JM: We do reams and reams. It's just unbelievable amounts of market research. Eyeball to eyeball and questionnaires. We travel around the world doing consumer research with our models. We do interactive work. I've been in situations where we've ridden around with customers and asked them specifically, "What do you like about your car? What don't you like? If you could do anything with it, what would you do? What works for you, what doesn't work for you?" Riding with people who don't own General Motors cars and asking them, "Why did you buy your car? What don't you like about it?"
CA&E: Do you find that constraining though, in terms of your creativity?
JM: Information. It's always fun. It's always fun to ride around with people in their cars because they tell you things that they probably wouldn't normally tell you. It's funny. A couple years ago we were working on the Grand Prix. So we were taken around with people who were in that market. Maxima owners, Accord owners, etc. And one woman was telling me, she says-well you know, I always ask the question, number one: Do you eat in your car? And number two: If you do, where do you put it? She tells me, "Well I eat my cereal on the way to work in the morning." I said, "Excuse me?" She said, "Yeah, I hook my one elbow over the steering wheel and hold the bowl, and I hook my other elbow over the steering wheel with the spoon..."
CA&E: (laughter)
JM: "...And I eat my cereal like that driving." And I'm thinking to myself: My God, how could anybody possibly do that and admit it to me... (laughter) It's amazing what some people will tell you.
CA&E: You mentioned going around the world and talking about the design and collaborating with various people and I read about the Chinese designers becoming more of an influential part of the business.
JM: Absolutely. In fact, China is going to be the world's largest car market probably within the next, uh, five to 10 years. They're already number two. The potential there is just unbelievable. I mean with, if you look at their population and when you look at where all the money is these days, both in Asia and Eastern Europe, with all the oil money, that's where the action and the growth is going to be.
CA&E: Now do you find that you're going to have to design cars specifically for that or can you simply just transport the designs that we have in the states and that would appeal to that market?
JM: I think probably both. We do, at least with General Motors, we have 11 design centers around the globe. And one of them is, in fact, in China. So what we do is we transport some of our young people over there and they spend a year or two years over there. We bring some of those designers over here so that they can kind of get steeped in what we do here. But ultimately I think those cars have to get designed in China for China. Because whenever they come and look at our stuff, you know, the Chinese market has a really unique way that they look at automobiles. So they're always telling us, this is what we want, this is what we don't want. This is what we think will sell. This won't sell. So one of the things we learned, a lot of people in China don't drive their own cars. They have drivers. So the back seat becomes a very, very important part of the environment. Here that's not as important as it would be in China. Another thing we look at is the outside: the amount of chrome, um, the amount of detailing. The Chinese have very, very specific tastes and what their expectations are for luxury cars in particular.
CA&E: I mean, for a culture like that where they don't have a long automotive history, where are they getting their sensibilities for what they like and don't like, do you think?
JM: That's the thing that kind of amazed me is that Buick is such a strong brand in China. And so we used to ask the question what is it about Buick and I was told that before World War II, Buick was considered the ultimate luxury car in China.