FCA Design Chief: Renegade, 500X Styles Go Own Ways

TURIN – Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is hiring an additional 1,500 workers at its Melfi, Italy, plant to help meet demand for the Jeep Renegade and Fiat 500X, which are being built on three shifts.

The CUVs are the fruits of the newly developed B-wide platform, but the similarities end there as the automaker tailors design, brand-image and customer-appeal concepts to the new Renegade and 500X.

Whereas the Renegade benefits from the Jeep brand’s global recognition, the Fiat 500X will be aimed primarily at European and North American markets, including the U.S.

WardsAuto talked with Lorenzo Ramaciotti, FCA vice president-design, about the design of these vehicles sharing an architecture but looking so different and so appealing with their distinct personalities.

WardsAuto: The instant success of both the Jeep Renegade and the Fiat 500X has to do with the quality of the marketing and communication campaign as well as with their design and individual style. How do branding, marketing, communication and design relate?

Ramaciotti: Communication, marketing and design are the most relevant when it comes to introducing a new car to the buying public. Marketing and communication, as it is with design, are part of the brand’s values and it is design that the brands leverage when presenting and promoting their products.

A strong design and character makes it is easier to do that, especially when we are dealing with two long-established design icons such as the Fiat 500 and Jeep.

Today, without a strong emotional involvement of the car buyer, one ends up focusing and banking on the selling price as the top motivation to buy. A car with a strong personality may not appeal to everyone, may polarize between yes and no, but for those who say yes it will be a very compelling buy, to have now. This is the design philosophy behind the Jeep Renegade and the Fiat 500X.

My opinion on this is that today the worst choice, when it comes to decide on a product strategy, is to not choose – banking on something very generic in order to appeal to everyone.

However, behind the success of an automobile are many other activities that are of the same relevance even though less popular, such as engineering, quality, production technology and product planning. As designers we work with them all, day in day out.

Carrying Out Missions in New Markets, Segments

WardsAuto: When it comes to body and interior design what was the vision and the strategy for the two different projects? Were their nature and their mission given a clear definition by brand, or were they dictated and orchestrated from the outset by your corporate design directives?

Ramaciotti: The two projects originated and developed through a most natural and smooth process within their own brand. Both Jeep and Fiat have a unique and clear-cut character. Our mission was to maintain and enhance the uniqueness and character of each brand. The Renegade mission is to take the Jeep image and values into the segment of more-compact SUVs, whereas the 500X had to take Fiat into its own utility-vehicle world and remain a Fiat 500.

WardsAuto: What was your mission in this case of corporate design governance? Which were the priorities and the challenges?

Ramaciotti: Our corporate design job is to provide the means for the highest quality and consistency to the different design centers (in Detroit, Turin, Sao Paolo, Maranello) and promote creativity in response to the expectations of brand management and product contents as well as timing.

Our role is to constantly update, evolve and implement the key values and the typical features of each brand. We must make sure that each brand and product line safeguard their heritage and identity through a consequent development, without any dilution or overlapping. This also requires the harmonization and management of interregional projects.

WardsAuto: The Jeep Renegade and the Fiat 500X have been developed from the same platform and are built in Melfi. Was the platform engineered ahead of the design projects? For both model lines or individually for each one? When it came to the hard points (overall architecture, dimensions, cabin layout, suspensions, engine bay) was each brand and team given limited freedom or, on the contrary, a great amount of freedom?

Ramaciotti: A top priority was the greatest commonality of technical components for both cars in the global market. The Melfi factory in Italy is the first one to produce them but soon one of them (the Renegade) also will be built in factories located in Brazil and China for regional markets. For this reason there was zero freedom for the hard points to compromise the industrial synergies that are at the core of the whole program.

At the same time, each brand was granted the greatest freedom in shaping the bodywork so that each car would look different and deliver a design entirely consistent with the formal language of each brand. My feeling is that the resulting outcome validates the strategy, philosophy and execution of the two design projects.

WardsAuto: Considering car design as a communication tool, what are the different messages from the Renegade and the 500X when it comes to exterior design, interior atmosphere and expression of different styles, lifestyles and image?

Ramaciotti: A successful brand must keep linked to its strong and clearly identified values. To this aim, design is one of the most efficient vectors they can show. The radically different design language of the Jeep Renegade and the Fiat 500X are perfectly consistent with the values of their brand. The Jeep is solid, square, trail-rated. The vertical rear (window) enhances its interior volume (and) strong tension lines mark the surfaces.

The Fiat is soft, round and moderately muscular, with a flowing silhouette and uninterrupted, filled surfaces. Because of the flair of the original 500 and its heirs, the 500X in its turn comes with two different personalities, one more elegant for the urban environment, the second one with a more practical and solid look for the countryside.

WardsAuto: Do the two cars actually reflect different spirits of time (and) of place to make (consumer) choice easy, almost automatic, between them in any given market, be that Italy, North America, China or Brazil?  If so, can we really speak of a unique and synergistic project?

Ramaciotti: Indeed we can. It is one project, hopefully not unique with our corporation, and it is very synergic because the features of the two cars actually complement each other. They are aimed at buyers with different lifestyles and with a clear idea of how they see themselves, what they like to be. Through all sorts of research and from earlier field analyses among the buying public their complementing roles have emerged clearly on every occasion.