syswei

Automotive News interview with Daimler design chief Gorden Wagener

trippy64

GM makes cars from clinics. M>B does not >Whose cars fare, look, work better?

MBS63AMG

The G wagon is the ugliest thing on the planet. I don't care what he thinks, I'll never even buy a used one for under $3000. So I didn't even finish reading the article. I don't know why this thing is over $100K.

syswei

GM isn't the only one that does car focus groups. I think it may be more common than not in the industry. I started doing them only in the last year and have already done ones for VW, Genesis, and I think BMW (the client for the last wasn't disclosed, but that is my best guess)...I think owning a Tesla resulted in some of the invitations. I did them partly for the easy tax-free cash for a potentially interesting session (in one case $500 for 2 hours, and they came to my home, so there was 0 travel time), but equally because I want to have my tiny say in the future direction of the industry. I don't see why companies shouldn't seek out customer (or potential customer) input. They can pick and choose what they might want to listen to, as far as suggestions/feedback.

ItalianJoe1

Makes sense on the G wagon. It's a terrible vehicle, and has been largely unchanged for 30 years. They are selling more than ever. I'd say they know what they are doing at this point, and whatever they offer, people will buy.

Mitch Alsup

For the people a G is meant for, it is the perfect vehicle.

Just like sharks are evolving at least as fast as everything else in the ocean, it is just that competitive pressures keep driving sharks back to exactly where they started from.

steveb9771

I was invited and paid about 5 years ago to attend a couple of Mercedes focus groups. We were asked to critique a few full size proposed future vehicles. Some of the models had different external designs on the driver and passenger sides. One of the sessions showed several proposed upholstery patterns and colors and we wee asked to rate each one as either preferred, acceptable, or not acceptable. Some of the thing we saw did appear in production vehicles a couple of years later.

syswei

Hope they're still doing focus groups, and that the G-Class was an exception.