By the year 2013, GM’s state-of-the-art design center in Incheon, Korea will employ over 200 employees in charge of a range of GM global vehicle programs, supporting the automaker’s exterior and interior vehicle styling efforts as well as digital design and studio engineering.
GM Korea, one of seven fully integrated design, engineering, and manufacturing operations within GM, is responsible for such global successes as the Chevy Spark, Aveo/Sonic/Barina, and Cruze. It was also GM Korea that — through visualization technologies and advanced design — brought us the beautiful Chevrolet Miray concept car.
GM’s press release was quick to point out that construction of the expanded center will abide by the automaker’s industry-leading environmental design practices, “including the use of innovative building technologies related to energy, water and recycled materials.”
Over the last ten years, General Motors has invested an average of $850 million annually in its Korean operations, and if today’s announcement is any indication — it will continue to do so into the future. In fact, GM will invest an addition $1.27 billion in vehicle engineering and facilities in 2012 alone.
Comments
Great More Small Designs then..should be coming. 🙁 Why don’t we just design the cars in Bolivia ?LOL
Can’t tell if you’re serious or not… Are you?
If you went into any of GM’s design center I almost guarantee 1/4 of the designers would be of Korean decent, Koreans make great designers…
Why can’t we employ Americans? Besides the paying them like slaves, what is the benefit of have them design our cars? The Sonic and the Spark are ugly and cheap looking compared to their classes, and the interior in the picture above doesn’t look very good – at all.
They certainly can employ Americans… and do already. But here are a few points to consider:
1. Global diversity is what makes a company… global. This applies especially in key areas of engineering, design, and development. A global task force in these areas makes a company better, delivers a broad(er) perspective, and offers an overall business advantage.
2. GM is a global company, not a government whose job is to look out for the best interestes of its (American) people. Sure, it’s an American company — but there are obvious tangible advantages of hiring, developing, and designing globally. That’s the difference: only governments need to look out for the best interests of its “constituents/tax payers/people”. That’s not a business’ duty.
3. South Korea is a developed country and its skilled “white-collar” workers are very talented (designers, engineers, business people) and don’t get paid “like slaves”. Moreover, HR strategy (real HR, not the stuff that most HR departments have been relegated to — like pushing hiring/termination papers) should make room for global talent sharing; we have American workers doing expat jobs in other parts of the world to bring a broader perspective; now, Korean, European, and workers of other nationalities can do the same around the world as well.
That said, the Spark, Sonic, Cruze, Orlando, Captiva and several other vehicles were penned and engineered in Korea with input from other GM development units from around the world. They’re better products from that and are global successes, for the most part. And to me, they’re far from ugly and cheap. But styling, of course, is very subjective. 🙂
Who says GM has to employ American auto designers?
I bet it’s more like “Here’s an opening for an auto designer, now only the best, most creative, and most talented will get the job”.
If GM was to single out applicants because of their nationality, then it would be GM’s grave to dig and fill.
So if GM employs Korean Americans is that bad. The US is a land of many nations folks…