Do you own a car?
"Yes"
What kind?
"White Jeep Grand Cherokee 1998"
Do you like it?
"Yes, but I liked my green Jeep better because it had a CD player with remote controls. I do like the seat controls in my white Jeep. They’re programmed in for me and for my husband."
Why did you choose this car?
"My dad bought it for me."
What is your favorite of any car you’ve ever driven?
"Either a Jaguar or a Mercedes M-Class. I liked the speed of the Jaguar, but I liked the Mercedes because it was a Mercedes and an SUV. I want to have that car to drive carpool at (local prep school). It’s plain snob appeal."
What cars do your parents own?
"A Jaguar and a Mercedes M-Class."
What do you use your car for?
"I drive to work and run errands. I smoke in the car."
Do you eat in your car?
"Only on long road trips."
Do you take calls in your car?
"If it’s a good person, someone I want to talk to. Or for work – I have to answer all work calls. I would like a speakerphone if it would work well. But I want all the controls for the phone and for the radio on the steering wheel. This is the best feature of any car I’ve driven. I don’t want to reach far for anything."
Do you listen to music?
"Yes, but I don’t have a CD player in the car anymore."
Would you like one?
"I’d rather have an iPod to use in the car and take to the gym. I prefer to listen to the radio in the car – talk radio and NPR. But an iPod would be good for road trips. I don’t like messing with CDs. I’m saving for an iPod, but I don’t feel like spending money on putting a CD player in the Jeep."
Would you like to access your music collection at home, or would you like to download music in the car – have access to a big database?
"Download in the car."
How much would you pay for that?
"I don’t know."
Would you rather pay per song – say a dollar – or pay a monthly fee -- $20-$30 – for unlimited downloading privileges?
"I think the monthly fee sounds like a better deal. I don’t know. My husband makes the financial decisions."
What does your husband drive?
"A little red Mazda – 1992, I think. I hate it. It’s too low to the ground, and it only has two doors. I feel all ghetto-fied in it."
Does he have a CD player?
"Not in the car. He likes to make CDs in the house to listen to. I listen to CDs in the house too. But he has to make them."
Would you buy a transferable CD player that you could share between cars?
"That sounds better than spending money on one for each car."
"What is important for you to have in a car?"
"It has to be an SUV. And it has to look good inside. And it has to be comfortable. If there’s money left over, I guess I’d use it for stuff like a CD player. But I have to have cargo space to deliver flowers on the weekend, and I like being high up when I drive."
How important is the car versus other items in your life?
"First I’d spend money on the house, then food and clothing, and the car might come fourth. Technology in the house is probably more important than in the car."
Would you rather buy a luxury car and take no vacation that year or buy a mid-priced car and take a vacation?
"Mid-priced car and vacation."
How much do you care about the design of the interior of the car?
"I’m a designer – I care a lot. No black interior. I hate that. I want nice leather, nice texture, but durable – I want it to withstand dog nails. There’s a specific brand of leather I like that we use in the jets."
Dashboard?
"Wood grain, and I think I’d like a digital display – well, the baby boomers’ eyesight is failing, and it might help them out."
Music controls?
"On the steering wheel, and if there are controls on the middle console, I want them up high."
Would you like a GPS?
"I want one that gives verbal directions and displays the visual directions up on the windshield. And I want the passenger in the other seat to be able to see it too. We offer this with the airplanes, but most people don’t want to pay for the upgrade."
When you were little and taking car trips, what would you have liked to have had in the back seat.
"DVD players, with monitors in the backs of the seats in front, and two different players so my brother and I could watch different things. Mom would have wanted us to have earphones."
Would you like a built-in cooler in the car?
"A wine cooler would be great, but I don’t want to take up a lot of cargo space – maybe as a partition in the back seat to separate two children."
Books on tape?
"Maybe."
Do you like vintage cars?
"I like the vintage Rolls Royces and Mercedes."
Do people at Gulfstream talk about cars?
"The engineers talk about boats, and motorcycles, and car power, and mechanical things like that. It’s very male."
Have you seen any of their cars?
"The president has an old restored antique Jaguar and a Mercedes. He drives an Acura SUV to work. So does the VP. Maybe a little Acura sports car? He has a convertible Corvette, I think. I think he got it in a business deal. He doesn’t talk very much, about them or anything else, but the guys at Gulfstream talk to him about them sometimes."
Tell me about working with your clients to design the interiors of jets?
"I’ve worked with about ten clients so far. I may be flying to India next week to meet with one. First they decide on the floor plan and the media package with the sales guy. Where the seats go, where the kitchen goes, and whether to get the simple or upgraded media package. We have pre-structured types – this is semi-custom design. It works well for corporations. I work with them to choose soft goods – leathers, carpets, countertops, wood veneer – we usually start with that – then we talk about accents, maintenance plans, plating, trim, lighting (this is very important), divan fabric, the conference area, the arrangement of the media credenza. Sometimes they change the floor plan and upgrade to a better media package after they talk to me, but it’s an upgrade from a lower standard package to a higher standard package. 2 DVD players, satellite radio, CD player, stereo, space for an iPod, USB ports, RJ-45 ports, monitors in the arms of the chairs or the wall – more durable on the wall. Often clients upgrade from a 17 inch to a 20 inch screen on the bulkhead – seat monitors are seven inches. The cockpit media is totally separate. We can install ports if they want to bring laptops and X-Boxes on board, but they bring their own and can store them in the credenza or take them on and off the plane. You often see this with family jets. Weight is a major issue. We could put all sorts of fancy things on the plane, but then you’d lose one possible passenger because of weight. Sometimes people upgrade to fast internet access for about ten thousand dollars. But these are 30-50 million dollar jets. Some people just don’t care about the internet. We see corporations and families on these jets, so the space can be used for entertainment, meetings, or just travel. The interior colors make a big difference. Lighter colors make the cabin look much, much bigger. Climate is important too, and people like big windows. Also low outside noise – we use Bose speakers and try to make the cabin quiet, but that adds weight to the plane."
