S550 Interior Design Timeline

Vehicle type Production/sports coupe
Interior design director Scott Strong
Chief designer global interiors Doyle Letson
Interior design managers Bill Mangan, Nicolas Thetard,
Robert Gelardi, John Acciaioli
Interior designers Sewon Chun, Michael
Thomson & Evan Wilson
C&T design manager Susan Sage
C&T designer Carrie Bommarito
Project started Spring 2011
Design frozen June 2012
Launch NAIAS Detroit / Jan 2014

The development of the all-new 2015 Mustang started three years ago with a review of customer feedback on the existing model. “We looked at what kind of input we’d been getting from customers in order to figure out what we could add, how we could make this car much, much better,” reveals Doyle Letson, chief designer, Ford Global Interiors. “The thing we know from having done so many Mustangs before is that there are four inviolables for a Mustang interior; a symmetrical IP, the double brow theme, large round analogue gauges, and
another big wish that we’ve heard time and time again from customers, which is honest, premium materials.”

This diagram breaks down the finished car’s key material choices: brushed aluminium IP, leather-wrapped shifter and e-brake, an anodised aluminium Mustang badge, satin chrome door pulls, leather steering wheel and accented stitching.

The photos show ‘Theme A’ undergoing full-scale clay model development prior to the to the merging of the two themes. “We built complete glamour models for each of the themes, then we picked one, developed the surfaces and got into the fine detail needed to develop the programme. It was really tough to choose,” recalls Doyle Letson. “We built them, scanned them, came in and out of digital as needed,” adds Bill Mangan. “You can’t discount the value of working in physical forms. When a human hand touches the model, touches clay, touches aluminum, the differences and subtleties that you find are very important.”

“With an interior, there are a million decisions to make, a million different requirements
that you have to meet; knee clearance zones, down vision zones… everything is compounded,” says Letson. “We don’t want to be working on a clay model that’s totally off package, so each of the guys, as they’re doing sketches, will sometimes build a quick core in data of what we’re really after. If we have to go back in once we’ve sold the theme and completely change the proportions, it’s a big problem.”...

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