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Julien Montousse, the man who designed the interiors of the new Miata and Mazda6 for Mazda, and the last-generation Camaro for General Motors, will lead the automaker’s California design team, Mazda announced Tuesday.
Montousse takes over for Derek Jenkins, who left the company in July for a “stealth project” according to Automotive News, who cited Jenkins’ LinkedIn page.
Montousse will be responsible for designing new cars for Mazda, including the next-generation Mazda3 — and then adapting that language into a whole range of crossovers that will eventually spawn from it.
Before joining Mazda in 2009 as design manager, Montousse was at General Motors for seven years as a designer, according to his LinkedIn profile.
15 Comments on “Mazda6, Miata Interior Designer Will Lead Mazda Design in US...”
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Is a guy like this pretty much a freelancer and can briefly work for anybody, even Mazda, without damaging his career?
Some designers can, Franz von Holzenhausen comes to mind. He’s currently at Tesla, previously at Mazda and GM, and known/notorious for insisting that the Solstice/Sky trunk be single piece and rear-hinged.
Yes, so there’s hope for Acura, which also have their styling center in California!
Quick question. Is LinkedIn genuinely useful, or is it one big circle jerk?
My experience is that it is genuinely useful, as it landed me my current position. I can keep up with colleagues career steps without getting involved with their personal lives (facebook). Sharing facebook access with coworkers seems like a very bad idea. Linked also allows for passive job searching in professional fields. In my experience, most engineers have low motivation to jump from job to job, so they aren’t going to place resumes out there to everybody, and they will use very strict criteria of what they are looking for in the next move. On the recruiter side, it allows a very broad resume database of all these people who are not necessarily looking for a new job, but might fit the position. Linkedin allows for a very easy way to keep an eye on the very narrow scope job market, which targets that very broad low effort population.
I don’t have an account. But I was surprised yesterday to see a huge LinkedIn van/truck parked in downtown DC. There was a long line of young professional types waiting to get inside. I think they were shooting profile pictures or something. Never seen anything like that before.
I wonder if it was his decision to put the interior door handle where it is on the Camaro.
It’s always good to see an internal person be promoted. Here’s to more awesome Kodo-inspired cars. Speaking of Mazda designers – any news of where the former design lead went? Derek Jenkins? Did he move to Apple? Derek’s LinkedIn profile still says “stealth project.”
Jenkins is probably either at Apple or that “other California electric car company” that was most founded by people unhappy at Tesla.
This can only be a good thing based on how nice the interior of the new 2016 6 is. I wanted a 6 since the redesign in 2014 but I was not a fan of the interior. The awesome new interior on the 2016 pushed me to finally buy one. I cannot think of anything I would change about the interior (or exterior) of this car. It is pretty much perfect. The only thing I could ask for is an upgraded engine option but even still the 2.5l has plenty of power for everyday driving and having some fun.
Sorry, But I don’t see what is “so great” about interiors this guy created for Mazda?
The interior of the 2016 is beautiful, high quality, and ergonomically excellent. Since I spend most of the time with my vehicle sitting in the drivers seat the interior is very important to me. I appreciate not having a sea of gray cheap plastic surrounding me.
http://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/legacy_files/pictures/j/jdpower/1771/2077113070171e36f3c53574c50b4025x.jpg
I like (and almost bought) a Mazda 6 – the interior is top-notch for that price. Kudos to Julien!
He’s hot.
TTAC, these pop-up ads are KILLING ME!
AdBlock Plus will take care of that.