Former General Motors top car designer talks about car design
Dick Luzin, former chief designer of Chevrolet and Cadillac at General Motors, shares his thoughts on automotive design.
When GM chief engineer Al Oppenheiser was selected to develop the electric GMC Hummer pickup truck, he was given an aggressive and seemingly impossible schedule to shorten the development cycle by two years.
The team named it Project O, meaning “unobtanium,” Oppenheiser said. Mr. Oppenheiser has shifted his focus to electric vehicles after 14 years as Mr. Camaro, and has been developing gasoline-powered muscle cars for most of his 41-year career at GM.
“Back in the day,[former GM CEO]Bob Lutz used to bring up the fact that engineers always have a reason why they can’t get there. So I flipped that around and said, “Let’s do this Hummer,” says the man who became chief engineer for the Hummer EV and later added the Escalade IQ and IQL to his work list.
His team got the job done. The Hummer pickup was the first of several EVs, including the Hummer SUV, Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, and Oppenheiser’s latest triumph, the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ, dubbed the 2026 model. motor trend SUV of the year.
Every model had to be developed faster
Once Hummer took off, the goal was to develop all subsequent EVs faster than their predecessors. Following the strategy laid out by GM CEO Mary Barra, making electric vehicles exciting and expanding the portfolio has been part of GM’s top priorities.
“So Escalade IQ and IQL actually completed faster than Hummer’s timing. At the time, it was the fastest we’d ever run a program,” says Oppenheiser, who still shakes his head in amazement. “Now that we have completed all of our electric trucks in the time frame that has been a challenge, the company is using the vehicle development process that we started as a way to move any program along faster because it is much better to get to market before the follower. So that is our mission, to get things in place quickly.”
It may sound simple, but different products require different degrees of pressure. Hammer had the burden of reviving the name with something new. “Mark (Reuss, GM president) was the person who saved the Hummer name,” Oppenheiser said. “He wanted us to build a better electric Hummer.”
High expectations are placed on Cadillac
Expectations were even higher for the next project. “When you get a model like the Escalade IQ, you carry the Escalade name, the Cadillac brand and all the expectations that come with it,” Oppenheiser says.
Escalade IQ and Stretch IQL were completed within two years. However, unlike Hummer, the Escalade team did not build a prototype vehicle. “We didn’t do that phase,” he says. “We quickly implemented production tools that saved us months and significant prototyping costs.”
To save more time, the team decided to introduce a single-trim IQ with a second row of executive seats. First, we decided to focus on one flavor that speaks to the upscale Escalade name, and then introduce versions with other configurations, such as second-row captain’s chairs. And Cadillac delayed the introduction of the IQ and IQL, shortening the model year of its large SUV in the name of speed.
One flavor makes things simpler and more doable
This all followed Hammer’s strategy. The first GMC Hummer pickups were launched in one color: white with a see-through Targa top. The Escalade also started with a single trim, the IQ, until the development team gained enough confidence to introduce more trim levels and second-row captain seats. “We exceeded our own expectations because we were able to get ahead of the introduction of other trim variants,” Oppenheiser said.
Mechanical engineers who had to relearn the world of EVs had a hand-picked team for the Hummer and subsequent electric trucks and SUVs. We are a team that can develop vehicles quickly and are not afraid to try new things. It was a startup mindset with rules like a two-pizza meeting. “If you can’t feed everyone in the room with two pizzas, there were too many people in there. Fail fast, fix fast. It’s the 24-hour rule,” Oppenheiser reveals. “You can talk about something and learn something, but you had to come back within 24 hours and make a decision. Autonomy: You don’t have to push decision-making down to the lower levels of the team and have everything go up to the executive level for preliminary review to make decisions. That’s how we did the whole architecture of Battery Trucks. We tried to act as a startup.”
The Escalade team essentially lives in a design studio, and they understood the mission: IQ is for style-conscious trendsetters. Oppenheiser tapped into this unique Cadillac culture when his Camaro work inspired the CT4 on the same platform. “I kind of understood that Cadillac was different,” he says. “The structure of meetings and approvals is completely different.” In other words, there’s an extreme attention to detail and respect for Cadillac’s brand, crest and legacy. “You can feel it, you can see it.”
Vehicles that are difficult to make
Challenge: Develop a vehicle that has a roof height of 6 feet 4 inches, weighs 9,000 pounds, has rear steering, and accelerates to 100 miles per hour in 4.7 seconds. This allows you to drive smaller than a real vehicle and at the same time feel quiet and floating. “I think it paid off,” says the proud IQ dad.
Is there anything you wish he had done differently? Yes, and that means we are poised to launch a longer IQL at the same time as IQ in December 2024. That was not possible in the truncated period. IQL was introduced in May as a 2026 model. He also hopes that the Dolby Atmos audio system will be ready in time, rather than being delayed to the 2026 model year. “One of the costs of running fast.”
Still, people gave up weekends and holidays to launch the Escalade IQ. To get rewarded, motor trend The SUV of the Year trophy for these efforts means a lot to many people, and they deserve exposure to the hardware, Oppenheiser said. “We’re going to carry this trophy around for a while.”
Photo courtesy of Evan Klein.
