رسانه اینترنتی مای موویز MyMoviz جامعترین سایت فیلم و سریال
FRANK STEPHENSON: Design for me is desire
to create emotionally aesthetic, stimulating
perfection,
[ENGINE ACCELERATING]
It's very difficult,
if not impossible to achieve perfection,
So, you're never completely satisfied,
[ENGINE REVVING]
That unsatisfied feeling, although it sounds negative,
is actually what drives the designer to do it better
the next chance he's got,
I don't know what I could do that is more
appropriate than design to sort of satisfy that craving,
[ENGINE REVVING]
Anything that's not perfect, you gotta,,,
You gotta make it perfect,
Ah! Oh, look at that,
[CHUCKLING]
Oh, my gosh!
That's really cool,
I love these, miss, Oh!
That's Steve McQueen's,
STEPHENSON: I'm the most curious person I know,
It's fascinating for me just to realize that I'm still a kid,
[EXHALING]
[CHUCKLES]
Of course, your body gets older, but my mind is
probably more curious than I was,,,
Even when I was very young,
It just gets more curious all the time,
I remember when I was about 10 years old,
I experienced my first awakening
when I first saw my,
uh, first Jaguar E-Type,
I can even tell you the date, [CHUCKLING]
March 19, 1969,
My father and I were walking hand in hand
and there's this E-Type just parked there,
It just stopped in my tracks,
I,,, I had never seen one before,
Remember staying there so long that
I actually broke out crying when my father took,,,
Pulled me away and said, "That's long enough, You've seen it,"
It really was a sensual feeling, I guess, at that moment,
I couldn't believe that something could be so perfect,
Just down to the shape of the car,
You know, love at first sight,
That was the most important thing,
[ENGINE REVVING]
It's like finding something that finally makes sense to you,
I don't know of anybody else who so consistently has just made amazing things,
[INDISTINCT] It's nice,
WOMAN: I mean, I love the cars that he's made,
The McLaren,,,
So wide, and just the angles on it,
I think they're super sexy,
MAN: Between the Minis, the Fiat 500s,
the, um, BMW X5s,
when you just drive around
and you're not even thinking about Frank,
Frank's in front of you every day,
So, in California,,, Many maniacs,
And be nice to Frank so he could sign the car just to have a,,,
"Here, It's,,, It's my design,"
There we are,
Lovely! [CHUCKLING]
STEPHENSON: So, I've been in the industry for 30 years now,
and I've gone everywhere, every way
and every direction, [CHUCKLING]
From working on, say, your entry level vehicles
up to way over to the other extremes,
[ENGINE IDLING]
Now that I've, you know, established myself pretty well
in the industry and, uh, have a name,
I can choose my own projects
and do what I want to do,
Not my car, [CHUCKLING]
[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]
I'm not the biggest admirer of big, flash cars,
although I have to design some of them,
I'm perfectly satisfied with something that
is small and fun to get to,
[DOG BARKING]
[BLOWS]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
I mean, there's so many carbon fiber pieces for this car that it's,,,
Probably is worth more than parts
than it is in reality,
I've designed the wings for it
which eventually will set,
When ready, we'll set up here,
Sort of in that kind of
angle there,
So, this is gonna be my snorkel to take air in
through this scoop here
so there's almost a three-scooper,
Two snorkels on the roof and one here that'll take air in
and feed it to the turbos,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
What turbos? [CHUCKLING]
I have here everything that kind of inspires me about
the whole world of design, I mean, I know I've got
a few cars, but there's a lot of other things here too,
Um,,, [CLEARS THROAT] Lots of sketches,
Earlier sketches,
Um, notes
of different projects that I'm working on,
Um,,,
Inspirations from nature, wolves,
I have this empathy with them,
They seem to be dealing with harsh circumstances
and somehow they come out on top,
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[DOG PANTING]
Hi,
You know, when you feel like you've been something in your prior life,
I would swear that I was a wolf or some animal like that,
Wolves are always trying to be at the top of its pack,
A designer has to have that bite to compete
because the whole thing about design
is finding a new way to do something that nobody,,,
Nobody's thought of before,
That's what moves the world forward,
Your whole objective as a designer is to bring innovation,
not just to design a pretty picture,
Yeah, when it starts working, it starts doing this,
It's gonna be cool,
One of the things that we're trying to achieve is to try to make a jet
as efficient as possible,
What you learn from water applies often to what works near,
That's why we're basically studying the maritime creatures,
We're taking a bit of inspiration from, uh, the hammerhead shark,
specifically because it has,,, Has what we call canards in the front,
Canards provide lift on a jet,
Working with the rest of the overall shape,
we're looking at something manta ray direction
because of the shape of it, and the fluidity of it, and how,,,
How beautiful it looks when it's going through water,
Just absolutely, uh, a work of art,
For most people, I think generally, it's considered science fiction,
but eventually, we're not really gonna need cars anymore,
There'll be other apparatuses that help us to get around,
So I'm kind of excited
about the future evolution of transportation,
[MACHINE WHIRRING]
As a child, I really liked dynamic, stimulating shapes,
Everything that had some kind of emotional movement to it,
[ENGINE REVVING]
Just before I graduated at 17,
I'd met somebody who was actually riding Motocross,
and he invited me to watch him race, a couple of races,
and obviously, it's, you know, it's like a spark,
[ENGINE REVVING]
The Motocross bike,
it's like a mechanical animal,
a fast mechanical animal,
[ENGINE REVVING]
Like a dog tugging at the leash, You have to almost hold it back,
[ENGINE REVVING]
What I did was ask my father if I could have a bike to race,
So he said, "Sure, yeah, get it out of your system if you need to,"
First year of racing,
I won the national championship in junior class
that eventually ended up with a professional contract
to turn motorcycle racing into my life,
My father loved racing, He loved being with me
and experiencing the same excitement
that I experienced racing the bike at its limits,
And, you know, kids always say, you know,
"My father's the best in the world,"
My father really was the best in the world,
He taught me and my brother before we were like even 10 years old how to drive,
and he would give me the keys and I would drive
on the Spanish highways, as a kid,
He wanted to just teach us,
my brother and I both, everything he could teach us,
Not wait,
I think he just loved us to death,
[MACHINE WHIRRING]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
Me and my father, we used to do this all the time,
We had my bikes and, uh,
we had to get them ready,
and basically, at every race you take your bike apart
and check it and replace parts
and make sure everything's perfect,
and then you put it back together again,
and we used to do this all the time,
Eventually, I had a mechanic do all this stuff for me,
and that took away half the pleasure of getting ready during the week,
Uh, hair is still there,
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[BOTH SPEAKING SPANISH]
That's, yeah, that's my mother and my father,
[LALO SPEAKING SPANISH]
Uh, and you're in there,
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
There's Lalo,
[BOTH SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
This was a lot, lot before, This was late '70s, um,,,
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[ENGINE REVVING]
[STEPHENSON SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[LAUGHS]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[PEPE SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[PEPE SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
This collection here, it's a treasure,
treasure chest of,,, Of iconic motorcycles,
Not only are they beautiful, but they are aesthetically
and functionally optimized, I'd say,
Not overly adding surfaces that you don't need
or volumes of surfaces that you need,
There's no fat,
What we've got here is, uh,
Motocross bike, It's a Montesa,
This really brings back the memories for me, There are two strokes,
Uh, extremely high revving little bikes and, um,,,
I remember whenever I came out of a corner, I would always have to feather the clutch,
Always leaning forward to keep the front wheel down,
You couldn't be weak and ride a motorcycle, especially a Motocross bike,
because the only thing that keeps you in contact
with the motorcycles is basically your hands,
You're off the pegs, A lot of times
the bike's moving underneath you
and it's such a physical, physically demanding sport,
it's a little bit like riding a wild animal,
All you were paid to do was to stay in shape and ride a motorcycle
and go as fast as you can, jump as far as you can,
You know, go into corners, and out of corners, as quickly as you can,
So, that was a great way to live,
I was within the top ten of the world,
so I was, uh, considered one of the better guys,
Um, and I remember when I was 22-and-a-half, almost 23,
my father said, "That's it, that's your last year,
"This will be your last year racing,"
And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well, you're not good enough," And I thought,
"I'm pretty,,, Pretty high up,"
"Yeah, but, you know, if you don't win a race,
"nobody's ever gonna remember who you are and you're,,,
"Your'e good, but you're not the best,"
INTERVIEWER: How did you feel when he told you to stop?
