#was as baffled as this person when I realized [country] was not the epitome of humankind as I thought it were because I only ever heard good

[itsworn]

Take 5 With Mark Trostle, Head of Dodge, Chrysler, and SRT Design

The unfortunate truth is that most folks aren’t working a dream job. They may have snippets of pleasure from time to time, but as a whole work is a daily grind that comes and goes with the sunset. Mark Trostle is different. As the Head of Dodge, Chrysler and SRT Design the man is not only entrenched in some of the coolest automotive projects on the planet, but he also gets to lead a team of young designers in a field that he’s beyond passionate about. He’s also humble, authentic and quite honestly, one of the nicest guys we know.

HRM: At what point did you realize you were talented enough to be a designer?

MT: I was fortunate enough that my father was not only a car designer but a gear head as well, and I grew up reading HOT ROD magazine because of him. He taught me how to put V8s in old Vegas and repaint cars in our driveway.

It started to come together in high school. I was always that kid who could draw cars and take shop class, but I sucked at math. I’ll never forget telling my guidance counselor in my junior year that I wanted to be a car designer. He said that I didn’t have the math grades for that, to which I responded, “No, you don’t understand, I can draw a mean car and I know about this field!”

He replied, “No, that’s an engineer.” I’ll never forget that.

HRM: Was car design something that came naturally to you or were you exposed to it at an early age?

MT: There was a car design competition at the Detroit Autorama in my senior year of High School. I won, and it gave me a whopping $1,000.00 scholarship to attend College for Creative Studies (CCS). That and ArtCenter College of Design are the two renowned automotive design schools in the country. That’s when it started to sink in that maybe I could make a living at this, and that realization was kind of cool. I was also fortunate that early on in my High School days I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

HRM: When did you decide that automotive design was your calling, and how long from that moment did it take to make it happen?

MT: I was probably sixteen or seventeen years old. It became my goal to be an automotive designer. It was either that or my other interest, automotive photography. I thought that would’ve been cool as well. But I love to draw and obviously with my Dad, it was a pretty good career path.”

HRM: Describe your first paying job in the world of automotive design.

MT: It was the best job I could have had, and it happened right after my sophomore year at CCS. I was twenty years old and had just received an internship at General Motors Design. It was epic! I wasn’t even old enough to drink, yet I’m at GM Design working on the coolest things in the world with design legends. Chuck Jordan (Vice President of Design for GM from 1986-1992 -ed) was still there, and I’ll never forget him coming into the studio. There was Jerry Palmer (Vice President of Design for GM from 1986-1992 -ed), as well as Tom Peters (Director of Exterior Design, GM Performance Car Studio –ed), who worked on the Corvette. He was my boss and one of my heroes. I then ended up going to work on Viper, the exact thing that was counter to what he was working on. That was my first job – a summer at General Motors- it was awesome, and it paid well.”

HRM: Why Dodge/SRT and when did you start your career there?

MT: After my junior year, I had an internship at Chrysler. It was a special project in conjunction with CCS, and it exposed me to Tom Gale, John Herlitz and Neil Walling. Those were the leaders of design for Chrysler at the time.

The Viper concept car had come out shortly before I graduated, and the show cars they were doing were the most incredible at the time, and they were killing everybody with them. That combination, the design work and the passion – I’ll never forget that about Tom Gale.

There’s something special about the designers at Chrysler – they’re car people and they’re real people. There are very few of us that have big egos and Tom epitomized that which helped draw me to Chrysler.

My natural gravitation has always been towards performance. I was always the guy who was trying to work on a skunk works project. What can we do to make a car go faster, look a little tougher? I road raced for years so everything I was doing in my personal life was more on that side of things. At work I would get asked to work on those types of projects because, somehow they seem to find each other.

HRM: We’re old enough to remember when classics were used as daily drivers. How much of the past goes into the future of design, and do you think that “retro” design trends will always have a place on future models?

