In his 30 years as a car designer, Luc Donckerwolke can look back on a wide range of brands. Born in Peru, the Belgian, after a brief detour to Peugeot in the early 1990s, worked for a wide range of brands in the Volkswagen Group for over a decade, giving a face to models from Audi, Bentley, Skoda and Lamborghini, among others. Since the end of 2015, Donckerwolke has been working with a short break for the Korean group and now coordinates the design processes of brands and models as President and Chief Creative Officer of the Hyundai Motor Group. Donckerwolke is considered a passionate car collector and speaks eight languages, not least because of his multicultural background.
Question: When you switched from the Volkswagen Group to Hyundai, what was the biggest difference in your day-to-day work? Luc Donckerwolke: To be honest, I’ve known the Hyundai brand and its current models for a long time, but I didn’t know much about their history and first had to familiarize myself with everything. What was immediately noticeable, however, was that you were faster than I had previously known from my work – a lot faster. At home I was used to very long processes. When I switched, I had all the models printed out and hung them on my office walls so that I could get a precise picture of the vehicles. That was 85 different models – mind you without corresponding derivatives. Of course there is no single market where all vehicles are represented – but the sheer volume was impressive for me.
Question: Does such a variety create more problems for a designer or does it also give a lot of possibilities? Luc Donckerwolke: Both – but it’s not possible, for example, to create a uniform brand face for the vehicles. There is no unanimous identity as there is with an important character trait such as the daytime running lights. A uniform family design is simply no longer possible with something like this. If seven out of ten vehicles at a traffic light in Seoul come from the same group, then you can’t do a family design like with Russian matushkas. So we decided to create small families with their own character. This also facilitates the short life cycle that we have at Hyundai. At first I was frustrated that after the design freeze you couldn’t work on the details of the vehicles for a few more months. But here it was simply said: “Just do it with the next model.” Not always easy for a designer.
Question: Why is the life cycle of Korean models shorter than many international competitors? Luc Donckerwolke: Very simple. In Korea, but also in the USA, customers always want something new. This is a Europe or something else with a premium brand and we have to adjust to that. Even I, with my former European mindset, had to understand that. That’s why we work differently with our premium brand Genesis, for example, because it should last longer. But with the high-volume brands Hyundai and Kia, we can’t transfer the same design to many vehicles because new models are coming out so quickly that the design languages would overlap in time. In the Hyundai Group, we do the facelifts so early that we don’t yet have any feedback from the market from customers.
Question: But what is the relationship between the Koreans and the history of individual models? Luc Donckerwolke: We’re working on that right now. Take the Hyundai Pony, for example, created by Giorgetto Giugiaro 50 years ago and now reissued by us. The pony was not only Hyundai’s first real vehicle, but much more than that. The pony, with its own unique character, was the beginning of automobile culture in Korea. Even today, some remember how the pony was created back then. At the time, Hyundai had sent several engineers to Italy who worked on the models together with Giugiaro. Hyundai needs to be more aware of its own history, because that’s something to be very proud of. But history doesn’t play the same role in Korea as it does in other regions of the world. Hardly anyone here drives a vintage car or wears a patinated vintage leather jacket – that’s only just beginning to emerge.
Question: The various brands of the Hyundai Group have been very successful in recent years. Where should the brands, the models and especially the design go in the coming years? Luc Donckerwolke: The Hyundai brand in particular needs to become much more emotional. In Korea or the USA we lack identification, sympathy on the street. Especially in the USA, Hyundai is not known for its history and the brand does not stand for its history either. Hyundai simply needs to get more identity and substance here. Once upon a time, people joked about the Hyundai brand. At least that’s over now. Precisely because of this history, which one can be proud of, we have now revived the Pony Coupé study. Koreans are very humble and forward-looking. Nobody rests on their laurels.
Question: How can one then imagine the Hyundai brand design of the coming years from these points of view? Luc Donckerwolke: Arrogance is a big issue. We don’t want to be arrogant with our models or think that we impose our design on the customers. You can see that with the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6, for example. There, for example, we no longer have a Hyundai logo on the steering wheel, because the driver knows which car he is in and does not have to look at it a dozen times a day. It’s almost like forced brainwashing.
Question: The automotive industry is in a state of upheaval – and not just because of electromobility. It must become faster and significantly more efficient. How does this affect the design? Luc Donckerwolke: We’re faster at Hyundai than I’ve ever experienced before. The fast work and the fast processes not only have business advantages, but are also good for the design. It is not diluted in the course of the process and the core is preserved. What we have approved is finished and therefore final. So you are much closer to the original idea and the car is not so clinical. To be fast, you have to work digitally. We did this for the first time on our Tucson and ended up completing the design freeze six months earlier than we had planned. Due to the fast digital work, there is ultimately much more time for the important details. The Tucson, for example, looks very masculine and aggressive – very close to our original design. And that’s from a woman, by the way. As a designer, I don’t have to like the car – the perfect vehicle would be boring. You have to be able to bother yourself with something. This is more important than ever.
