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| Chief Design Officer Chris Benjamin (Photo Credit: Scout Motors) |
Like the elite club of the four Black quarterbacks who have led their teams to the finish line in the Super Bowl, Benjamin finds himself in a car club just as exclusive as the Black NFL winning Super Bowl quarterbacks.
Creme de la Creme of Black Car Designers
Benjamin follows in the footsteps of retired auto executive Ed Welburn, who was the first Black designer to reach the pinnacle of car design, serving as General Motors' first vice president of global design.
And up until recently, MINI Design's Oliver Heilmer headed the studio in Germany, leading his team to create the iconic brand's first electric car, before stepping down to a new role. Mullens Automotive's Andre Hudson is the vice president of design for a California-based electric vehicle start-up, while Benjamin's former boss, Ralph Gilles, holds the chief design officer role at Stellantis. Gilles, who is currently the highest-ranking Black car designer in the industry, oversees Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Maserati and FIAT. Like the NFL winning quarterback club, this automotive group hasn't been open to Black women.
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| Chris Benjamin is debuting two new Scout Motors utility vehicles. (Photo Credit: Scout Motors) |
Fast forward in 2023, after over two decades of grinding his way to key design roles criss-crossing the globe, gaining experience working for several car makers, Benjamin earned the keys to lead Scout Motors, an off-road electric brand.
Scout Motors, an American-based electric vehicle start-up, is funded and owned by the Volkswagen Group. Benjamin is also the first Black car designer in the history of the Volkswagen Group to lead a design studio. The Volkswagen Group consists of Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Cupra, Skoda, Lamborghini and Bentley.
Benjamin joins Auto Trends with JeffCars.com, a syndicated multicultural automotive program, to talk about the winding road he took, no pun intended, designing for Mercedes-Benz, BMW Group Designworks, Volvo and Stellantis, before landing his current gig.
In fact, two of the vehicles currently hitting the streets, the Dodge Daytona and the Jeep Wagoneer S, have Benjamin's fingerprints stamped throughout the interior.
Moreover, like with the movie Love & Basketball starring Sanaa Latham and Omar Epps, the global car designer shares pivotal points in his life when he first fell in love with cars (and how he kept steering back to his first love when there was doubt and uncertainty about his future while attending community college).
Furthermore, the affable chief designer officer wraps up the fast paced talk discussing the two vehicles he led his team to conceive and the inspiration behind them. Unlike his former boss Ralph Gilles, the artistic Benjamin has been tasked with creating the design theme for a brand that has been dormant for over four decades. Based upon early observations, it seems as though his team has nailed it, breathing life into an off-road brand, while modernizing it for the electric vehicle revolution.
Lastly, the designer shares when his masterpiece on wheels will be available for consumer purchase and how any thoughts of range anxiety is virtually eliminated.
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