STEPHENSON: I think, uh, looking back, I realized that he was
actually looking out for me, Wasn't like he was trying to
take one of my life's pleasures away from me
and punish me, It was rather the opposite, so,,,
-INTERVIEWER: But at the time, how did you,,, -At,,,
At the time, I was devastated,
It really gets into your system and it never leaves,
It's basically a virus that once you get it, it's there for the rest of your life,
and anything else after riding a motorcycle seems boring,
How can anything be more exciting than that?
And I,,, I loved it,
I think any weakness for my father was wrong,
He, uh, was born, uh, pretty much as a Scandinavian,
but moved early on in his life to the U,S,
He was in the war, World War II,
After that, got into the merchant marines, Uh, eventually,
one of his trips led him to Malaga,
and that's where my father met my mother and things took off from there,
It was kind of interesting
because they were quite different, my parents,
I can only remember my mother ever smiling
and being in a good mood all the time,
She was more interested in the creative side of life,
And, um, my father was obsessed with precision, technology,
You know, it's very,,,
You know, analytical way of approaching life,
He taught me, when I was growing up,
that if you're gonna do anything
you have to be the absolute best,
That was the turning point in my life
where everything sort of went from being,
you know, in a safe, comfortable atmosphere,
racing in different countries around the world,
but still coming back home to Malaga where you have your,,,
Your friends, your cousins, your parents,
Suddenly going off to the U,S, and becoming independent and everything,
Then I applied to this university in California,
At that time I didn't really know what car design was all about,
I just knew I could draw a car
and it seemed like a pretty cool way to,,,
To make a living if you could do that,
It's almost useless to think of something specific
when you're first starting to draw,
because you really don't know what you're gonna come up with,
It's really,,, Your hand is,,,
Is linked with your mind,
but your hand is doing all the drawing,
So, it's almost like I'm sitting here
as an observer, watching what's coming out on the paper,
Like there's two of us here
in front of this drawing,
One doing the drawing and the other one sort of
criticizing it or critiquing it
as it appears in front of me,
I remember as a kid,
I just wanted to stay inside and draw,
My mother being from southern Spain
and she was the typical Andalusian woman
where art is what rules in the family,
The first memory of my mother would be the smell of oil paints,
because she would spend the evenings painting in the kitchen,
So, the whole artistic side,
I think, comes from my mother,
In the early '60s, my father actually started the dealership,
and so, I always started hanging out in that area
and started falling in love with the shapes of the cars,
And it becomes a creative thing,
like, "How cool could I draw a car?"
Typically, I would be touching the cars, [CHUCKLES]
It's a bit of a strange thing,
but I loved touching surfaces,
I loved, um,,,
You know, it's almost like an animal,
You don't have to communicate by word,
There is a vibration between you and that animal
and that was what kind of, uh, turned me on in a certain way,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
And slowly my drawings evolved from being horses
to faster horses
-to horsepower, -[ENGINE ACCELERATING]
And I started drawing cars,
And then, drawing cars of the future,
-You guys know how to sketch? -WOMAN: No,
[CHUCKLING] What sketch?
[ALL LAUGHING]
And,,, I mean, if you wanna use a computer,
just some nice hand-sketching and stuff, whatever,
and then we can just sit down
and, uh, see if what we learnt back in the '80s
[CHUCKLES] still applies today,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
MAN: I wanna solidify Range Rover in the U,S, market,
So, I thought, "What better to do that than a truck?"
-My,,, -STEPHENSON: I can see that
as the new generation comes along,
thinking, "Now it's gotta be digital,"
almost you have to convince them
that sometimes manual is better than digital,
When you have an idea,
the computer's not gonna be abe to read that emotion
and print out what your idea is, whereas your hand,
connected to your brain
and your heart,
You can get that onto a piece of paper
in a much more expressive way
than a computer's ever gonna allow you to do it,
How many design programs have you been in
where somebody does a little,
even a napkin sketch,
and you put that up and all the sketches that follow
and all the development and digital modeling,
and people come back to that little,,,
-That first sketch,,, -,,,sketch,
-and they go, "That's the character," -Yeah,
With the coffee mug imprint on it right there,
-REED: There's a human touch,,, -Oh, yeah,
,,,you know, that you feel and that thing you can achieve,,,
STEPHENSON: That's,,, That's what we spoke about earlier,
it's the romance of design,
REED: At that time, I was Chief Designer
for the Toyota Studio in Newport Beach,
and I was asked to come up to this campus and teach a class,
And one of those classes, uh,
-Frank was in the class, -[BOTH CHUCKLING]
STEPHENSON: I remember first day of class,
there were 30 of us sitting in the classroom,
the teacher walks in,
He says, "Well, you should all feel very proud of yourselves
"because you're one of thousands of students around the world
"who tried to apply for these courses,
"and we only take the top 30,"
And, of course, your chest gets very inflated
because you think you know, "Pretty good,"
But then, they cut you down the size when they tell you
that, "We've never had a classroom more than 10 students finish,"
And, of course, everybody's thinking, "Not me, not me, not me,"
And at the end of the four years there were only six of us left, [CHUCKLES]
You guys should look sleepy, You don't look sleepy at all,
-[INDISTINCT CHATTER] -Oh, that's right, that's right,
-[CHUCKLES] -Great,
-We used to look like zombies, -[LAUGHING]
INTERVIEWER: Can you give me, like, an average day and night?
-Do I have to? -Yeah,
It's painful [CHUCKLING] to think about it,
Um, so I remember,,, I would remember getting,,,
Getting home at 10:30 at night, 11:00 almost,
and the first thing I would do
is just take two heaping spoonfuls of instant coffee
and put them into my coffee cup,
I would drink that
and then shake for half an hour,
then I would work till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning
and then again,,, And I don't think I ever seriously got
more than four hours of sleep a night
in those four years I was there,
And that's the pace you go at,
-That's pretty cool, man, -Thank you,
-You built that all yourself? -Yeah,
-The foam? -Uh, this is out of clay,
-That's clay? -Yes,
STEPHENSON: Damn!
It's a bit like going to some kind of
Navy SEALs,
or Green Beret training camp,
A lot of instructors gained fame here at Art Center
by ripping your 12-hour renderings off the wall
and stamping on them or lighting them up,
They just destroyed you right there in the class,
and many, many students would end up crying, It's,,,
It's just sad,
INTERVIEWER: Did anything ever happen like that to you?
Yeah, I didn't cry,
-Did you ever just want to give up? -No,
Never, never, never, never,
No, because, I mean, like I said, [CHUCKLES] my father
I went over there, geared with,
you know, uh,,,
Failure is no option, That was really,,, I didn't even have to think about that,
A couple of the guys were failures, frustrated failures because
they'll say whatever they want to say,
but the guys who were at the top,
who had made it to the top had done something right,
So, those were always the guys to listen to,
That's what I did,
And you have to be super competitive, You can't just be,
you know, one of another bunch of guys, You have to want to,,,
That group of six of us that finished, we were,,,
We all had that killer instinct,
And it has to be absolutely, you know,
not just the best you can do, but it has to be the best,
That bite to compete kicked off very young in my life,
I remember a lot of kids that were always going
to the dances on Friday nights were doing social events,
I was in sports,
I always made a point of using as much time as I could to get better
in any sport I was doing, to win,
No matter what people say, it's not about
participating, It's about winning,
Otherwise you're just one of the bunch,
REED: When you're driving back up here on the hillside campus,
driving under that big bridge, you feel that little flutter?
