Car Design Review X: Pontus Fontaeus, GAC
By Laura Burstein2024-02-07T08:00:00
GAC Los Angeles’ Pontus Fontaeus shares his personal approach to design in this exclusive Car Design Review X interview
Our Advanced Design Center in Costa Mesa, California, opened in 2018 when GAC was planning to enter the North American market. Later, when the company announced it was delaying those plans, we had to ask ourselves, how do we stay relevant? We had to weave our own safety net and show that our studio was an asset, and I’m proud to say that we have done just that. This was the first advanced studio overseas and thanks in part to our success, we later expanded to Milan and are now going much more into Europe.
These satellite studios have made a lot of impact on the Chinese automotive landscape. We’ve made a big effort to build a beautiful, creative space here for the team. We work on production cars as well as concept cars and do exterior design, interior design, digital modelling and studio engineering. We also have user experience and user interface UX/UI design and branding teams. It’s very important to me to have this relationship with our head of design, Fan Zhang, where we are very fair, humble, and work hand-in-hand.
Of course, we compete for…