Concept vehicles are an integral part of an automaker’s portfolio that helps it gauge everything from the public acceptance of cutting-edge design and technology to testing the bounds of materials and innovation. Many of the vehicles we see on the road today are inspired by concept vehicles, and General Motors is no exception. The Detroit giant recently opened a 140,000-plus square foot design center in Pasadena, Calif., with the aim of attracting new talent and creativity. On a tour of the four-month-old building, Observer got a brief peek inside the process the country’s largest carmaker goes through to take a car from a sketch pad to a physical running concept car and eventually to production.
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GM has had a footprint in Southern California that goes back to the 1980s when it opened a design studio in Newbury Park in 1983. “There’s always been a fascination with the automotive culture and the design thinking that happens here in California,” Brian Smith, design director at GM Advanced Design California, told a select group of journalists during a tour at the new design center on July 24. “It’s very different logic to........