[CHUCKLING] Absolutely,
-Especially when you do it in something you designed, -[BOTH LAUGH]
-Yeah, Okay, -Okay,
Okay, that sacrifice was all right,
If you just go down the hill, you're right in the movement
and all that, but up here, you're kind of,,,
It's a little bit like, like a small piece of
hellish heaven, [CHUCKLES]
You're separated from the real world,
and you,,, You get to think weird thoughts up here
and create weird things and all that,
Maybe that's part of the reason why,,,[CHUCKLING] Why it works,
Can I get behind the sign? And then,,,
INTERVIEWER: Uh, where would you stand?
Inside the bushes?
INTERVIEWER: You can't, the security guard might not be happy,
No, but what's he gonna do? He's got to jump out and come tell me to get out,
So, once you have gotten out,
-you'd have already captured the image, -Come on then,
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
,,,when you're ready,
-Ready? -Ready,
One, two, three, four,
My parents had a pretty nice villa in Malaga
that they had built back in the '60s
and that was gonna be our family home for, you know, later on in life,
But when I decided to go to Art Center,
tuition was pretty high and living expenses and all that,
so they ended up selling the home,
just to help me with the financial side of it,
So,,, [CLEARS THROAT]
They sacrificed a heck of a lot to get me through,
Two years in the Art Center, General Motors,
uh, Chrysler and Ford
make it sort of a pilgrimage to Art Center
to look at talent that
they could potentially lock their teeth into,
So, what happened was,
Ford sent me a proposal saying that,
uh, "We know who you are,
"If you agree to work for us after graduation,
"we'll pay for the rest of your studies, the next two years,"
And I thought, "Well," you know, "how can I say no to that?"
They offered me a position with the Ford,,,
European Ford design studios in Germany,
That was my first experience here,
And having worked on
a very special version of the Ford Escort,
it sort of was a very good kick off for my career,
but that's about as far as my father got
into seeing what I was, uh,
doing with my career,
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[WHISTLES]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
-[LAUGHS] -[STEPHENSON SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[PEPE SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
STEPHENSON: As a designer of the first major project that I worked on
was the Ford Escort Cosworth,
Of course, you come out of college
having grandiose dreams of doing something pretty,,,
Pretty amazing,
and the Ford Escort Cosworth was gonna need spoilers,
My inspiration was basically the Red Baron's airplane,
the Fokker Dr,I tri-winger from World War I,
So, what I did was take the concept they had of the three wings,
then applied that to the wings of the Cosworth
and that would give it a lot of attitude,
The results were fantastic in the wind tunnel,
but towards the end, finance at Ford
were able to get rid of the middle wing,
I had the feeling that my baby
was actually born with nine fingers instead of ten,
-which really hurt me a lot, -[CRASHING]
Design is a very emotional process,
You're actually envisioning it in your mind,
putting it on paper
transferring that paper design to a physical model
and then it's been recreated in full-scale
and at the end of the day, it's your baby,
You know, you fall in love with it as you're doing it,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
So, when your car came out,
people were pretty happy about it,
but they didn't know what they were missing
because they had never seen it,
When I began designing, you know, aspirations are
I'm gonna be the best car designer in the world,
And working with Ford,
not to say it in a bad way,
but it's kind of like a bread and butter company,
I was kind of like, "I've gotta go upwards,"
The BMW range was very exciting
and there was a lot of potential to move it forward,
So, I went down to Munich in July of '91,
Um, I,,, [CHUCKLES]
They looked at my portfolio and hired me on the spot,
They had just bought Land Rover, Rover MG,
Using the technology that we had just bought,
the big boss said, "In six weeks,
"I wanna see what a BMW Land Rover could look like,"
There's no way you could build a full-sized prototype
in Germany in six weeks because you're,,,
You need to work on the weekends and the unions don't allow that,
so it had to be done outside of Germany,
I designed, Boss said,
"Frank, we're gonna send you down to Italy
"and, uh, you'll be back in six weeks
"with something that we hope looks pretty good,"
And I said, "What about the design? What's it look like?"
"So that's your job to come up with it on the flight,"
"What?" It was,,, It was crazy,
There are design houses in Turin
that are dedicated to turning sketches into real models
and they'll work insane hours to get it done for you
and they do the concept cars for the motor shows,
The Sunday when I arrived, there were these three older gentlemen,
probably no less than 70 years old,
smoking their little Italian cigarettes
and drinking their little espressos,
First question to the translator was,
"Are these three guys gonna be able to work
"eighteen hours a day, [CHUCKLES]
"seven days a week for six straight weeks?"
He says, "Don't worry, these are the same three guys that built the Mira,"
[ENGINE REVVING]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
Ninety-nine percent of designers out there
would rate it as one of their top most beautiful designs ever,
And these were the three guys that actually had built that prototype
back in the late '60s when they were in their 20s,
We worked flat-out model building,
We turned a design into a real car in six weeks,
We presented it in the courtyard at BMW,
The big boss did one clockwise round,
one counter clockwise round and said,
"That's it, That's going into production,"
So, we didn't have to change anything,
Through those three guys, we basically turned out
what became the very first X5 for BMW,
and that became their design language
for all future SUVs from BMW,
Fastest, probably, designed car ever
in the history of car design,
[ENGINE ACCELERATING]
MAN: How do you feel about designing a car without a clay model?
-Without a,,, -Without a clay model,
Absolutely zero chance of getting a nice car,
because on the screen you're never gonna see a car
as well as you can see it when you see it in front of you,
And there is one thing that is so important about car design
that people should always remember,
it's a human thing when you design a car,
it's not a machine thing,
MAN 1: You said, like, you're supposed to know
what's gonna work in 10 years?
-Yes, -How do you know,,,
How do you know, like,,,
How do you come up with ideas that,,,
How do you imagine things out of thin air?
I mean, how can you like,,,
How can you,,,I guess, sort of, Kind of assume what's,,,
No, you are the deciding factor,
You're not guessing, You're saying,
"This is what I want to see in the future,"
So, basically, all you're getting paid to do
is imagine something that doesn't exist
that's better than what we have today,
REED: You know, I think a lot of people think that
a transportational designer, a car designer
is a very deep skill, you know,
And in reality, I think, to do it well,
and Frank does it well,
you have to have a broad understanding
of a range of things,
A sense of history and context, you know,
a sense of relevant new technology,
you know, a sense of culture,
And Frank had that broader view of life,
STEPHENSON: This is an incredible part of Malaga for me,
It's so full of life,
[PEOPLE CHATTERING]
So colorful, there's so much going on all the time,
with all the smells and all the sounds
and the new things you see all the time,
Love the octopus,
There's not a lot of modernity to places like this,
It's kind of old-fashioned,
The building itself is so old,
It's actually back from the Moorish days,
I think my early upbringing
was really based in this kind of environment,
where you sort of have that
old-soul feeling to things,
People look at me at this stage of my life
and say, "Oh, that guy, He's very modern,"
I probably appear to be that way, but it's,,,
It's pretty much because of this contrast that I've,,,
I've grown up with, moving from one,
uh, old-school type of world
and then suddenly being thrown
into the Hollywood lifestyle of California
and the fast pace of working in the modern world,
[LIVELY JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING]
-How are ya? -Jay! Hi, man,
Are you in town for the new Magnum, P,I,?
