Acura's new studio gives brand a 'keen edge'

LOS ANGELES -- Twenty one years after Honda created its Acura luxury division in 1986, the brand finally got its own design studio.

By that time, Honda's U.S. styling team had designed several Acura models, including the 1994 Integra, 1995 CL coupe and 2000 TL sedan. But designers thought there was too much overlap between the Honda and Acura work going on at Honda's studio in Torrance, Calif.

And since Acura was sold only in the United States, the bosses at Honda Motor Co. decided the upscale division needed its own styling center on Honda's sprawling Torrance campus.

"We needed to focus on our brand a little more," said Jon Ikeda, Acura's chief designer. "We used to be in one building with Honda, and our designers were all jumbled up. The guy next to me would be working on a Honda; or I would be working on an Acura, then a Honda. There was cross-pollination. We needed more independence."

But things sometimes move glacially at Japanese car companies. It was the U.S.-designed 2001 Acura MDX crossover that helped Honda brass in Japan make up their minds, earning American Acura designers much-needed respect from Japan.

But it wasn't until 2007 that Honda Motor granted Acura its own studio, in a 50,000-square-foot building separate from the Honda design house.

Ikeda says the dedicated space helped Acura develop the "keen edge" design philosophy that began with the Advanced Sports Car Concept -- a swoopy, angular adaptation of the NSX supercar shown at the Detroit auto show in 2007.

"Before we did the sports car, our design was a free-for-all," says Ikeda, who joined Honda r&d in Japan as a freelance designer before getting a full-time job with the company in the United States.

With the new philosophy, he says: "We wanted to show how technology interrelates with people. The surfacing is very sheer with machining, but the line work is very emotional -- what we pull from nature and the human side. We see a bright future with technology, rather than seeing it like The Terminator, where machines will kill the world."

The opening statement from the new studio is Acura's signature grille, formally called a "power plenum" but referred to informally as "the beak."

"We felt like we needed to create an image that is more recognizable," says Ikeda. "It's a polarizing design, but you had to put some kind of stamp there. When you go to a dealership, there's a face you can recognize. But we might have pushed the grille further than what people were comfortable with."

From those beginnings, Acura designers are trying to give the entire lineup a family look. The upcoming ZDX hatchback will be the first Acura production vehicle conceived start to finish in the new studio.

"We made lots of good-looking cars prior to this, but we didn't really adhere to the original concept," Ikeda says. "Now, when you go to a dealership, the vehicles will really have a look and an image."

An impressive part of the $15 million studio is a 200-square-foot flat-screen display that allows designers to superimpose full-sized vehicle renderings. It's a hulking piece of glass that requires its own cooling room to keep the computer equipment it needs at a chilly operating temperature. If two designs are competing for approval, they can be overlaid on the screen to see how they look from every angle, big as life.

"If you have two clay models competing to be full size, we can scan the quarter-scale and fluff it up with computer graphics," says Ikeda. "Within a week, we can look at it full size with the quarter-scale model on a desk in front of it. Sometimes it's hard to make a decision looking at a little model because it may not translate into full size."

The interior and exterior design departments are laid out in a typical Honda bullpen formation, unlike many studios, where the two departments are segregated. A casually appointed think-tank zone allows for informal, impromptu confabs. "There's no wall or division, and everything is open to discussion," Ikeda says.

Independence does not mean that the Acura stylists have severed ties with Japan. Although Ikeda says the brand has "more freedom now than ever," he says conference calls to headquarters are made nightly to give updates and defend the studio's work.

"Acura is a mix of American thinking and Japanese culture," Ikeda says. "But they understand the brand was developed here."