The Designers Pt12 – Ryuzo Kubo, Lear

The year has been extremely exciting for both myself and Lear in general. There is a definite polarisation within the industry in two strong directions – one is very high premium and another is very economically-minded, with nothing in the middle area. So we have found ourselves in a very interesting situation.

This has lead to a very exciting series of projects, particularly with our Italian design studio. Maybe not so many people realise, but this studio has been responsible for the design of some of the most high-end seating on the market. Seat design is usually led by the carmakers’ design studios, but sometimes we create original designs, just as we did for the Ferrari 458 Italia and Maserati Gran Turismo.

The Lamborghini Huracán’s seats were a real highlight of last year for us and were designed in collaboration between Lamborghini and Lear designers. It’s of course extremely satisfying to be a part of a program that results in such a stunning car. The year before we released the Corvette Stingray with our seats so it’s been a great run of stand-out projects. Being so involved with the interior design teams in order that what we produce fits into their vision is very rewarding.

As I am Japanese and based in Japan many of the companies I work with are also from here. They of course have some premium brands – Toyota has Lexus, Nissan has Infiniti and Honda has Acura – and these brands are aiming to be competitors to European premium marques. One way we are helping them achieve this is to work with them from our Italian studio to create a European-designed seating solution for their next-generation of products.

“There is a definite polarisation within the industry in two strong directions – one is very high premium and another is very economically-minded, with nothing in the middle area”

We have done this previously with Lexus with the seats for its LF-A supercar, which is perhaps the most expensive Japanese car of all time. Our other work with Porsche, Audi, Maserati and Ferrari, for example, has meant that the demand for Lear from our customers is on high-end. These clients are looking for very good styling and design with top-quality European craftsmanship. I’m currently working on the final mock-ups in the studio ready for these carmakers to review.

Overall I feel that car design is trending more and more towards sporty and aggressive styling, especially the European brands. Look at BMW for example – they mainly build four-door sedans but now they are very sporty and aggressive. And interiors are also the same. So we find ourselves working on very aggressive-looking seats, which poses many challenges – how do you balance these sharp, hard forms with comfort, durability and safety? It’s a difficult task but there are always ways around it. The result is that the standard of seat design has increased very much recently.

For us fashion and furniture design are obviously sources of inspiration, but we also have design facilities in the US, Europe – in Italy, the UK, France and Germany – Japan and China, so we have a global network of designers drawing influence from their environments.

In terms of the future we are heading towards auto drive, so it’s not going to be such a manual task. This is a very big trend for the future. The key will be the relationship between design and engineering. I don’t know now what the answer is but it’s something we need to incorporate into our future designs.

Ryuzo Kubo

Name Ryuzo Kubo
Role Chief designer seating, Lear corporation
Age, nationality 56, Japanese
Location Yokohama, Japan
Education Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan

Ryuzo’s cars of 2014

Concept

1. Land Rover Discovery Vision
2. Renault Kwid
3. Lamborghini Asterion

Production

1. Citroën C4 Cactus
2. Aston Martin Taraf
3. Lamborghini Huracán