Page 24 - MotorTrend (March 2020)

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF
Mark Rechtin
Reference Mark
Godspeed to One of the Greats:
Jerry Hirshberg, renaissance man
he world of car design recently lost one of its icono-
clasts when Jerry Hirshberg—pop star, painter,
author, and the dynamic force behind cars as diverse
as the Buick “Boattail” Riviera, the Infiniti J30, and
Tthe Nissan Z and Xterra that saved the company—
died after a yearlong battle with glioblastoma. He was 80.
But I’ll miss Jerry for far more than his immense
contributions to the automotive landscape. I’ll miss a
friend and debate partner.
Jerry must have missed the “media training” meeting
where PR minders lodged clichés and banalities into
the craniums of executives, forbidding them to speak
freely to journalists. “You can’t script him,” said former
Nissan sales boss Mike Seergy, himself no stranger to the
piquant comment.
With Jerry, it was never an interview, it was a conver-
sation. He wasn’t provocative for provocation’s sake; he
just reveled in the act of sparring. Jerry didn’t hesitate
when assessing other automakers’ works or when blowing
up logjams within his own company via the press. If
an outsider brought criticism of a Nissan design, Jerry
didn’t get defensive. He got passionate. He saw it as an
opportunity to educate rather than hector.
The Nissan Design International studio he created
had a sand volleyball court out back to help kickstart his
stylists’ endorphins. And it wasn’t barbecue ball—the
studio’s proximity to San Diego’s beaches meant these
guys spiked hard and dug with fervor. Smack-talking
your boss, on the court and in the studio, was encouraged.
Also encouraged: owning vehicles from
rival automakers. (In the midst of an
Infiniti product surge, Hirshberg drove
an Audi A6.) To break brain-lock from his
team of designers, Jerry would close the
studio and take everyone to the movies.
Those sorts of leadership lessons led to
his writing The Creative Priority, still one
of the most entertaining management
tracts I’ve read.
And although NDI created wild concept cars like the
Gobi pickup truck, it was the non-car thought experi-
ments that really showed the true breadth of the studio’s
talent. There was a world-class luxury speedboat for
Yonca Teknik, ski boots for Salomon, and the famed
Burner Bubble golf club for TaylorMade. In building
furniture for kindergartners, the team discovered tots’
dislike for stereotypical primary colors and a preference
for subtleties of hue and shade that even most adults
couldn’t discern. All of this then informed the next
generation of vehicles.
“I never wanted to be interviewed later, saying, ‘If you
had seen what we really wanted to do ...’” he once said.
24 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2020
@markrechtin
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Hirshberg bridled against corporate planners who Jerry Hirshberg
modestly
felt entry-level cars needed to look ordinary and built to
turned down
price. And when Carlos Ghosn came aboard to rescue the a promotion
foundering automaker by slashing costs, it was Hirshberg to run Nissan
global design
who convinced the fiery new CEO that an expensive because he felt
resurrection of the dormant Nissan Z sports car would the automaker
do more to restore the imperiled automaker’s reputation would be
better served
than any other action. Jerry won the conversation. When in the hands
Hirshberg retired in 2000, it was the day the Z cleared of a Japanese
native.
its final design hurdle. Talk about a walk-off home run
to win the World Series.
But Jerry was more than a car designer.
A virtuoso clarinetist, Jerry formed a band
in his collegiate years and wrote the song
“Sparkling Blue”—which hit the pop charts
and earned his band a gig touring with Bobby
Rydell, Fabian, and Frankie Avalon. The hit
song, about falling in love and spending your
life with your sweetheart, was prescient. He
met Linda Liss shortly thereafter and wooed
her on their coincidentally timed trips to Europe. At the
time of his death, they had been married for 56 years.
After his retirement, Jerry painted gallery-worthy
canvases of bamboo stands so lifelike that, when I saw
them, I clumsily asked if he had taken up photography—
which led to an hourlong theoretical conversation about
expressionism and realism.
Of the hundreds of automotive luminaries I have
interviewed over the course of my career, there was no
person I looked forward to seeing more than Jerry. Under
the guise of our professional relationship, there was a
friendship that I valued greatly. Our conversations would
always run long and yet end too soon. Q