Industry woes leave car design students stranded

Standing in suits beside sleek, carefully constructed models of futuristic-looking cars and video screens with 3-D renderings, they smiled and handed out resumes, hoping to catch the eye of a car company recruiter.

Almost none were to be found.

"Normally there are a lot of designers from the big companies, but with all that's going on, nobody is coming," said Julius Bernardo, 27, who has dreamed of designing flashy cars since childhood and spent about $100,000 on his education. "At this point in time, you have to start thinking about other kinds of jobs."

In normal times, the senior show at Art Center, one of the world's top transportation design schools, is an employment gold mine, an auto-world agora where carmakers go to stock their studios with talent and put them to work on the vehicles of the future. Industry legends such as BMW's design chief Chris Bangle and former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker walked almost directly out of their senior shows and into automotive history.

But with the industry suffering its worst sales decline in a quarter-century -- General Motors Corp. and Chrysler are awaiting word on $14 billion in emergency aid from the Bush administration, and Ford is only slightly better off -- these are not normal times.

Carmakers, desperate to cut costs, have reduced or frozen hiring. Product planning and design have taken a hit, on top of layoffs on the assembly line, pay cuts in the executive suite and reductions on a host of expenses including auto shows and office supplies.

Although designers make up a tiny fraction of the workers in the auto industry, their importance is immeasurable; without good design, cars don't sell. A car company without designers has no future.

GM has cut its research and development budget and told Congress this month that it would eliminate eight models by 2012. Ford has cut back on plans for new truck designs. And Chrysler, which in March closed its advanced design studio in Carlsbad, Calif., has seen its design staff shrink by about 15 in the last year from about 75.