Yeah, we'll be doing the series,
You're doing the series now, going with a different look,
-Yeah, yeah, -[CHUCKLES] You look great, Jay,
You look very Californian,
-I must say, -You been working out? [CHUCKLES]
Yeah, that's me, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I'm working out,
Where do you wanna start? What do you wanna do?
STEPHENSON: My gosh, this place is like walking into, uh, heaven,
-If you crack this splinter,,, -Hmm,
,,,you either got a new spoiler or a Z06 Corvette,
-They're the same thing, -Nice, yeah,
-Which would you rather have? -Exactly, exactly,
I like the plain, simple look of this car,
When it came out, everybody sort of went after it and said,
"Oh, it's boring, or it's not exciting enough,"
But I don't like juvenile wings unscooped,
I mean, everybody's going for this atomic insect look now,
-Which is okay, but I,,, -Yeah,
-Well, they're trying too hard, -Yeah, they're trying to be,,,
I like the purity of this,
STEPHENSON: I feel very proud that Jay has his cars collection,
If it's in Jay Leno's car collection, that means,,,[CHUCKLES]
It means you've won the Oscars of car design,
Even more so because one of the first cars you see
when you walk into this area where Jay keeps his cars,
is the McLaren P1,
It sounds like a jet 'cause it is a jet,
[ENGINE REVVING]
I want it to be kept this way,
-What engine is that? Is that an,,, -Merlin?
-Merlin engine? -Yeah,
-So that was in a Spitfire? -Yeah,
[SOFTLY] Oh, my gosh!
-Oh, it can pull a building down, -[LAUGHS]
A couple of buildings,
Gosh, you've got the biggest collection of Ruffs,
-,,,that thing, -Wow,
-He runs nicely, -This is the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles,
-She runs good, -The gauges, look at that,
You,,, Do you still run?
-You wanna fire it up? -Oh, heck yeah!
-That's gonna kick back, -[ENGINE SPUTTERING]
[ENGINE STARTS]
Oh, my gosh! Where's my Texan ten-gallon hat?
Yeah, get in, Get all the way in,
[INDISTINCT] There we are,
A man of your position should be driving this kind of automobile,
Oh, wow, that's spacey,
I know it is,
It's awesome,
It's so Jetsons,
-Do you know? -What?
-What my next gig is? -What?
Uh, more than a gig, It's my,,,
It's 2,0, Transportation 2,0,
-I start next month, -And what's that?
[BREATHING DEEPLY] eVTOLs,
-And what's that? -So, I'm gonna be designing
the first company,
the number one company at the moment,
-eVTOLs, which is,,, -eVTOLs?
Yeah, Electrical, Vertical Take-Off and Landing,
-Oh, okay, -Absolutely silent, autonomous,
So, two passengers, five passengers,
doesn't need any more space than a helicopter,
Uh, less than a helicopter, sorry,
-It's autonomous and it's flying? -Yeah, And,,,
I don't mind dying if I know the pilot's going with me,
-There's no pilot, -I don't have to,,, [INDISTINCT]
-There's no pilot, It's,,, -Oh, Bob, I don't know,
Yeah, I was reading my book and I don't have it,
Jay, it's the 21st century,
-[LAUGHING] -I know, I know,
[ENGINE SPUTTERING]
How do you blend the old and the new together
is what I find fascinating,
and it keeps me always super curious,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
That kind of juxtaposition of two types of lifestyles
has to reflect in your way of thinking
and designing,
The chance to really design an icon is,,,
Is few and far between,
Because the original Mini
was the car that put England on wheels,
[ENGINE REVVING]
It was economical and it was space efficient,
It was cute, it was serious,
and it was classless,
You know, you got famous people buying the Mini
and you got less famous people buying it,
every,,, every segment of the public,
Honestly, every designer that heard of the project
wanted to get involved
and be the guy who redesigned the new Mini
because it was gonna be historical,
Because the original Mini
that had been born in 1959
was the same car for 40 years,
In 1999, the Mini was gonna die off
because of the legislation restrictions on it,
That it was not gonna be safe enough and, you know,
fit for purpose for the new century,
the new millennium,
The thing they didn't wanna do
is restrict any of the designers,
uh, creativity in the sense that it has to look like a Mini
or anything like that, So, basically,
your only restriction or your only guidance
was, "Make it look like your interpretation
"of a 21st century Mini,"
Out of thin air, you suddenly have to create a design
and you're starting with,,,
With a clean sheet of paper, thinking, "How do I do this?"
Sometimes in car designs you have unique design language
that you have to create from scratch,
But pretty much the most, um,
normal thing to do is take an existing design
and make it better,
It builds another advances,
-So, you've already got building blocks,,, -Right,
-,,,that you're progressing upwards on, -Right,
An iconic design like the Mini,
I think it would have been absolutely, you know,
unholy to change the design
in such a way that wasn't recognizable
with the original,
Yeah, they have something that connects back historically
-and touches a place in your heart, -Emotionally,
And, yeah, leverage is really leading edge technology
-as always that nice,,, -Yeah, Exactly,
It's that emotional connection to the past with the technology of the future,
So, I spent the first week
not designing the 21st century Mini
but designing the 1969 Mini,
which never existed, It was basically the same one, like I said,
But if it had changed in 1969,
what could it have looked like?
So, that was the first week,
The second week was the '79 version,
the third week was the '89 version,
and the last week, the fourth week,
I designed the 1999 Mini,
The Holy Grail of design is to create a timeless design,
Now, obviously, that would put us out of business
if we created a timeless design,
because you won't have to redesign it,
But at the same time, I think, um,
if you can make a product design,,,
A design of a product last
and not just be trendy,
then you've really hit the nail on the head,
Because that's what happens in fashion,
For example, something's in one year and out the next,
and so it's constantly changing all the time,
Exciting but it doesn't last,
[CROW CAWING]
We're almost there,
And in terms of being aspired by things that are timeless,
what better exploration than nature?
Because nature's not trendy,
You don't have anything in nature
that's in one year and out the next,
So, my favorite tree,
can you see the antlers on it?
INTERVIEWER: Oh, yeah, Is this your favorite?
Yeah, that one right there,
It's like the only one there,
The whole forest is like that,
And I sit on that log right there
and that's my thinking sofa
-out in the forest, -INTERVIEWER: Yeah,
I sit there, think about the cars going by,
You know, it's not a disturbance to me
because it's been a big factor in my whole life as vehicles,
but then, I've got nature right in front of it
with such an inspirational tree,
And it's the only tree I've ever hugged in my life,
You can start from scratch, which is one way of doing it,
or you can take something that's already beautiful
and make it even more beautiful,
For example, with the mirrors of the Mini,
How do I design the most beautiful mirrors, but do it up to them?
So, what I did was I spent a week
drawing female breasts, right?
The idea of female breast for me,,, [CHUCKLES]
And that's all I did
was seriously draw breasts for a week,
And a lot of people don't realize it,
but when they look at the original Mini that I designed,,,
Now they'll probably realize they're looking at a female breast,
Then they didn't, They just felt comfortable with it and liked it,
It looks familiar and it's attractive
and, you know,[CHUCKLES] it's natural,
If you were sitting inside the Mini
and you looked out over the bonnet,
um, what people don't realize
is they're looking at the pelvis area
of a woman,
The fenders were very curvaceous like that,
Those are the thighs,
And as it comes into the middle,
there is a, what we call, a power dome
which is sort of the pelvic area,
People looked at it, felt very comfortable,
It was sensual in a way but not overtly,
You know, you didn't know it unless I was telling you about it,
A designer has to be a little bit odd,
or seem a little bit odd to a normal thinking person,
It makes you have an advantage
in terms of thinking forward easily,
This was built by a 17-year-old kid in 1931,
A guy named Bob Shanwell,
Uh, he wanted a car and it was the Depression,
and his father said, you know,
"If you want a car, you're gonna have to build one yourself,"
STEPHENSON: If you can combine a forward-thinking designer
with a forward-thinking engineer,,,
It's an Indian engine?
