Made in China

Joe Qiu's interior for a Chinese Buick caught Detroit's eye--and got Shanghai into a global design bake-off.

The Chinese LaCrosse was designed entirely in GM's PATAC studio--with enough bling to sate Shanghai's young buyers.

Joe Qiu doesn't own a car. He doesn't even have a driver's license. His favorite vehicle, actually, is a go-kart with a top speed of 75 miles per hour. His distressed leather bomber jacket, which he rarely takes off, betrays his fascination with airplanes and all things military. His jeans, the hems unfashionably turned up, and a brushlike crewcut are pure 21st-century China. His TAG Heuer watch: a nod to the international uniform of designers.

At 31, Qiu still lives with his parents. But he spends much of his time drinking in the vibes at the expensive high-end clubs, over-the-top shopping malls, and elegant, luxurious hotels where Shanghai's burgeoning middle class gathers. "I'm just a piece of white paper," he says, collecting insights into China's skyrocketing consumer culture. He has an uncanny knack for divining Chinese tastes and whims, what it is they'll buy.

Qiu is, in fact, a car designer. He works for the largest automaker in the world, General Motors, at its outpost in Shanghai's Pudong suburb. Two years ago, he was part of a team that radically overhauled the Buick LaCrosse for the Chinese market. The original LaCrosse had a soft, rounded exterior and a plain-vanilla interior, meant to appeal to the brand's aging U.S. consumers. But Qiu and his boss James Shyr, an intense, fast-talking Chinese-American who learned his trade at Nissan and Toyota, knew Chinese consumers would sneer at such frumpy wheels. "Our buyers are 36 and 37, half the age of buyers in the U.S. and much more discerning," Shyr says.

So Qiu and a team of Chinese designers rethought and reshaped every piece of sheet metal, turning the LaCrosse into a glamorous, elegant sedan that turns heads even in fashion-conscious Shanghai. Their car features an oversized, chrome-laden front grill and large jewel-like, clear taillights to sate the bling-bling urges of China's status-conscious young buyers.

The Chinese redesign was pitch perfect, so well targeted that the LaCrosse is on track to sell nearly 110,000 units in its second year in production.

Qiu was in charge of the interior. He patterned the soft buttery-colored ambient lighting, which glows from the instrument panel and from lights hidden in the rear, after the subdued world of Shanghai's trendy clubs. "I looked at where people lived, where they hung out, and then I tried to create that same feeling inside the car," he says. The result feels like a beautifully designed living room, a sharp contrast to the hard, blocky plastic interiors so common in other Buicks. He paid close attention to the backseats, adding padding and features such as front and rear power-massaging seats.

The redesign was pitch perfect, so well targeted that the Chinese LaCrosse is on track to sell nearly 110,000 units in its second year in production. (In the United States, the LaCrosse isn't expected to approach the 100,000-unit mark, ever.) Now, with that success still fresh, Qiu and the China design team face a critical test. They will design the next Buick LaCrosse, due out at the end of the decade, for the entire world.

It's a mind-bending phenomenon. After an intense internal competition that pitted Shyr and his team against their U.S. counterparts, they will have complete authority over the interior design--driven by Qiu's insights. The exterior is being handled in the United States, but with a great deal of input from China. And China will control much of the overall logistics.

There's a carload of irony here. It used to be that GM would send American versions of cars around the globe--sometimes even selling left-hand drive cars in right-hand countries like Japan. What worked in America, it thought, would work globally. Now the automaker, with 50% of its sales coming from outside the United States and the Chinese market growing fastest of all, is betting that a Chinese sensibility will best inform a car for Americans, and everyone else.

"Our LaCrosse pushed the expectations," says Raymond Bierzynski, president of GM's Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center, or PATAC, co-owned by GM and its Chinese joint venture partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Group. "Our Buick is what the brand wants to be everywhere in the world."