Gilles, Ralph

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Gilles, Ralph

1970—

Automotive executive

Ralph Gilles holds one of the top creative jobs in the U.S. automotive industry as head of one of the Chrysler Group's design studios. Promoted to the job when he was 31 years old, Gilles scored several notable successes for the company with the Magnum and Charger relaunches at Dodge and the top-selling Chrysler 300 luxury sedan. Sales for all three boosted revenues for the automaker in 2004 and 2005 after a period of precipitous decline. "We cannot afford to do regular," he declared in an interview with Mary Connelly of Automotive News. "America rewards you when you do something with passion and you take a chance."

Gilles is the son of Haitian immigrants who were living in New York City in 1970 at the time of his birth. The family, which included his older brother Max, later settled in the Canadian metropolis of Montreal. Gilles's passion for anything automotive surfaced early in his life, and he amassed a large collection of Hot Wheels toys and began to sketch his own car designs as a hobby. "I grew up in the 1980s, which wasn't a great time for American cars, or anybody's cars for that matter," he told Forbes FYI when asked about his personal favorites. "I loved '60s-era Italian vehicles, and also a couple of American muscle cars from that period: the '69 'Cuda, the Camaro. I also loved the Alfa Romeo GTV from the late '60s, and the whale-tail Porsche 911s of the late '70s were pretty cool."

When Gilles was in his early teens, his aunt decided to send a letter to Chrysler chair Lee Iacocca—one of the best-known American company executives at the time—on behalf of her nephew, telling Iacocca that the company would most certainly want to hire the talented car-sketcher a few years down the line. Gilles received a reply from Chrysler's head of design with recommendations to look into the top three schools for automotive design when it came time to choose a college. The letter was lost, however, and by the time he entered Vanier College in Montreal, Gilles had decided to pursue an engineering degree. He soon had his doubts about his choice of major, and eventually dropped out. After spending a few months living in the basement of his parents' home and watching a lot of television, Gilles had begun to worry his family. His brother Max remembered the name of one of the schools in that vanished letter from Chrysler—Detroit's College for Creative Studies (CCS)—and urged him to apply. The deadline for the next semester was only a week away, and Gilles's family plied him with coffee to keep him working on the set of ten vehicle sketches he was required to submit to enter the undergraduate program in transportation design.

Gilles was accepted at CCS and earned his B.F.A. in 1992. He immediately went to work at the Chrysler Corporation, the Detroit automaker whose brands included Dodge and Jeep. In 1998, the year that Chrysler merged with German automaker DaimlerBenz to become the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Gilles was promoted to a management position in the design studio, and a year later he was made a senior manager. Gilles was put in charge of the interior styling for the Jeep Liberty, a small sport-utility vehicle planned for a 2002 launch, and led a rather contentious internal battle over what kind of chrome was to be used in the interior, and how much; he was repeatedly told by higher-ups that requirements were far too expensive, but he held his ground and the Liberty was a hit with consumers. Those pricy chrome finishes in its interior proved such an enticement that they were later deployed in other Chrysler vehicles.

Gilles was named a design director at the Chrysler Group in 2001, though he was just 31 years old. He became one of seven studio chiefs at the company and was put in charge of large cars at Studio Three. Over the next few years, he guided two new cars through the design process and on to spectacularly successful launches in 2004 as early debuts for the coming model year: the Dodge Magnum wagon and the Chrysler 300. In the case of the Magnum, Gilles battled with company executives once again, who reminded him that wagons had never sold very well in the United States market. His retort in meetings, he told Connelly in the Automotive News interview, was that "most of the wagons, especially American station wagons, have not been done with a lot of love. I would argue that if you put in love, you will make it cool, and it will transcend the boundaries."

The Dodge Magnum was a critical and commercial success for Chrysler, racking up sales of 18,000 vehicles during its first three months on the market in mid-2004. Those numbers paled in comparison, however, to Gilles's other Studio Three project, the Chrysler 300. Numerous industry publications named the rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan the Car of the Year. Time magazine journalist Daren Fonda called it "the hottest iron out of Chrysler in a generation." Fonda added: "Beefy, brash, styled like a gangstermobile, it is resonating with urban hipsters, popping up in music videos and car-makeover magazines, tricked out with big wheels, lowered suspensions and interiors with mini-bars and reclining seat." It was favorite of celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal and rappers Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, and at one point was selling some 10,000 vehicles a month.

Both the 300 and the Magnum emerged as surprise hits for the Chrysler Group at a time when they were direly needed. In 2003, the company posted an operating loss of $637 million, but the 27-percent jump in sales for 2004 resulted in a $1.9 billion profit that year, helped by the strong demand for the new product launches from Gilles's division. He was already working on his next sensation by then: the Dodge Charger, an updated version of one of the company's most iconic muscle cars of the 1970s. Gilles's new Charger was a four-door sedan, which was a controversial change that roused the ire of muscle-car enthusiasts. It was a "polarizing" product, Gilles admitted in an interview with Esquire, and he had planned that way. "We decided we were going to make this car have enough attitude to scare the weak away and attract the bold," he told the magazine. Launched in 2005 for the 2006 model year, the Charger sold nearly 30,000 units by the end of 2005.

Gilles was put in charge of product design for the Truck Exterior/Interior Design Studio in 2005, which gave him an unenviable task of adding some pizzazz to the Chrysler Group's minivan lineup. He planned to add some of the design elements from the 300, including a larger front grill and chrome detailing, into freshened-up versions of the vehicle that had turned the company around in the 1980s. His wife drives one of Chrysler's top-of-the-line minivans to ferry their two young daughters around, but he once had a customized Dodge Caravan minivan he used to race which featured a much larger engine, racing stripes, and oversized rims. That custom ride was supplanted in his garage by a performance version of the 300 and then a souped-up Charger.

Gilles teaches automotive design at CCS, and finally found that letter from Chrysler in 1998 in the family home when he was sifting through some of his late father's belongings. It came from the office of the man who was his first boss at the company. Gilles's own rapid ascension to one of the most influential titles at the automaker was usually credited to his talent and eye for vehicle design, but he attributed it to another factor. "Probably my mouth," he replied to Time's Fonda when asked why he had been promoted upwards at such a young age. "I've been pretty outspoken from Day One."

At a Glance …

Born in January, 1970, in New York, NY; married Doris; children: Tia, Sidney. Education: College for Creative Studies, BS, 1992; Michigan State University, MBA, 2002.

Career:

Chrysler Corporation, designer, 1992-97; Chrysler Corporation, manager, 1998-99; Chrysler Corporation, senior manager, 1999; Chrysler Corporation, Studio Three design division, director of large cars, 2001; Chrysler Corporation, Truck Exterior/Interior Design Studio, director of product design and vice president of the Jeep/Truck and Component Design, 2005-.