Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Spring/Summer 2005 | Page 10

INTERVIEW

a new direction

PHOTO: NOBUYUKI KOBAYASHI

Andreas Zapatinas, Chief Designer of the 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca

W

hen talking about his team’s latest
and most important creation,
Andreas Zapatinas, Subaru Advanced
Design’s Chief Designer, has a wish list.
“I hope the 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca
speaks excitement,” he says, gently
running his hand along the vehicle’s boldly
shaped front fender. “I hope it speaks to
originality and innovation,” he adds. “I hope
it also speaks to excellent quality, good
taste and good engineering.”
The Subaru B9 Tribeca takes Subaru in
a new direction. It establishes a dynamic
and immediately recognizable design that
is “all Subaru.” Performance, safety and
driving pleasure are all here. They are the
fundamentals of what makes a Subaru a
Subaru. But this new Subaru design goes
even further. The 2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca
represents a new direction for Subaru.
In designing the Subaru B9 Tribeca,
Zapatinas’ challenge was to build a
premium global brand based on the core
strengths of Subaru technology, but led
by new and innovative design. “Good
design is all about proportions,” Zapatinas
says with a smile, “and about expressing
the personality of a brand and the
company heritage.”

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“The Subaru B9 Tribeca is the new
flagship for the Subaru line-up,” says
Norio Osakabe, President, Chairman and
CEO of Subaru Canada, Inc. “It combines
a bold new design with the trademark
Subaru symmetrical full-time All-Wheel
Drive system. And it’s our first vehicle to
accommodate up to seven passengers.”
“We are going in a whole new direction
with this design,” Zapatinas says. “The
vehicle has a great personality of its
own. We don’t want to hide the vehicle’s
personality; we want to show it. At
the same time, we want to combine
our heritage and also go beyond the
boundaries of our traditional frameworks.
This is a great challenge.”
A challenge made even more difficult
now that consumers have become acutely
aware of styling. Consumers, in seeking
vehicles that express individuality and
good, even bold taste, are reacting to a
number of marketplace trends.

“Good design is all
about proportions”
During the past three decades, the
number of automotive nameplates in the
market has exploded from less than 150 to
more than 260. This fierce competition has
put greater emphasis on the design studios
of every automaker. After all, head-turning
style is a sure way to get noticed. These
and other marketplace developments, as
well as Subaru’s goal of being recognized
as a premium global brand, have made
style a much bigger issue at Subaru. “In
the past,” Zapatinas says, “greater priority
was given to improving the function of
Subaru vehicles, an approach consistent
with Subaru’s decades-long commitment
to advanced automotive engineering.”
Heading down a new road
“The new design direction at Subaru,”
Zapatinas says, “reaches deep

into Subaru’s individuality to create
‘drivers’ cars’.”
“Subaru has always pursued advanced
technologies, the proactive features of
a ‘driver’s car’, as well as space-saving
packaging and simple, lean forms,” says
Zapatinas, who also notes Subaru’s heritage
in aircraft manufacturing and its unique
dedication to both AWD and horizontallyopposed SUBARU BOXER engines with
their low centre of gravity and balanced
performance attributes.
The design of the Subaru B9 Tribeca
encapsulates these core attributes and
communicates them through every
purposeful curve. “We are drawing on our
aircraft heritage,” Zapatinas says. “In the
Subaru B9 Tribeca, All-Wheel-Drive is, for
example, expressed in the wheel arches.
Look how tight they are to the body. The
boxer engine is expressed in an SUV with a
low stance. Our aircraft heritage is expressed
in how very aerodynamic the vehicle is. We
are trying for functional beauty.”
Designing from the inside out
Equally important to Subaru’s new design
are the interiors. According to researchers at
J.D. Power and Associates, interior quality
ranks high with consumers and has become
a new competitive battleground.
Zapatinas says the new Subaru design
direction is placing tremendous emphasis
on quality and functionality for all Subaru
interiors. That means the designers are
paying close attention to surface finishing,
including the graining of interior pieces and
the degree of gloss allowed. The designers
are also developing top-grade materials,
paying attention to minimizing the size of
the gaps between panels as well as aligning
surfaces properly and matching the colours
of adjacent surfaces to create a consistent,
high-quality look and feel.
“This is a very exciting time for us at
Subaru,” Zapatinas says. “We have a
company with a strong identity and precise
goals, so this is a great brand for a designer
to work with.”