Scout Motors' design boss has lots to capture with SUV, pickup

Chris Benjamin's task is anything but ordinary: design two electric vehicles, an SUV and a pickup, for Scout Motors, a new independent and electric vehicle brand from Volkswagen Group, on a tight timeline.

The mission: Design and engineer an SUV and truck for U.S. consumers, where Jeep, Ram, Ford, Chevy and GMC have ruled for decades and Bronco, Hummer and Land Cruiser are back on the field, joined by up upstarts such as Ineos and Lucid.

The long-dormant Scout name has a rich and colorful role in the automotive history of the United States, as well as a loyal fan base.

For Benjamin, Scout Motors' chief design officer, capturing and representing that heritage is part of his design goal but so is looking forward.

Scout's vehicle development took a big step with the creation of the Scout Innovation Center in Novi, Mich., northwest of Detroit. It's where Benjamin and his growing team of 23 designers, as well as product and engineering teams, will continue to work on the two vehicles.

Scout CEO Scott Keogh told Automotive News earlier this month that the company intends to reveal its first vehicles in the third quarter while production at its South Carolina plant should commence in late 2026.

Scout hired Benjamin from Stellantis in May. The veteran automotive designer, a graduate of Detroit's College for Creative Studies, has also worked at Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo.

Benjamin, 47, spoke with Staff Reporter Jack Walsworth. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: You've worked at a few automakers. Are there things from former employers you've worked at that you wanted to bring to this facility?

A: I would say this: As a design leader, for me, the team has always been super important. The atmosphere of the team, the sort of camaraderie that you can build. That atmosphere, that team-building spirit, everyone being cooperative and innovative in their own way, and allowing themselves to be open to input from others, I think is one of the really big cultural things that we're building at Scout in the Innovation Center. It allows us to, I would say, meld backgrounds. My team comes from a lot of different companies. Everyone's got their own experiences. I don't like to just dictate "This is exactly the way we're going to do it." I like to listen to my team. I'm open to hearing their thoughts and ideas because ... when we collaborate, we're a lot more effective.

What are some things that you're working on?

We, of course, have cemented the vision of the design. Now we're just working hand-in-hand with our engineering teams to bring it up to the level of feasibility that we want it to be, and working through all of those things to make it really concrete. For me, it's also a matter of, from a design perspective, continuing to flex our muscle and push the boundary on what we think Scout should be from a design point of view, just representing all of the things that we want to capture: the hardworking heritage, the American ingenuity and that combination of how we pay respect to our heritage, but that we are, certainly, as an all-EV company, looking forward, looking at the future and creating rugged trucks and SUVs that will definitely support the needs of Americans.

Scout has had a few renderings released in the last year or so. Are those still in line with what the design is looking like now?

This is a perfect segue into the "no comment" comment. But generally speaking, you think about the modern world of automotive design and when cars come out and when auto shows were a big thing, and you would reveal things pretty early on. By the time people actually saw it, they were almost tired of seeing it. There's certainly a fine line between what you show and when your vehicles will be produced. We've certainly got a cadence that we are going to follow. Certainly, stay tuned on updates that are going to be coming in 2024.