest British car brands so in a way it was the fulfilment of a lifetime dream to come here and work.
Bentayga’s built-in watch winder in detail
Altogether I think 2015 was a rather normal year. What it lacked and what I hope to see in years to come, are answers to some of the fundamental questions customers are asking. We’re still not there in terms of consumer electronics, that industry runs very fast. And also, what is the right technical basis of propulsion? That’s more an engineering question but as designers we define ourselves not only as stylists. Working with pre-development engineers, if we have a more advanced package than a combustion engine we can make a step forward. There will still be four wheels and a passenger compartment but there will be more freedom. This change is happening bit by bit, but for me not strongly enough. You see a lot of variations of the same theme. There is not a lot of room to reinvent things anymore. I’m much more interested in making a blockbuster innovation.
There is a Group policy on who gets which innovation first, and the big brands in the Group are Audi and VW, so they have a completely different amount of resources. But nevertheless, we’re embedded into this luxury brand group with Porsche and Bugatti, and are definitely having stronger contact with Porsche. We are not big enough to develop everything on our own, but we can influence the development within the Group and then put it into our cars sooner than before.
Speed 6 interior mixes old and new
In the last decades the typical Bentley customer was rather conservative and maybe not asking in the very first second for the mega-technical electronic innovation. But this is changing as our customers are getting younger. Millennials are inheriting money, growing up in rich families and asking for much more advanced innovative technology. We have to accelerate and make sure we fulfil these expectations. HMI in combination with autonomous and electric driving will become different. Personally I’m from this Bauhaus, German design education, where you want to do stuff simpler, so I’m disappointed things have got more complicated in the last few years. Touchscreens are innovative and have translated from iPhones and iPads into the car, but I’m not so sure it’s the answer for the long-term future of the car. I don’t want to fiddle around on touch-pads and screens.
For Bentley it’s important to ask what a luxury answer to this issue is. My personal opinion is that luxury is about service, and delivering such a service in a car, via talking to a ‘butler’, an avatar. A lot of activities should be deliverable by speech. When driving by yourself and focusing on the traffic the things that are most unused are the mouth and the ear. This could be easy-going, as long as it works. Not forgetting our heritage and genetic codes design-wise, we need to accelerate our next generation of cars, with a younger and more modern appeal. This is also cultural.
Bentley design team outside the Crewe studio
We need young designers and are building a new and bigger design studio. We have about 70 staff now and need to be at 120 in the next two years. There will be a new engineering building and an office close by. Also, I want a more digital process. This way you can immediately get feedback on exterior aerodynamics and it answers a lot of feasibility questions on HMI too. We can’t do this on clay models. Our young designers build the model digitally and then we use the data to reintegrate into a clay or foam model. In the end we always have to judge an analogue model as we sell an analogue product in terms of exterior and interior feeling. In the future, we won’t ‘only’ be designing luxury cars, but also luxury products, and a luxury lifestyle and world too. We’re expanding into furniture, accessories and more. It’s not just about extremely high material quality but extremely high design quality too.
Stefan Sielaff
Role Director of design, Bentley
Age 54
Nationality German
Location Crewe, England
Education Munich College of Design, Germany and RCA, UK
Stefan’s cars of 2015
Concept
1. Peugeot Fractal
2. Mercedes F 015
3. Mazda RX-Vision
Production
1. BMW 7 Series
2. McLaren 570S
3. Volvo S90
Car Design Review 3
This interview is taken from the Car Design Review 3 yearbook. Published annually by the writers of Car Design News, the book rounds up all of the major car-design trends seen in the past 12 months, counts down the best production and concept car designs of the year and features interviews with 18 of the best car designers working today, plus an in-depth interview with Syd Mead, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner.