GM to Draw on Hollywood Talent Pool for Car Design.

Southern California's reputation as ground zero for automotive innovation just got a boost. With the Jan. 5 announcement that General Motors Corp. would establish a new design center in North Hollywood, every major car manufacturer now has a design presence here.

"We picked North Hollywood because it's one of L.A.'s central arts districts," said Don Walker, director of GM's local commumications office. "We will be within a five-mile radius of the center of entertainment design talent."

Auto designers are in increasing demand as carmakers start moving away from boxy, all-purpose models and increasingly offer vehicles aimed at more specialized audiences -- like two-seat roadsters, pickups and heavy-duty sport-utility vehicles such as the Chevrolet Suburban or the Ford Excursion.

Recent graduates from design schools can command impressive starting salaries. But car design is not exactly a fast-growing industry. Nor is it a major employer.

"There are probably more Major League Baseball players than there are practicing, mainstream car designers in the world," said Richard Hutting, chief designer at the Lincoln Concept Center in Valencia.

Even so, carmakers are turning over model lines more quickly and using computers and other technological advances to make cars more distinctive. That is heightening the interest for people with fresh ideas.

"Increasingly, the factors that affect a consumer's decision to buy a car are related to design," said Greg Brew, assistant chair of the Transportation Studies Department of the Art Center College of Design at Pasadena and a director of BMW's design studio.

"Reliability, performance and safety are not big issues now as they were, say, in the 1970s," he said. "We take them for granted. So people decide on what cars they're going to buy based on what they look like."

Brew says the competition for graduates from his program is intensifying. "Over the last year our graduates have gotten an average salary of $48,000 a year -- that's for someone with an undergraduate degree," he said. "And a completely new factor is the signing bonus -- our students are typically getting bonuses that range from between $8,000 and $15,000."

The Art Center, which is one of the world's most respected automotive design schools, has about 100 undergraduate transportation majors currently enrolled.

"When I graduated in the early '90s, I considered myself lucky to get a job of any kind," Brew added. "Times certainly have changed."

Despite the heightened competition for new designers, the shops themselves don't employ lots of people. The oldest and perhaps largest design shop in Southern California is Toyota Motor Corp.'s Calty Design Research in Newport Beach. Calty, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, has 18 designers on staff, and 51 employees overall.

Hutting says the Lincoln Concept Center, which does all of the luxury brand's design work, has five designers on the payroll, along with six modelers and five fabricators to build prototypes.

"Computers and other technologies have made all of us more productive," Hutting said. "We can do more with fewer people, so we all have as much work to do as ever -- if not more."

The GM center, which has been touted as major facility, is expected to employ only about 30 people, including designers, modelers and support staff. The director will be former top Volkswagen designer Frank Saucedo, an Art Center graduate.

GM wants to overcome its reputation for stodginess by tapping some of the creativity of the entertainment industry for fresh ideas. The Art Center's Brew says that strategy has its limits.

"When you're looking for a lead designer, you want someone with a strong transportation background," he said. "Ford has been recruiting people in product design to work on some of the smaller components, including interiors, but (to lead a team) you really need someone who understands how cars work."

Brew says car makers are getting more pragmatic. "Despite all this talk about getting 'wild and crazy' creative people to design cars, the bottom line is, will people buy them, and if so, will they work?"