-That's an Indian four-cylinder motorcycle engine, -That's interesting,
STEPHENSON: ,,,then the sparks really fly
and you get impossible solutions made possible,
Yeah, my gosh!
-LENO: Yeah, -This car doesn't exist,
No, this car does not exist,
What existed was the wheels
-and the chassis, -Okay,
We put a 27-liter Merlin aircraft engine in it,
-27 liter? -You hand spin this,
-[ENGINE SPUTTERING] -that throws sparks into every cylinder,
STEPHENSON: Your whole objective as a designer
is to bring innovation,
The new Mini has a lot of impossible features on it,
There were engineers saying, "There's no way we can,
"you know, wrap the glass around the pillars
"in such a tight way that you've done it,"
Or, "You can't put what we call a clamshell bonnet on the front,
"It's too much metal to press into one shape,
"or a lot of small details,"
But pushing those details is what made the Mini look modern,
When it came out, a lot of the press were coming in
and then it was a retro design, which really hurt me a lot
because there's no way that the Mini was a retro design,
It's kind of like, you compared with your forefathers
and grandparents or ancestors,
You're, uh,,, There's a link, You can say a visual link,
obviously, you might have the eyes or,
you know, physical attributes,
but basically, you're a smarter, faster, stronger person
than what your grandparents were,
You're an improved version of them,
So, that's not like you're a retro version,
We launched it in October of 2000
and it became very successful very quickly,
It connected with the original crowd that owned the Mini,
It also connected with the younger generation
because it was, um, customizable and it was cute
and aggressive at the same time,
And then it was basically also not a chick's car
and not a guy's car, It was sort of walking a fine line
between being a woman's car and a guy's car,
If you don't have good design principles,
you're not gonna make it,
Sorry to put it that way, but you're not gonna make it,
You might have one hit, It's like going up the bat, right?
And you might hit a home run,
but if you don't consistently hit home runs, you're not a home run hitter,
So, they're not gonna put you in fourth,
you know, batting fourth,
You're not gonna clean up the bases,
-[CLEARS THROAT] You know what I'm talking about? Baseball? -[ALL SNICKERING]
Okay,
My brother was a pitcher and I was a catcher in baseball
when we were growing up in the Little Leagues,
I remember once really feeling bad for my brother
because my father was,,,
I was catching and my brother was throwing,
And my brother was probably
around 10 or so, and I was probably about eight,
And he was forcing at sunset for my brother
to keep throwing,
keep pitching the ball
until he had 10 strikes in a row,
And my brother could just not hit the strike zone,
He was just, you know, always just near it like that,
But he was relentless,
He wouldn't let my brother or I go home until we actually,,,
Until my brother actually threw 10 strikes,
And, um,
he never managed it, that was the thing, [CHUCKLES]
Ten strikes, you know, consistently
in the strike zone and not even a pro,
Sometimes he even manages that,
but he was physically driving us to a point,
and I never understand that,
I just thought he was trying to be mean at that time,
but I realize it was just, you know, nothing is good enough,
just keep pushing, pushing,
And he probably never even expected my brother to hit,
throw 10 strikes in a row,
But it was the mentality that you don't stop,
you just keep pushing,
My brother was a little bit different, personality-wise, from me,
It wasn't his goal in life to be the best,
[EXHALES] I think he couldn't take it,
He couldn't accept the pressure,
So, he kind of, like, any chance he had to get out
and get away, he would do that,
My father, he demanded perfection,
So, I could never really feel relaxed with my father,
I always felt I had to be better than I was
because he was so precise about every single detail,
which is good, It's a bit cold,
If we could say OCD, then I would absolutely nail him to that,
The P1, there are a lot of details that upset me,
For example, what happens here when you have to actually cut
through the tail light to make it two pieces,
it's because you can't really inject one single piece of plastic
that long in one single piece,
So, you get a slight, almost slight condition here
where it looks like one of the LED lights
has been, uh, doesn't work almost,
And people don't even realize that,
but from a design point of view, it almost looks like
one letter isn't connected to the next letter,
if you're doing cursive writing,
And that looks like a mistake when I see it,
My dad would probably be happy,
until I started explaining to him the mistakes in the car
and then he would be unhappy, which is [CHUCKLES]
the way my father was,
He would notice things like that,
and ask me, "Why you did it?" And I would explain it
and maybe he would accept it or maybe he wouldn't,
but he would see it as a mistake and not a success,
The car definitely reflects the kind of upbringing that I've had from him
where you're in that pursuit of perfection,
I mean, this is a very rare car, There's, uh,
around 375 of them in the world,
No car I've ever designed,
have they ever sat here, Yeah,
And here's your car, um,,,
-[INTERVIEWER SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY] -No,,, Yeah,
-INTERVIEWER: Would you have,,, -Yeah,
'Cause this cost a lot more money now than it ever cost before,
when it came out,
So, basically, these kind of cars, when they're limited like that,
as soon as they come out of the dealership, they're actually going up in value,
And, uh,,, But not from investment point of view,
More from the pride point of view, I'd love to have one, Uh,,,
INTERVIEWER: That kinda sucks, Like, your design, your hard work
and you don't get it actually,
No, you get to drive,,, Drive them as prototypes,
but, like, you're right, This is,,,
You know, it'd be awesome to own one of these things,
because [CLEARS THROAT] it's your baby, isn't it? It's yours,
You feel like it's yours, And, um,,,
After the Mini sort of started to take off,
I started getting a lot of phone calls
from different companies around the world
asking if I'd be interested in working for them,
And, no way, because I was living in Munich,
I was working for an incredible brand, BMW,
and running the Mini side of the design studio,
And the whole future of Mini was in front of me,
There was only the car I had designed,
But the whole future of the brand was in front of me to develop
and I thought, "Gosh, it doesn't get more exciting than this,"
[PHONE RINGING]
One day, I got a call from some lady that was, um,,,
The details were very scarce in the phone call,
She said, "I represent," um,,,
Uh, "a car company,
"and they're looking for somebody
"to have a very responsible position
"within their design department,
"and would you be interested?" I said, "Of course, but who are you?"
And she's like, "I can't tell you who we are,
"but we need to have this meeting,"
A few days later, a ticket came in the mail
to fly to Turin, Italy,
I just thought, "Oh, this isn't anything too hard,"
because Turin is Fiat,
Basically, there I met the head of design of Fiat,
and I'd been discussing my philosophies on design and outlook,
And they say, "Okay, we think you're the right person for this job,"
while I was eating my tiramisu, [CHUCKLES]
The job offer's to be the head of design,
the director of design of Ferrari and Maserati,
And my tiramisu went,,, [SPLUTTERS]
And I said, "Of course," you know,
"I'll think about it and get back to you as quickly as I can,"
I went back to Munich thinking, "Oh, my gosh!"
