Interview With 2016 Nissan Titan Senior Design Manager Diane Allen - Truck Trend Network
After graduating from high school in the Detroit suburb of Garden City, she went to Wayne State University in Detroit on a full academic scholarship, but didn’t stay long. “I was looking into product design,” she relates. Her first assignment was working on a small facelift on a sedan. Three decades later, she is senior design manager for Nissan’s all-new Titan pickup. We caught up with her for a chat, mostly about the new Titan, at the 2015 North American International Auto Show in her hometown of Detroit. DA: Facelifting the Frontier pickup, I think for ’99. It had the bolted-on fenders and big pads, so we called it the boxing glove. It was probably the most-loved truck in Brazil and still is. Have you stayed with trucks since then. I was senior design manager for the 350Z, the 370Z, the first Titan, the first Armada, the first Infiniti M, and the Rogue. The way we’re structured, we work on a whole range of products in different segments, which I think brings power to the product because you have the perspective of seeing other programs and working on the form language. Not many designers get to do Z cars, then big Titans. You really have to analyze what vehicle you’re working on and what you want to bring to the form language. Source: www.trucktrend.com
