Dutch shout at Renault

High profile Mazda designer Laurens van den Acker will lave the Japanese company this month to replace the influential Patrick le Quement as Renault's Vice President of Corporate Design.

The changing of guards will see one of the industry's promising young guns (van den Acker is 44, le Quement is 64) replacing a designer who carved out a new corporate image for Renault during his 22 years with the company.

Le Quement's long career at Renault was marked by a number of styling initiatives that stamped the French company as a sometimes controversial style leader. From the beginning, he was adamant that styling should not be answerable to engineering.

Among the familiar designs in Australia that were fathered by le Quement is the current Megane hatch with its intriguingly irreverent tail end. The designs he introduced over the years that we didn't get to see in Australia are quite significant and include the Twingo light car and the ill-fated Vel Satis "executive" car.

Although he had worked on a number of notable cars, including the selectable-colour GloCar and Bronco concept car, during his time with Ford, the Dutch-born van den Acker came into prominence after being appointed General Manager of Mazda Design in 2006, where he introduced a range of arresting concept cars that helped define the company's Zoom Zoom image.

He was the driving force behind the Nagare and Ryuga concepts that influenced the current Mazda6 and new Mazda3 models.

Van den Acker was recently in Australia, where he previewed a range of forthcoming concepts that will influence the company's future design directions.

Van den Acker joins Renault on May 15 and will take up le Quement's role as Vice President of Corporate Design at Renault in September, prior to the latter's retirement in October.

It will be interesting to see how van den Acker interprets future Renaults.

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