Design Fundamentals — Ralph Gilles

The episode overall was interesting though there were some parts that I wished were shown more. One example would be actually getting some shots of Ralph designing the interiors and shaping the exteriors of the car more. We get moments where the engineers are shown to be scraping away lines on the clay car, but that’s more sort of finishing touches. The initial shaping of the car and choosing materials for the inside aren’t ever display so much as just talked about. The only technical bit was when the 300 was made to be lower to instill the feeling of sportiness. I just feel like the episode spent too much time going over his personal life and not as much of design as it could have.

Something else that I found, was that his story seemed a little bit cliche in the sense that it was a relatively straight path from childhood dream to career. He started off as a child drawing cars and being entranced by it all, and then ended up working and designing cars. Sure, there was the bit about his struggles in college, but there weren’t really any other major blips in the way. It’s rare for any designer or person to accomplish success without much more drastic life changes before they finally “found their way”. It was nice though, to see how his brother was such a strong influence in his life and how he woudn’t give up until Ralph committed to doing what he truly wanted to deep down. The episode does a good job of portraying how, often in life, it only takes one person to push someone over their own barriers.

Chrysler is painted in a positive light by the episode, as it’s shown to be a company that’s focused on innovation and building for the future. That’s quite the contrast to many other companies today who are trying to double down on what they have to squeeze out the last remaining short term profits. They could definitely start to become a market leader for EV’s, and setting off a chain reaction for other companies to finally follow suit, similar to what Tesla’s been doing.