Meet The Guy Who's Responsible For The Side Past Times Side Nissan Navara, Terra's Design

Ken Lee took the helm of Nissan’s LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle) pattern squad half-dozen months ago, in addition to immediately he shares his vision of where he’ll live on taking the construct moving forward.

H5N1 Nissan veteran of nearly 17 years, Ken was born inward the U.S., but spent fourth dimension living inward Singapore in addition to Hong Kong. Working for Ford for 3 years, he saw how innovative Nissan pattern was when the American carmaker got their hands on the Nissan Murano in addition to Infiniti FX. H5N1 calendar month later, he joined Nissan.

Now that Ken’s inward accuse of LCV design—focusing on body-on-frame SUVs in addition to pickup trucks, he feels that at the core, the “Nissan DNA” plays a really key role. He equates this to beingness technologically advanced, amongst careful attending to detail. However, when talking close Nissan’s LCV DNA—it’s all close “go anywhere,” in addition to beingness “unbreakable.” His challenge hence is to mix them inward a recipe that honors the brand’s heritage piece making it nonetheless segment-appropriate.

One perfect example is how Ken’s eyes were changed when designing the 2020 Patrol. He says, “I’ve discovered how potent the next is, how loyal in addition to passionate our customers are. If nosotros own got the Patrol, our query trips to the Middle East demo us how high the customer’s perception is—it may fifty-fifty live on higher than how nosotros at Nissan perceive it internally. That is really encouraging in addition to motivating.”

“It’s really of import to live on inward touching amongst our regions, in addition to LCVs comport on really interesting markets. Coming from the rider motorcar globe to LCVs, in that location are markets I’m familiar amongst in addition to also novel ones. Our pattern squad is already quite inward melody amongst the markets, because nosotros take in in addition to own got satellite studios. We’re inward deep communication amongst the production planning community, which also has satellites inward all key markets. That’s the fun, when nosotros larn to own got inspirational trips that touching the marketplace in addition to customers.”

Nissan’s global pattern squad isn’t in addition to so big, but they’re highly efficient, working amongst a potent global collaboration betwixt the carmaker’s other pattern studios inward the U.S., Europe, China, Latin America, Thailand, in addition to Japan. Whichever pattern is chosen though, the regional studios nonetheless verbalize to each other, in addition to telephone commutation information, ultimately resulting inward a vehicle that the client is expecting.

“As senior pattern director, my move is to inspire the pattern team—and, every bit the championship says, to laid direction. The most of import move is finding the correct management for design, peculiarly inward the really beginning, in addition to that the production finishes well. I would compare the procedure to an airliner taking off in addition to landing. Takeoff in addition to landing are extremely important, but the middle move is when the squad is expected to piece of work quite autonomously to notice the design. For my ain job, it’s a affair of agreement global markets, pattern trends, client expectations, in addition to exactly only the sense of aesthetics, in addition to convey everything together to guide the projection inward the correct direction,” concludes Ken.