MT: A lot of that has to do with the type of vehicle being designed. Obviously with the Challenger, that was our main goal. The number one purchase consideration from our customers for Challenger is styling. Our customers love its size and the connection to the original. Charger has a little bit of that flavor as well. It’s not as literal, but it still has some retro or nostalgic cues to it.

Dodge has evolved into such a performance brand for us, and I always tell the guys that our cars have a soul. There are companies that would die to be able to pull from a historic past and bring it into the future. I want to continue to leverage that. That can just be in the details of things: lighting, tail lamps, headlamps, shapes like that, and I think that it’s something that helps give our brand a uniqueness.

HRM: Do you find that CAFE and NHTSA regulations are a hindrance or a challenge in regards to design?

MT: I try to be optimistic. There are absolutely times when you think – how am I going to solve this one? But as an industrial designer you look at the problem and try to use it to create a unique solution.

We spend more time in the wind tunnel these days because of those regulations. Can we still make a car like the Challenger be slippery and have a 200mph top speed while meeting those café numbers? It would be easy to complain, but that’s what helps evolve not only engineering, but the fit and finish on cars as well. It also lets us do neat tricks that are invisible to the customer, yet still allows us to have a car that doesn’t look like everything else.

HRM: What other facets of design do you gain inspiration from, for example: aerospace, commercial design, architecture?

MT: That’s a tough one for me. I love modern architecture. I am intrigued by it, the cleanliness of modern homes and such. I think it influences you because to me, design, regardless of the subject, be it your phone or what have you, gives one a sense of feeling, and that feeling is unique for everyone.

For example, I’m still baffled that planes, as large as they are, fly through the air. Yet they’re so cool to look at, especially military aircraft. They function, but they have a finesse to them that you might find on say, the surface of a wing. While I can’t say I’d take any one of those things and put it into a design I’m working on, it’s more of the emotional aspect that transfers over.

HRM: We’re currently at a precipice when it comes to automotive technology. On the one hand, we’re living in the golden age of horsepower, yet we know the push to electric and autonomy is in full swing. How much longer do you think you’ll be designing cars that are driven as opposed to cars that drive themselves?

MT: I don’t think anyone who reads a magazine like HOT ROD will ever want to be driven around. It’s tough because there are two sides to my job. There’s the passionate, emotional, performance side, and then there’s the “okay, I’m still an industrial designer designing a product for hundreds of thousands of people” side. Fortunately, we have enough products that allow us to focus on those different areas. While I love driving, I also understand there are those who should not have control of the wheel (laughs).

HRM: Have you ever been given a project that you were not passionate about, and if so, how was that handled?

MT: I’m a pretty optimistic and passionate guy by nature and I always try and look at things as a challenge, even if the challenge may not be super exciting. I remember I was given a tail lamp to design, and I thought, “Really? I’m going to design this tail lamp?” But you know what? It ended up being the first thing I designed that made it to production, and I learned so much about what went into a tail lamp (laughs). I thought it was just a tail lamp, but there were tons of requirements. What that said to me was that, while I may not always get goose bumps over a project, it’s more than likely I’m going to find something about it that makes me think it’s cool. Hopefully that comes through on what I’m working on.

HRM: At what point in your career did you transition from Luke Skywalker to Yoda?

MT: Ralph [Gilles, Chrysler’s Global Head of Design] always tells our young designers, “You gotta get control of your light saber, man! You’re swinging that thing around, you’re cutting limbs off, and you’re hurtin’ people!” We get a lot of young designers in that go crazy, and we always talk about how they’ve got too much design on one car. So, I love that analogy, and we use it all the time with our young guys.

I’ve gotten to the point where it happened organically. I remember when I first became a design manager, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m responsible for some of this?” But then you think, “Wait, I know what to do,” or, “This doesn’t make sense,” and it just starts to happen. The most important thing for a successful designer to do is to leave their ego at the door and understand the needs of both our engineering and marketing folks.

HRM: Has technology improved design, and has it allowed you to think in deeper dimensions than before?

MT: As an artist, pen and paper is still such an important piece to get an idea from your brain down, and we still use that because it’s based around emotion. It comes right from your hand onto a piece of paper and I don’t think that’ll ever go away.