COMMENTATOR: It's an Italian Ferrari,
And when it crosses the finish, it makes the sixth year in a row,
And the Ferrari has won,
STEPHENSON: Every kid's dream is to design a Ferrari,
and suddenly, to be offered this job,
which is like the best job in the world,
I sort of started to have my doubts,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[HORSE SNORTING]
And I started to think, "They don't know who they're talking to,
"They've got it all wrong, I mean, if I accept this position,
"you know, everybody's gonna be looking at me,
"and if I get it wrong, how embarrassing that's gonna be
"and that's the end of my career, I've thrown away
"you know, 11, 12 good years of BMW
"just to take a chance, and, uh,,,
"And fall flat on my face,"
And basically, that affected me quite a bit,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[BARKING]
[GROWLING]
[BARKING]
[GROWLING]
[LALO SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[BARKING]
[GROWLING]
[BARKING]
[LALO SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
STEPHENSON: If I needed any kind of advice,
my father was there for me to support me 100% all the way through my life,
Fact is, when I finally did get going into the design world,
he passed away fairly shortly after,
He had a heart issue,
uh, in the aorta valve,
And he could live with it, It was no problem,
but, you know, his philosophy on life was,
you know, anything that is not perfect, you gotta,,,
You gotta make it perfect, [CHUCKLES]
He asked a doctor, "If I have this replaced,
"will I be able to work out more, you know, run?"
And the doctor said, "Yeah,"
[INHALES] So he went for it and it just went bad,
The operation went bad,
and he had four heart attacks after that operation
and the last one was too strong, so,,,
That happened in December 1990,
And it was the worst day in my life,
I'm sure you can tell that, the way I talk about him,
he's absolutely the biggest influence you can have as a child,
And growing up, and still, you know,
um, I remember him every day,
It's impossible not to think about my father,
My father was my best friend, He was,,,[STUTTERS]
You know, it almost felt like he was my big brother most of the time instead of,,,
I could talk to him about anything,
I would feel so, so relieved
after talking to him,
You know, he would take that huge weight off my shoulders and I would feel like,
I'm at peace again, and the world is a good place to be,
[SEAGULLS SQUAWKING]
My mother and I took his ashes
and we went right off there to the point,
and that's where we,,, Where I put his ashes at, into the sea, um,
on the very end of the pier there,
[MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYING]
It just makes you realize that
no matter how good a car works,
or a person is health wise,
we're all geared towards,,, death,
[LALO SPEAKING SPANISH]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
[TIRES SCREECHING]
I started reasoning slowly, reasoning myself that
"I'm never gonna get this chance again in my life,"
You know, "Either you take it and run with it,
"and,,, Okay,
"If it works, it works, If it doesn't, you've tried,"
And that was my overriding feeling at the end,
Believe me, it took a while to get there,
[ENGINE REVVING]
The F430 wasn't really about
designing something radically different,
At Ferrari, I had to design a car that looked like a Ferrari,
It was my choice of design language,
Of course, it's an excellent design language,
but Ferrari was more about adding
the Italian feel to it,
which is all about sensuality,
[ENGINE IDLING]
Of course, the sportiness is very necessary,
But there's sort of a fullness to the design,
There aren't a lot of
rotund, sensual-looking animals that are very fast,
so it's a balance, it's a tricky balance to get it right,
After four years of working with Ferrari,
thinking I was being, you know,
congratulated and,,,
[STUTTERING] And, um,
seen as a good designer,
the boss of Ferrari calls me up,
um, then he says, "Okay, Monday you're going to Fiat,"
[HONKING AND CRASHING]
So, I said, you know, "Are you not happy with what I'm doing?
"Why am I going from heaven to hell?"
And he said, "We have a new boss at Fiat, Sergio Marchionne,
"He wants to speak to you on Monday,"
Fiat actually owns Ferrari and Maserati,
and in 2006, Fiat was, you know, at the very bottom,
It was a really bad situation for the company,
So I sat down with Sergio Marchionne in his office and he goes, "Look,
"if we don't have a successful new car on the market in 10 months,
"we're gonna tank, We're out of here,"
He's talking about Fiat, right?
How do you make a global success with a Fiat?
I said, "Well, first of all,
"it takes five years to develop a successful new car,
"And if we're gonna do it in 10 months,
"that means that the guy who's buying the car
"is basically the test driver, because we won't have all the testing done,
"Impossible, You can't design
"and bring out a new car in 10 months
"and be guaranteed of a success,"
He said, "Well, that's your job,"
[STUTTERS] What do you do? How do you,,,
You can't do it, There's no way you can do it,
-But then I got this flash, -[SNAPS FINGERS]
Take the only existing Fiat that was trickling out of the factory,
which is the Fiat Panda,
and if we just took the skin off of it,
kind of like taking a person and just re-dressing them,
If we do that, then we're not really changing the car,
we're not having to re-homologate the car for crash purposes,
That's already been done with the Fiat Panda,
Luckily, Fiat had the Fiat 500 in their portfolio
from back in the '50s,
If we could take that car and make it a modern version,
That's what we did, And it took nothing to design the car,
So basically, that car was ready in 10 months, and it was just amazing,
because, you know, basically we were just
selling a different version of the Panda
that looked like the modern version of the Fiat 500,
And again, that just took off like a, you know, a blast,
Boom, 10 months, it was out,
And it went over all the capitals in Europe,
Suddenly, they had a new fashion car to be seen in
and it was, you know, feminine and it was masculine at the same time,
The older crowd loved it,
the newer, younger generation loved it,
Huge success for them,
and saved the company,
[SIGHS]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
There's one that's starting to come in,
So if he turns this way, he'll see it,
We live in an area where there's a real abundance of red kites,
What I like to do is just come out
and, uh, throw out some raw chicken legs,
[GRUNTS]
It kind of starts to resemble
a little bit of a dogfight in the air
with them all starting to challenge each other for the food,
And it's one of the more beautiful sights I've ever seen in my life,
You can start from scratch, which is one way of doing it,
Or you can take something that's already beautiful and make it even more beautiful,
And where better to get inspired than through nature,
which nobody says that nature is ugly,
It's always,,, [LAUGHS]
It's accepted that it is the most beautiful thing that we have on Earth,
People consider today, cars, you know,
and say, wow, how gorgeous that car is and everything,
For me, the real beauty is what came before that,
The horses that we were around,
and that's just natural beauty,
If you can take that kind of emotion, that kind of beauty
and put it into something else,,,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
,,,you're gaining something, you're adding something to the world
that's very valuable,
2008, McLaren was expressing concern
that Formula One could potentially go,
you know, downwards, and not be as successful,
They would need to guarantee that the sustainability of McLaren
in another way, which was, instead of just racing cars,
they would be doing road cars,
This way, Monte, Come on,
I got a phone call and it was from McLaren,
He said, "If you want, the job is yours,
"design director of McLaren,"
"We don't have a design studio, we don't have a design team,
"We don't have a car,
"And we need, basically, somebody to come in
"and create that whole design environment,"
Come on, Monte,
-[BARKS] -[WHISTLES]
Having somebody tell me to come work at McLaren
with a clean sheet of paper, starting from scratch,,,
The engineering expertise and race car engineers
and the facilities there,
you feel, really, like you're walking into the future,
It doesn't get better than that,
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
If you look at nature,
there's really nothing ugly in nature, Everything's beautiful,
But nothing's designed to look beautiful,
It's just beautiful because it works,
The thing with McLaren then was,
I could basically create my own design language,
And that's where this love that I've always had of nature came in,
[BARKS]
[PANTING]
Shortly after starting with McLaren,
I flew out to the Caribbean for a short break,
And at the hotel or resort, I recognized, uh,
a certain fish that was on the wall in the reception area,
This, uh, stunning sailfish,
and, um, I asked the director there
why he'd actually put it on the wall,
He said, "Well, you know, these are incredibly difficult to capture
"because it's faster than the cheetah,"
Pretty amazing, because it's going through a much denser medium,
and a cheetah's on four legs
and going through air,
So I was intrigued by that,
such that I had to have a sailfish,
I went down to the fishing village
and somebody had just caught one,
I was able to have it stuffed,
and then had it shipped back
to the UK, to Heathrow,
We ended up having to take one of the Formula One trucks to pick it up
because the box that they put it in
was absolutely massive,
The sailfish cost a lot of money,
It was in the tens of thousands,
enough to almost get me fired in my first months at McLaren,
The finance director from McLaren asked
why I had bought it with my company credit card,
Obviously, they don't understand why designers
pay good company money on things like fish,
We basically found out that the bumps on the end of the torso
created the pocket of air
that enabled it to be so streamlined,
So those bumps, we put 'em on the steering mirrors
to quieten the sound of the air going around the A-pillar,
That worked very effectively,
We were able to take the texture of the scales of the sailfish
and put those into certain areas of the car
to increase the airflow and the amount of air
and the speed of the air into the engine,
So, little things from nature that we were able to learn
from something that's existed for a long, long time
actually seemed very futuristic,
But in effect, they weren't futuristic,
They were just an effect of being curious about nature
and taking what nature has taught us,
So, what you look at when you're designing fast cars like McLaren
is what makes an animal fast,
[ROARS]
And the major common point of all that
is what we call shrink-wrapped,
So, you see, on fast animals,
you see almost like it has very low body fat,
the muscles are coming through, the tendons,
And the skin is almost minimal,
It's just covering what you need,
If you look at Ferraris,
Italian cars look Italian 'cause they're sensual,
You know,,, Mama,,, You wash a Ferrari
and you spend four hours washing the fender
just 'cause it feels nice and sensual,
And your wife looks at you, a bit strange, like,,,
"It's clean!"
