Somewhere in Germany's Ruhr Valley, a factory stamps out car designers — skinny men with interesting hair and severe eyeglasses, invariably clad in black Boss suits or tight English pinstripes and pillowy cravats. Gorden Wagener isn't one of them. The freshly minted head of design for Mercedes-Benz all but loathes the stereotypical uniform and aesthetic sheen of European car designers. "It's so cliché," the 40-year-old Wagener says in a buttery German accent. "I don't need a black suit to say I'm a designer. That was one of the great things about coming over to the U.S. — you get to know yourself better."
Seated in an empty conference room at Mercedes-Benz's design studio in Irvine, California, Wagener is clad in gray slacks and standard-issue shirt and tie. With his broad build and stolid manner, he seems at first glance less like a global automotive tastemaker than an Omaha insurance executive. And he has a Midwesterner's shyness. When I ask him where he lives, he says, "south of here." It's a reminder that Wagener's ascent to Mercedes's top design job has been elevator-quick, and that people who hold the position are — in the world of car enthusiasts — celebrities. But not everybody enjoys being a celebrity.
Wagener's got a lot on his plate. Members of the board are flying in for a presentation next week; he's planning his family's move back to Germany after three years in California; his wife, Tanja, also German, is about to give birth to their first child (it's a boy). And hovering over everything are the trials and perils that come with holding the pencils at the world's oldest and greatest car company. "It's a big thing I have on my hands now," he says. "It's a lot of responsibility."
Wagener may appear conventional — he declares that his favorite book is the Bible and his favorite movie is Star Wars — but he's an intriguing mix of contradictions. Born in Essen and educated at the University of Essen and the Royal College of Art in London, he is intensely proud of Germany's tradition of fine design, even as he distances himself from its asceticism. "German design is timeless," he says. "But there is this formula that timeless things are simple, and I don't totally believe that. In fact, sometimes to me simple things are really boring!"
After graduating from the RCA, he took a job with Volkswagen but soon discovered it wasn't a good fit. "VWs are much more of a rational car," Wagener says. "And they really like the Bauhaus style, the whole form-follows-function style of doing a car, and I'm not into that rational aspect of design. I don't see myself as a rational, gray guy." While still working at VW, he found himself sketching Benzes instead of Beetles in his spare time. "I said, 'Well, that's it, I have to work for Mercedes.' "
In his eleven years with the company — his previous position was head of Mercedes-Benz's global advanced design organization, which has studios scattered around the world — Wagener has made his mark, and that mark is a curve: a long, taut parabola of the kind that arches down the back of the CLS Class four-door coupe and the dorsal surface of the F700 concept car and flanks of the R-Class.
Meanwhile, he has brought a ferocious energy and exuberant spirit, even flamboyance, to the brand, which a decade ago was best known for its Teutonic rigor. Consider, for example, the SLR. This scissor-doored, $500,000, 200-mph supercar, a collaboration between Mercedes and F1 racing legend McLaren, is Wagener's highest-profile project, and one of the most outrageous cars ever to wear the three-pointed-star logo. It's also the most controversial from a styling point of view. "Is it?" Wagener says. "I didn't know that."
For Wagener, the SLR is his summary argument against simplicity. "Even though it is so stylish," he says, "and so much is going on, we designed it ten years ago, and still it's spectacular. Especially when you see them driving around here, with the play of light and shadow. It's still attractive, futuristic." Not that Wagener is enamored of the haute minimalism school of luxury. "I like things that are rich, gold, and crocodile," he says, pointing to his Mercedes-made watch as evidence. "Luxury has to be something rich, that makes you feel nice. Look around the world, in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America. In most cultures that kind of flavor is a matter of luxury. Which part of the world sees a gray, simple, rational thing as a luxury?"
Sweden? I venture. "OK, maybe in Sweden, and parts of Germany," he says, smiling.
With his promotion to the top job, Wagener has to move back to Deutschland, which will be quite a change. He loves driving his CLS around Southern California among all "the free spirits, the lifestyle, the living circumstances, the houses, the weather, the ocean." He also loves to surf. Actually, in his enigmatic nature — a self-denying luxuriant, an irrational rationalist — Wagener reminds me of no one so much as John from Cincinnati.
