Ford secures future of Aussie design centre

Ford Australia’s global design centre looks to be secure for at least another decade, with the Blue Oval brand investing $12 million in a long-overdue upgrade to the Victorian studio complex.

Currently accommodating more than 200 designers who work on vehicles for Australia and global markets, the design studio housed within Ford’s Asia Pacific Product Development Centre (APPDC) in Campbellfield, north of the Melbourne CBD, has been only upgraded on an ad hoc basis since it was opened in the 1970s.

It has been the birthing centre for generations of Australian-built models – the good, the bad and the ugly – including the Ford Falcon and Territory, along with the Thai-built Ford Ranger and Everest and a host of vehicles not sold here.

The latter include the Ford Figo for India, the Ford Escort and Taurus for China and, more recently, the all-new Ford Bronco for North America.

We note that in its press material Ford mentions the XA, XD and FG Falcon, but not AU…

Since the closure of local Ford manufacturing in October 2016, the Australian design team – as part of the 2500-strong APPDC workforce – has worked largely on overseas programs with less-than-adequate facilities.

The upgrade sees the studio’s footprint doubled to 2300 square metres and adds an extended clay modelling workshop (where full-scale models are made), a new five-axis gantry milling centre and 100 extra workstations.

The company said it will also pump a further $2.3 million into “additional studio technology infrastructure” by the end of 2021.

Design director for Ford International Markets Group and China, Max Wolff, who earlier in his career was based at the now-disbanded Holden design centre, said the improvements were aimed at keeping the facility contemporary and cutting-edge – “with the technologies required to design the vehicles of tomorrow, from initial concept to prototype”.

“The design studio underwent a minor refurbishment in 2012,” he said. “[But] this time around, the whole building has been redesigned.

“It has been structured around supporting our design process and our team, enabling them to work in a modern, creative environment.

“We have a new Virtual Reality review space, which is a key tool for the visualisation team, and a five-axis gantry mill that is integral to the work of the clay modelling team.”

Wolff said there are currently 40 clay modellers in the Australian-based team, who now have access to “cutting-edge digital technologies to speed up the design process”.

“The new five-axis gantry mill is an interface between the physical and digital worlds, taking information from the computer and quickly and accurately translating it into the physical with a greater level of detail,” he said.

“We can also feed that information back into the computer’s digital models.”

Wolff, who was head of exterior design for Ford’s luxury brand Lincoln in Detroit before he returned to Australia in 2015, said the importance of natural light in the design process was also recognised with a new 1110-square-metre internal courtyard created where vehicles can be privately viewed outdoors.

“Critically, the refurbishment was a consultative process, with creative design, physical and digital sculpting and design engineering all contributing to what was needed with the new facilities,” he said.

“This collaboration was extremely valuable in informing the design decisions.”

With the demise of Holden and the disbandment of all local mass-market vehicle manufacturing (Toyota joined GMH in closing its factories in October 2017), Ford has become the largest automotive employer in Australia.

It still runs a graduate program for designers, with at least 10 grads working in the studio, and remains an important springboard for emerging talent to work for the Blue Oval brand overseas.

Some of the designers currently in prominent positions abroad include Todd Willing and Nima Nourian, both in Detroit, and Simon Brook who’s running the Ford China Studio in Shanghai.

Ford says it invested more than $1.9 billion in research and development in Australia between 2016 and 2019. In 2020, the company invested more than $500 million in R&D and says it’s on track to spend a similar amount in 2021.