THE CAR INQUISITION
Japan’s most avant-garde car company? Nissan, obviously, according to its European design VP.
MATTHEW WEAVER NISSAN EUROPE’S VICE PRESIDENT FOR DESIGN
‘Look at me: I’m not a maverick,’ Mat Weaver gently protests, having spent the best part of 50 minutes outlining why Nissan’s design ethos is to challenge the status quo. Then he chuckles and adds: ‘There’s just something in the Nissan mindset that allows [experimentation]. I’m always waiting for the grown-ups to say no, but they never do.’
Weaver has been at Nissan Design Europe (NDE) since 2003, the year its facility in a converted British Rail depot opened on the Paddington canal. The London studio sired two of this millennium’s most influential cars – the original Qashqai and Juke crossovers – and the 49-year-old Brit helped shape both.
During the first Covid lockdown, the gentle giant became vice president, Nissan Design Europe and assumed responsibility for the studio. ‘You go from being a designer to a senior designer, then project leader, then design director – and with each of those steps you are slightly less hands-on each time.
‘My role here is keeping the momentum in the studio, [giving] direction to the managers and the designs. We provide Japan with advanced studies and production proposals and we look after all the Illustration: Chris Rathbone Europe products.’ Now, as a vice president, Weaver is in constant dialogue with the top product planners and sales and marketing execs to deliver the portfolio for the AMIEO region (Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania). It’s a big job and he oversees a team of 60.
WITH JUKE, NOT ONLY DO WE INVENT THE SEG-MENT BUT MAKE A CAR SO ICONIC ITS NAME MEANS THE SEGMENT
‘My personal philosophy is to offer our counterparts and the Japan HQ a contrarian point of view. If we’re told to go down a particular route, we will do some of that. But I think the team enjoys saying “Well, actually we’ve gone down this route…” I imagine there are many studios that know what they want and go do it, which is fine. But I prefer that we don’t know what we want, and we’re going to look for something.’
Weaver learned the basics – drawing, clay modelling, the process – on the transport design course at Coventry University, before completing his masters at the Royal College of Art. Weaver reckons he and his car design peers looked quite conservative alongside the more bohemian students, ‘and I think that period broke something in me, like a vial of poison got snapped in my head. And it laid the path to be more inquisitive.’
The designer has been on the receiving end of some of my less diplomatic reactions to product unveils, particularly the first Juke. I also euphemistically describe the Leaf Mk2 as unconventional,