But with the McLaren, it was more about a car that looked athletic
and like it'd been to the gym and it had, you know,
watched what it was eating,
[ENGINE REVVING]
So that became the inherent design language of McLaren,
was shrink-wrapped design,
Not overly adding surfaces that you don't need
or volumes of surfaces that you need,
So the McLaren started achieving this sort of
athletic look,
I just take apart my bike for fun sometimes,
And the fun of these bikes, anyways, is looking at the bike
and I kinda don't like covering things up if I don't have to,
In this case, for example, the engine
is part of the actual rigidity of the frame,
It adds to the rigidity of the bike,
So you have a minimal, or minimalistic, almost, type frame,
and the engine forms part of that structure
to increase the strength of it,
The true beauty, I think, is underneath that surface
when you start looking at these components
and how they all come together,
This is the essential beauty of the motorcycle,
With the McLaren, from the design point of view,
when the engineers come up with where the engine's gonna be
and where the driver's gonna sit,
where the wheels are at,
where the suspension is,,,
If you just took a bedsheet
and just threw it over what we call the hardpoints,
those are points you're not gonna be able to move,
And you let that sheet just drape itself across the hardpoints,
that basically becomes the shape of the car,
We were designing it to be beautiful,
It just is beautiful
because that's a beautiful way to design,
It's kinda like an athlete with a suit on,
with a well-cut suit on it,
[INDISTINCT TALKING]
Oh, yeah, more than happy, More than happy,
Simmy, can I, like, suck my stomach in
and you push your stomach out?
-[LAUGHING] -And you go like that?
And I'll go like that, and we'll look about the same,
[BOTH LAUGHING]
-Even out, -Yeah,
It'll even out,
INTERVIEWER: Did you own this car before you met Frank?
-Or was it,,, -No, no, no, After, After,
I was even influenced, like, by Frank,
Not necessarily to get this model,
but just what he'd done
with the design language with McLaren, you know?
STEPHENSON: You don't get to where Simeon's at
without having an incredible mindset,
PANDA: That's the other thing that we had in common,
-I love to train, -Oh, yeah,
-And bodybuilding, you know, -And hard work,
-'Cause it's hard work, -Hard work, yeah,
And sets to failure,
Because that's what bodybuilding and gains are all about,
going to failure
which is what our tenure is about, going to failure, [LAUGHS]
I know a lot of people are probably[LAUGHS]
wondering what's so aesthetical about bodybuilding,
but that's the opposite viewpoint that I have,
[APPLAUSE]
I've just always been interested
in not-normal human beings,
I love bodybuilding because it's just, uh,
it's just an optimized way of tuning your body,
I see this huge correlation
between bodybuilding and design,
because it's the best of the best,
Basically pushing it, pushing it, pushing it
till you can't give any more to what you're doing,
And you can always give a little bit more,
But if you can come as close as you can to that limit,
you're not coming to perfection,
but you're doing, probably, a better job than the next guy
who's not going as far as you can,
All those factors help you to get to
an end result that is absolutely spectacular,
And generally, for the general public, unachievable,
but you managed to get there,
[INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER]
When I was growing up, I was having
to lift weights with my father,
Working out at that kind of young age,
and keeping yourself
physically at the top of your game
no matter what age you are,
that was one of the things I had to do for him,
He was pumping weight gainer into me every night,
I wasn't gonna be a scrawny kid,
there's no way I could have been a scrawny kid
the way my father brought me up,
INTERVIEWER: It seems like he was really kind of preoccupied
with making you a man,
Yeah, it could be,
It could be that he was trying to get me ready for life early, I guess,
But, um,,,
I think he just loved us to death,
Uh, not literally, but loved us
in such a way that he wanted us to,,,
He wanted to teach us, my brother and I both,
everything he could teach us,
ASAP,
Not wait or not let us learn it on our own,
but basically just be there when we were learning things,
You set your own expectations of where you wanna be in life
and what you wanna achieve,
and my father set these levels up very high for me,
You have to be,,, You have to be the best
at anything you do in life,
And I thought, if I don't do it, I'm not,,,
Well, I'm not meeting his expectations obviously, for sure, for one,
but almost,,, I always had the feeling
I'm never gonna be satisfied or a happy person,
You know, pushing yourself is tough,
because it takes it out of you mentally, it takes it out of you physically,
you have to make a lot of sacrifices
and that is draining for a lot of people
and almost too high of a price to pay,
When we did this project,
we took it into the big presentation room at McLaren
and presented it to Ron Dennis,
And I remember, his jaw dropped
because he suddenly
didn't know where the front of the car was, or the rear of the car was,
He was aghast,
He just looked at it and said, "I don't understand what this car is,
"Where is the front? Where is the back?
"Is this what you've been doing for a year?"
But then, yeah, he said, "I could stop the project right now
"because I really don't understand what this car is all about
"looking like that, But if you believe in it
"then we'll go with it,"
and, uh, "but if it doesn't sell, you know, you're gonna get,,,"
-[LAUGHS] -",,,axed,"
As a designer, you have to be in the right place mentally
to do your best work, I think,
And I wasn't mentally in,,,
I was doing the work, I was being efficient
and still good at what I was doing,
but it was a struggle because I had,,,
It was a really tough time,
In 2016, two days before his, uh,,,
His birthday, his 59th birthday,
my brother passed away,
He smoked so much that eventually it caught up with him,
It started, obviously, in his lungs, and moved to elsewhere,
The worst part of it all was as that was happening,
my mother was seriously ill with a stroke,
My brother was asking me not to tell her because he didn't want her to,,,
get any worse than she was,
So I made a promise to him that I would wait
until she eventually was back in good enough shape
to take the fact of what was going to,,,
Obviously was going to happen, so,,,
But that took another year,
So I couldn't tell her, you know,
up to about a year after he'd passed away,
If you can imagine your mother asking you why
her other son doesn't call her anymore,
what do you say?
I didn't deal with it, that's the thing,
I couldn't deal with it,
I had no way to deal with it,
You know, if you're a director of a design department for a major company
that has to be doing great work,
you can't find an excuse, There's no excuse,
Over a long period of time, that,,,
that is excusable for not performing,
so I was able to keep
sort of a facade up, I think, um,
but it just didn't feel, internally, it was, uh,
an incredible weight to carry around,
And in 2017, I thought,
you know, it's a now or never thing, I've got her back home
from the care home,
She couldn't walk or anything like that,
So I wheeled her out in the wheelchair
all the way down to the port in Malaga
on a nice Sunday morning,
She asked me, as she customarily did,
"Have you heard from Raul lately?"
