Cherry goes out on top.

Of some people it is said that their last day on the job is just like their first day. That's because those people haven't changed. Haven't advanced. Haven't really improved much. They're in the same place at the end of their career that they were at the beginning.

January 1, 2004, was the last day on the job for Wayne Cherry. And of Cherry it could be said that the last day was like his first day--but for an entirely different reason. That's because Cherry, who retired as General Motors' vice president, Design (the fifth person in the corporation's history to head GM Design), ended his career as he started it back in 1962: Driven, enthusiastic, curious, and absolutely honored to have had the opportunities that he's had throughout his career with GM. Sitting in his second-story office in the GM Design Center on the grounds of the GM Tech Center a few weeks before his final day, Cherry gazed out the window and reminisced: "I can remember the first day I drove in through that Mound Road gage in my '55 Chevy. I graduated from Art Center"--he studied Transportation Design--" and got hired by GM. Driving in here and seeing the Tech Center back in '62 ... I thought it was a dream come true. We were sitting in the studio, among full-size clay models, sketching cars, having the radio on, shooting the breeze with the other guys about our passion for cars and design--and I was being paid for it." Even though more than 40 years have passed since that first day, the excitement and awe in his voice are resounding.

Or listen to this from a man whose career took him to England in 1965 to work at Vauxhall, to Germany, where he became director of Design for Opel (and consequently in charge of the design of all GM passenger cars in Europe), then back to the U.S. in 1991, where he achieved the top design job in '92: "Seven days a week since I started here, this"--by which he means working on designs for cars and trucks (some of which have become iconic, including the '66 Olds Toronado, the first Chevy Camaro, the Chevy SSR, and the Cadillac Sixteen concept--"is what I've done. It's not because I had to do it seven days a week, but because I want to do it."

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And so when we asked him what he suggests that young designers do, it's not surprising that he talked about the need to "do what you love to do and to be good at it. It's the only advice that I can give."

Cherry's career has essentially spanned the time when computer-aided design (CAD) began to emerge in design studios (i.e., CAD is considered to have been first described in 1961 by Ivan Sutherland in a Ph.D. thesis at MIT). So, does he think that computers have had an effect on the designs that are being created? Not really. So far as he's concerned, it isn't the tool or the method that matters. Rather, it is the individual: "It comes back to the skill and creativity of the designer." While some people seem to think that the effect of a computer on a vehicle's design is discernable, Cherry provides two good examples of why that isn't necessarily the case. First, he pointed out that when Cadillac initiated what is called its "Art [epsilon] Science" form vocabulary--such as the Cadillac '99 Evoq concept vehicle--that gave rise to such production cars as the CTS, SRX, and the XLR, "I wanted the vehicle to communicate to people that it was done in a computer." Yet the model was hand-sculpted. On the other hand, there is the case of the Chevy SSR Concept, which was translated fairly undiminished into the SSR production vehicle, the retro-truck with the bulbous, curvaceous surfaces: "The concept vehicle for the SSR was done in a computer." The concept that appeared at the 2000 North American International Auto Show was done in math, from the design to the milling of the model. "That broke the classic thinking of what a 'computer model' is," he said.

Cherry candidly admitted: "Like so many people, I find automotive design exciting, fascinating, and all-consuming. It's all I ever think about. I bore the hell out of a lot of people." But the automotive landscape would be more boring if it hadn't been for his automotive design obsession.

By Gary S. Vasilash, Editor-In-Chief