Mattin's challenge: changing Volvo's design--just enough.

"Don't change too much."

How would you like to have that advice given to you by your predecessor when taking over a job as the design chief at a ar company?

That's what Steve Mattin heard from Peter Horbury, the man who is credited with transforming Volvo's image from being the boxy favorite of the Birkenstock-wearing set to something that is far more contemporaneous during his 10 years at Volvo.* Yet Mattin, who spent 17 years at Mercedes--where he was senior design director for exterior and interior on the S-Class, M-Class, R-Class, SLK, SL, SLR, and Maybach vehicles--after being graduated from Coventry University in 1987, isn't in the least bit off-put by what might seem to be shackles around his creativity. He puts it quite simply: "I think Volvo has a very strong brand identity at the moment, and it is very important to build on that." And he adds, "I am not really constrained."

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A large part of Mattin's brief is to take Volvo's current design language [which, of course, has safety at its core] and to expand it without fully changing it, with a goal, in large part, to achieve an annual sales volume of 600,000 vehicles [up from 456,000 in '04].

There are two vehicles that are near to production, the [30 compact and the XC50 crossover. While most of the design work was completed on the cars before Mattin arrived in Gotenberg from Stuttgart, he says that he'll make some minor changes to the designs. For example, he says that there will be adjustments to the exterior lighting of the C30. Then, he is hoping to create vehicles that he thinks will have the emotional resonance to help achieve the higher sales volume. He is particularly keen on the crossovers, the XC50 and the next-generation XC90: "Those vehicles are going to open up a lot of opportunity for us as to where we can go in the future."

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Mattin says that he'll be sitting down with Volvo top management to outline his ideas and to get their approval. He notes "They have been very open and supportive. When I came in for my interviews, they said they wanted to take design in the company a bit further." [The key word, one would think, is bit.]

He is anxious to begin work on his first Volvo show car, about which he is comparatively mum. It will be ready by the end of '06. He does drop a couple of hints about his direction: [1] the signature grille will become more prominent on the front fascia and [2] interiors will take additional cues from Swedish furniture design. [Mattin is interested on pushing innovative interiors, citing, for example, the slim "floating" center stack first used on the 540 as the sort of thinking that they must continue to promote.]

So what's he doing now that he's changed addresses from Germany to Sweden? The 40-year-old says that he enjoys spending time along the Scandinavian coast line, which he describes as being "very inspirational." Closer at hand, he finds influences in mobile telephone designs ["every week you can pick up a new phone with a new design," he says without exaggeration; Nokia, incidentally, is based in Finland] and consumer electronics, especially product from Denmark based Bang & Olfsen ["They are right up there in terms of the latest product design."].

*Clever design has its benefits: Horbury went from Volvo to being director of design for Ford's Premier Automotive Group [PAG] to his current post, executive director of Design, North Americo for Ford.

By Kevin M. Kelly, Senior Editor, [e-mail]