Holden Colorado prototype being build

Holden's design future will be top secret to most people - and many of the multi-million dollar one-off cars it creates will never be shown publicly.

Futuristic concept cars largely designed for General Motors top brass have replaced Commodores and motor show concept cars as the main line of work for the centre that first opened in 1964.
Speaking at an unprecedented deep dive into the brand's Port Melbourne-based design studios - which will continue beyond the planned 2017 shutdown of local engineering and manufacturing operations - the Australian-based vice president of GM international design, Mike Simcoe, said most of the vehicles now produced in the advanced Victoria design centre would never be seen by the public.

"Its unlikely the public will see a lot of what we do," said Simcoe, who this week gave media exclusive access to the top secret facilities.
"The majority of the work we do won't be seen by the public. The stuff will be seen as influence on other design and production products or, if we're given a very specific job to do like a (motor) show vehicle ... obviously that will be seen."
Simcoe said the Australian design team had evolved from a studio that would follow a car from its original inception through to the production line - typically a Commodore or one of its derivatives - to one that now focuses almost entirely on advanced design.

As well as sketching and conceiving cars that could be a decade or more from sale - or cars never planned to go on sale - the designers can also build clay models, do advanced graphics, react to the latest colour and materials trends, and model a car in three dimensions digitally. It is also one of only two General Motors facilities - the other being head office in Detroit - to build the one-off concept cars used to test public opinion.
The Holden design team - now officially known as GM Australia Design - employees 140 people, including about 25 designers, support staff, some engineers and fabricators.
It's so secret most Holden employees can't access the design areas and scrict protocols are put in place; camera phones have their lenses blocked by a tamper-proof sticker, design drawings are not sent via email and video linkups with other GM design centres are encrypted.

Simcoe conceded the thrill of seeing a car designed locally on the roads would be missed, particularly by younger designers. But he said Holden would still play a crucial role in developing next generation vehicles for brands as diverse as Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and Holden.
"It's always nice to see something your team has designed drive on the road, but the difference now is that rather than doing Commodores we're influencing a number of vehicles for a number of brands."
He said the opportunity was to work across a wider variety of projects and deliver the results quicker.
His comments were backed up by the Australian design chief, Richard Ferlazzo.
"This is actually pretty inspiring for us because there's so much more we can explore into, not just Commodores and Holdens," said Ferlazzo.
"There are so any brands, so many different flavours - Cadillacs, Chevrolets and Buicks, they're all very different, with different expression and surface language - so we can explore different surface languages now, not just a Holden.
"We like creative expression, that's what makes designers happy."
Ferlazzo said success would be measured differently now many of Holden's designs won't ever reach the showroom.
"It doesn't have to be shown (publicly) every time to be successful ... just to show the guys around the world, our peers, our management around the world, that's the success.
"They will come back here as products we import. It will have an impact on production cars."
Simcoe also pointed to the variety that "There's a number of projects were doing right now which are kind of exciting and very different to what we've done before," he said.
Simcoe added that the design studio had the full support of recently appointed GM CEO Mary Barra and global design boss Ed Welburn.
"We're continuining to so the projects with the quality of execution that makes us a valuable studio, we happen to have (the fabrication department) that makes it possible to take it through (to a concept car)."
He said the reason Holden's design studio would remain open in light of the imminent shutdowns of local manufacturing was because of the skill of the team and the mentoring role it plays with younger design studios in Korea, China and India.
"It's because we're good, simple as that."