Beautiful cars that are economical to manufacture: a revenge for the automotive industry?

The automotive industry has long sought to design a diverse range of attractive cars, whilst managing industrial complexity. All manufacturers have, with varying degrees of success, adopted a platform strategy that uses as many shared parts as possible to produce different and attractive models. After working for thirty-two years at PSA, Gilles Le Borgne was approached by Jean-Dominique Senard in 2020 to take on this challenge at Renault, which was in a very poor state at the time. There, he met with numerous key figures, established a discovery report, and proposed a simplification plan leading to savings of over 1 billion euros and a reduction in development times from four to three years. The rare achievement of winning the Car of the Year award twice in a row cemented the company’s genuine expertise in designing beautiful cars that are economical to manufacture. The proof, from a man of the trade, that economic efficiency can go hand in hand with design quality...