If you want to know where Luc Donckerwolke’s next “top secret” assignation is to, look at his watch. Bentley’s design director won’t tell me where he’s going tomorrow to test the newest designs but he does let slip that he has changed his watch accordingly. I notice he’s wearing a Rolex Submariner and wonder if perhaps the next batch of Bentleys might be in for a dunking.
The work that goes into designing Bentley’s latest models, due for release in 2017, is confidential so the cars are taken to highly secure places.
Mr Donckerwolke’s job involves leading a 140-strong team of designers, meeting suppliers, presenting the cars and testing them in often quite hairy conditions: “We have to do this because we need to see, for example, whether you can see the graphics on the instruments in extreme sunlight or whether you get reflections on the dashboard. You have to see how your design works in action.”
He’s even in charge of people specifically dedicated to getting the colour and trim correct: “The colours will fade in the sun so they need testing too. It’s aesthetics and chemistry.”
Mainly, says Mr Donckerwolke, “my role is about taking a vision and transforming it into a real product; something that will fascinate people and make them happy. Frankly, nobody buys a Bentley because they need it.”
We meet in the Crewe factory and showroom, where he is based most of the time, surrounded by Bentley paraphernalia.
There are shiny white surfaces, a display shelf of wooden steering wheels, delicate figurines and leather samples and a slightly intoxicating smell in the air, which can best be described as the scent of opulence.
Via stints at the Volkswagen Group and Audi, through head of design at Lamborghini and director of design at Seat, the Belgian-born designer joined Bentley nearly two years ago.
The son of a diplomat, he was born in Peru and brought up in Africa. He was always destined to be a car designer, he says, and drew cars from a very early age.
“Changing school and country almost every year, drawing cars was my constant, even when I was living in cities with no traffic lights.”
He was told he would never make a living doing that so he was duly packed him off to study engineering. After graduating, he contracted hepatitis in Bolivia and while he was recovering his then-girlfriend brought him some magazines.
In one of them was an advert for the Art Center College of Design in Vevey, Switzerland, which was offering a course in car design. So when he was better, Mr Donckerwolke drove (a “boy-racer, Renault 11 Turbo”) to the village, asked for directions at the police station and enrolled himself.
From there he joined Audi where he learned the basics of design in the industrial world, before going to Skoda, where he joined a small team of designers.
“I was lucky,” he says: “You can end up doing wheels and seats and rear-view mirrors but I contributed to Skoda’s rebirth. It was the first time I contributed to the DNA of a brand. I was designing a future for the company too.”
Other high points included designing the new Audi A2, which was, he says, ahead of its time in terms of its environmentally friendly credentials.
Audi taught him the basics of aerodynamics and then he went to design racing cars, which he says, is just “design but a bit more extreme”.
“Form always follows function but race engineers only want the car to win. However, if nobody associates with the brand then there is no point in racing.” He quotes Henry Ford: “What wins on Sunday, sells on Monday.”
From Audi he went to Lamborghini (“a job you don’t even dare dream about”) and then to Bentley, where he is now working on “the fastest luxury living rooms on earth”.
Bentley is not just about the car, he says: “It’s about your senses being rewarded in the car. In many ways it’s the opposite of Lamborghini. A Lamborghini is always saying, ‘Are you good enough to drive me?’ Bentley tells you, ‘You are the best driver in the world’.”
Unlike some designers, Mr Donckerwolke has no artistic pretensions about his work. “We use art as communication but here we are doing something that works in the industrial process, following economic rules,” he says: “There is no art in it. Yes we have a feel for shapes and light but I don’t like the term ‘artist’.”
The design process never stops at Bentley, says Mr Donckerwolke, because the cars are constantly personalised. The leather, trim and wood panels are all customised. People fly to Crewe to have their cars configured for them.
There’s an enormous colourful wheel made up of bits of car bodies in every colour you can imagine. “This one is called sequin blue, after a customer came in wanting her car to match the sequins on her dress.”
Bentley, he claims, is the only car brand that embodies both speed and luxury: “It’s silent and soft and insulates you from the world but when you want to drive it fast you have everything you need. It’s the butler concept. There when you need it.”