Because I was one of the youngest guys here when I started, I was one of the first to use Photoshop to draw electronically and create 3D models on a computer. I’ve lived that transition, and the biggest piece we’ve taken from that technology is the efficiency it provides. As a car designer, you don’t do one sketch or one front-end design and everyone says, “Yup! That’s it, build it exactly like that!” You have layers of bosses, reviews, and someone saying, tweak this and make that headlamp a little bigger. Now, rather than re-drawing something every time there’s an aesthetic change, we just go in and manipulate it electronically.

HRM: Does performance dictate design or vice versa?

MT: Whether I’m working on a Pacifica or a Challenger Redeye, there are certain criteria that I have to design around. When it’s a performance vehicle, we have to take more consideration in regards to cooling, downforce, aero balance, and things like that. What growing up wrenching taught me was that not only do I want things to look cool, but I also want them to function. There are times when it’s frustrating, but I truly believe that form and function have to work together.

HRM: I would assume design and engineering work closely together. When you butt heads, which usually comes out on top?

MT: There can definitely be frustrating moments, absolutely. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to remedy something is to show them. One of the benefits a designer has is that we can visualize something different than words on a page would dictate. A lot of times, showing them visually what they’re asking for makes them go, “Oh, okay now we get it.”

I believe that creative tension with engineering is an important piece. So many of our engineers have an appreciation for how the car looks, and I have an appreciation for how it functions, plus the cost of building it. When we work together we’re able to work through things and find what’s best for the customer mechanically as well as aesthetically. Also, and in a lot of cases, when something looks cool, it usually works. Science isn’t always the answer, sometimes it’s the artistic pieces that can help something function too.

HRM: As the lead at one of the largest OEMs, how do you inspire young designers?

MT: I always put myself in their shoes, as I know they probably look at me and think, “This guys been around forever. What does he know?” The biggest piece, is to keep them enthusiastic.

There’s a certain naivety that someone without experience in the design studio has, and we benefit from that. They don’t know how things necessarily fit together, or that what they draw – even though it looks cool – will cost a ton of money to build or fit the program the right way. What they do provide are those new ideas and passion. So I always like to try to find things that we can use from our young designers. Their ideas, their passion, and inject that into what we’re working on. Once our designers see that, throughout our different programs, their toolbox grows, and they get closer and closer to that Yoda status. Plus, enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm, and the most passionate car people make the best designers.

HRM: What are your top three moments in automotive design?

MT: Early on in my career I designed three-in-row of our Chrysler concept cars. The first one was the Chrysler LXH concept. That was 1996. I’d only been here three years. When Tom Gale introduced the car at the Detroit Auto Show, there was a big movable stage with a digital screen, which was brand new at the time, and when I came out from behind the stage, I was actually drawing the car live during his intro in front of hundreds of people. I was literally shaking. I was 24 or 25 years old.

Next would be working on the Gen 5 Viper and Gen 5 Viper racecar simultaneously. Working on a Viper and trying to evolve this legend (and not screw it up) and also developing the racecar in secrecy– it was the coolest thing in the world, and I couldn’t believe I had a hand in that icon of a car!

Then, there is the Hellcat and Demon. Working on the Hellcat in the design studio and the Demon with the Widebody, along with the intros of the cars and the wind tunnel stuff– just the significance of what they did for our brand and automotive culture as a whole – to be designing a car that’s going to be a legend in the world that I love is surreal to me.

HRM: Here is the toughest question of all (from a design perspective): what is your favorite car and why?

MT: There are several cars on my favorites list. A 1970 AAR ‘Cuda is a car that embodies what I’m trying to do in the modern era. It’s a car with so much soul. Then, there’s the 427 AC Cobra just for the purity of it. I then think of the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa and the shape of it for the late 1950s! The Lamborghini Miura… I could go on and on. I’m just fortunate to own a couple of cars, namely the Demon and Viper, that I feel would make it onto the list of a real car person.

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