And I said, "Well,
"I don't think Raul will be in contact with any of us
"again," [CLEARS THROAT]
And after that had sank into her, she just started crying,
[BREATHES DEEPLY]
You know,,,
INTERVIEWER: I'm sorry you had to go through that,
No, it's okay,
[KISSES]
Good boy,
INTERVIEWER: How old was Monte when you got him?
Oh, he was as small as you're allowed to get a dog,
[LAUGHS]
We couldn't wait to see him,
so three weeks, I already saw him,
and he still had a lot of pink around his nose,
A lot of areas aren't dark on the face at that time,
So he was pretty, you know,,,
Probably didn't recognize anything except his own mother
and siblings, I guess,
but he's turned into quite a dog,
Uh, I think dogs are pretty much the best gift,
you know, from the guy upstairs,
Dogs don't move out on you
and they love you no matter what,
-[MONTE BARKS] -Come here, Come on,
[PANTING] Ah!
You get back in spades what you give to him,
And it's just pure love,
Ah,
Good boy,
[PANTING]
Unconditional love,
When you reach that period of your life
where you think you're not gonna reach
a further extreme than what you've already done,
I was starting to rethink,
"Am I going to continue doing this for the rest of my life?"
I was too intense, I think, during the earlier part of my life,
because I wasn't attached in a long-term relationship with anybody,
I just used to put too much emphasis on work,
And it's almost like trying to lift more weight than you can actually lift,
It starts crashing down on top of you,
And if there's nobody there to lift the weight off of you,
then you're kind of stuck,
My wife, Linda,
she's been able to help me balance life and work,
People often say, "My wife is my best friend,"
She's a bit more than that,
As we've developed our lives together
and gone through a lot of situations that make a relationship,
we've grown closer and closer,
We've become sort of like a couple of molecules
that join together and become something even stronger,
Things likeRiverbreeze, my boat here,
it's a way to chill out on the weekends,
It's hard to find a better way to enjoy a day
in the English countryside than on the rivers,
When I moved to England, I moved about
half a mile away from Peter Freebody's,
which is the company that's been around
for 300 years on this location,
And they've been building wooden boats
since way back then,
So we used to come down to the workshop here
and watch them build boats, old-style,
And at some point, decided I gotta have my own boat,[LAUGHS]
And I have to have it bespoke,
The only real elevation that this boat has
is the propulsion system which is all-electric,
It's about as silent as it can be,
The fact that you don't really disturb nature while you're in this boat
but you're a part of it makes the whole design
really sing, I think,
It's probably the closest thing I've ever come to,
to thinking about being perfect,
Because simply, I had no desire to innovate,
I was not trying to think how can I modify it, or,,,
And so, in that sense, I'm kind of happy,
When I'm on the boat, I don't feel like I have to change anything,
[QUACKING]
When you're starting out in design, you wanna do the cool stuff,
The stuff that, you know, you almost brag about,
But when you've done it and you've gotten through that,
you see, what is the actual practical value of your work,
And I've got to the point now where I'm seeing,,,
I still got some time left[LAUGHS]
to do some real design,
For most people I think, generally,
it's considered science fiction,
The thing is, at some point, designers have to
turn science fiction into reality,
The future's now,
What we're looking at here is the very first prototype
in terms of what is actually lifted off,
It's an evTOL jet, which means
Electrical, Vertical Take-Off and Landing,
So what it will be is a way to transport
around four, five people,
Different types of trips that you would typically use
either a train, or a taxi,
or maybe even a short plane flight,
The advantage here is that you're requiring a lot less
take-off and landing space,
roughly 12 square meters,
That means pretty much anywhere, It can adapt itself
from rooftops, high-rises,
parking lots, skyscrapers, things like that,
that would have a pad fitted out and such, that you could land, take off,
The whole concept is as silent as possible flight,
so it's not disturbing people on the ground,
And it's operating between 300 meters and 3,000 meters,
That means you don't have to worry about pressurizing the cabin,
Most likely, at the beginning you'll have a controller
or somebody who's on board to make sure that everything is running well,
Eventually, we'll go fully autonomous,
The process of designing something like this,
uh, is, in terms of efficiency,
the very same thing as when you design a high-performance car,
But if you look at what a hypercar is meant to do,
what a jet like this is meant to do,
they're completely different objectives,
Hypercars are pretty much luxury items
that you really don't need in your life,
But the purpose of this is global,
I do see that at some point in your life,
you should start doing things
that have a better use for more people,
These really tend to make sense
when we get volumes of them flying,
As many as we can get, transporting or connecting cities,
There's a lot of engineering minds and IQ
going into how to make this thing work,
Uh, my job is more about
making the actual experience of flying in one of these things
absolutely mindblowing,
There's always gonna be a fear factor
of the first time you try anything,
the first time something comes in
that's bringing in new technology,
and especially when we're talking about heights
and speed and things like that,
The beginning of aviation was a very scary period,
But today, everybody takes it for granted,
You don't really think twice about it,
And if I can create that feeling for the passengers,
then, mission accomplished,
So right now, if you look at it, it looks super aggressive,
-Right? Almost like it has teeth or something like that, -WOMAN: Wow, wow,
Well, it's part of the motor technology,
I can't get into too much depth about it,
But I can say that basically the cones are a requirement,
uh, for thrust and things,
but if we can basically clean it up in such a way
that it stays just as efficient,
then that would be a much better look, I would say,
It's kind of,,, What kind of public are you reaching out for?
You know, sports cars tend to have
an aggressive nature to them
because they're all about high performance,
When you're talking about mass people's transport vehicles,
we don't want these vehicles, obviously, to look like
military objects that are out to, you know,
harm people,
You're gonna want something that's sort of more appealing,
You know, you can look at the difference between some types of aircraft,
fighter planes,
Obviously, these are designed for a single purpose,
Or you can start to look at a little bit more,
things that are a bit more cuddly,
These shapes here appeal a bit more
in terms of wanting to get closer to it
and interact with it,
All the people out there, they don't believe it's coming,
It's still too new for them,
and it'd be somebody else's lifetime
that experiences this vehicle, but,,,
I see it coming, I know it's coming
a lot sooner than the general public expected,
Cars have been around for 100 years or more,
This is just kicking off,
and it's something that has never been done before,
It really does get my blood flowing pretty fast
when I think about what it could be,
and the chance and the opportunity
to be able to turn that into reality,
Designing aircraft like this,
it's almost like you're able to swim in deep waters,
but this is more like where the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean meet,
You get this kind of current where everything is just in turmoil
and really rough,
It's kinda like saying, "Okay, I can swim,
"but can I swim in these waters?"
My father, he demanded perfection,
He taught me, anything that's not perfect, you gotta make it perfect,
It's a good thing to strive for perfection,
Problem is, perfection does not exist,
It's a winningless game,
So, what is perfect?
The only thing I can describe it is,
it is the challenge to make something
as unchangeable as possible,
If you look at anything, it's never really perfect,
because there's the process of evolution,
the constant drive to become more effective and more efficient,
Perfection just doesn't exist,
It's a nice word, it's a nice thing to aim for,
But I need that kind of challenge
to be happy, I think,
It's that trip that we're on to get to that level,
It's frustrating because you just can't get there,
And there's always,,, I mean, I've always said it,
don't fall in love with your design,
because you'll realize at some point that it's,,,
You would have done something differently anyways again,
if you had a second chance,
That kind of challenge to try to be able to make something perfect
is never gonna end,