How do you feel about road noise?
"I hate it. And I want good sound in the car. I like bass, but I don’t want to be pimping or anything."
Do clients often come back to change things after the plane is finished?
"Changing the interior is very expensive. We do this for them, but it is cheaper to go to a mom and pop re-ragging place for media and basic interior changes. Some people find they can’t stand the floorplan or the colors they picked."
Back to cars – tell me again what is important to you.
"Passenger-side comfort – maybe a foot rest? I want the driver’s side pedals to adjust – I’m short. I want satellite radio and a GPS and a DVD player. I’d pay 5000 for an upgrade, but I’d rather get it all when I buy the car than have to make appointments for installations. I want the car to look aerodynamic outside but elegant – not like a giant suppository. No tricked-out rims, no ghetto car."
Do you care about gas mileage?
"Yes, but I won’t buy a hybrid until the service is better."
What if you got special parking spaces?
"Then I’d think about it."
Would you drive a van instead of an SUV to conserve gas?
"Not a chance. Maybe a station wagon, but I love my SUVs. And I want a light color interior – maybe a hunter green exterior and a tan interior. And I want good air conditioning. That’s really the most important. It’s got to work and work well. Oh, and I want back up sensors and automatic windshield wipers that go on when it rains."
Do you notice cars when you drive around town?
"I notice the ugly ones. I hate the Viper, I think? And my husband’s car. Plus it’s stick, and I can’t drive stick. It’s tiny and low to the ground, and I feel like Fred Flintstone when I’m riding in it. It might be better if it were a convertible. It was the first car he ever bought himself, way back in 1992. He’ll drive it until it falls apart."
Who will pick out his next car?
"In an ideal world I’ll pick it out, and he’ll pay for it, then he can have the Jeep, and I’ll drive his new car. But he wants a sports car, and I want an SUV. If children are in the picture, maybe we can settle on a sedan or sporty Jaguar or Mercedes – as long as it fits a child seat safely. But I’ll admit, I’m hung up on makers, and I care about image. I know that Ford makes good cars, but I don’t want to drive one. I want a car with a better brand name. Maybe it would help if I took clients out in it, but I rarely do this – it’s really just for me. I want ONSTAR and the Volvo SUV, because the back seat has this reconfigurable center part that comes forward – you pull it forward with a baby seat there, so you can reach the baby from the front seat. Lots of flexibility for cargo and kids. I hate the Range Rover. It’s noisy. I want a nice interior, more so than the exterior, and since I’m short, a manageable interior, good seat settings, a nice display, I want to reach the pedals, and the technology can come after that. I really want speakerphone and steering wheel controls. Oh, and TV trays in the back, like in a Jaguar. And the controls that turn heat and lights on in the house from the car and vice versa."
Would you like to have internet access in your car?
"Maybe for work and for shopping, but it would be really nice to have a docking station for laptops in the passenger seats."
Would you like to sort and view your email while stopped in traffic?
"Maybe, since I can’t really figure out how to do it at home, and since Gulfstream is all Big Brother watching over my shoulder."
Do you want to be able to set up all controls and features by yourself?
"No, my husband can set it up for me, but I want it to be user-friendly and come with good instructions in layman’s terms."
Would you take a weekend three-hour course for new owners to learn how to operate all the features?
"I probably would, but it would be great for old people. I think we will need to be very concerned with the baby boomer generation as it’s aging."
Would you like to add and/or upgrade features as you go, or do you want decide on everything when you buy the car?
"I want to pay for it all up front, and I want it all in my new car when I get it. I don’t want to be messing around with looking for the best stereo or GPS and scheduling installation appointments. And my husband is more likely to agree to get fancy features when I get the car – he’ll say no if I ask for upgrades and additions after the fact. But if it were easier to upgrade and didn’t take much time, maybe I’d consider it."
Do you want voice-activated commands for most things in your car?
"Only if they work well. I hate yelling “home” into the phone and have it not recognize it because I had a sinus infection or something when I recorded it."
Do you care if your husband is playing with media in the car if you’re driving?
"As long as he keeps the noise low. I guess it would be nice for him to have a computer in the front seat. Maybe his X-Box."
Would you mind if he played his X-Box while you were driving?
"Well, he gets absorbed in those things. In the computer too. I feel like a widow. Maybe I don’t want him to have the stuff in the car. I guess maybe if I could shut it off when I felt like it."
Would that start an argument?
"Yes. Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t have any computer or X-Box up front. Just in the back for the kids, with earphones. I don’t want him ignoring me, and I don’t want to fight about turning it off. But it would be nice if the kids were occupied so we could have grown-up conversation. I don’t mean anything bad – just not talk about Barney or something like that. And like I said, everything needs to be user-friendly for the aging baby boomers."
Would you rather have a private club membership or a luxury car?
"Private club membership, but I can’t drive a ghetto car to the club! Maybe a mid-priced car and club membership. I just really want it all. I want a boat too. But I want the club membership. I’d borrow my parents’ Jaguar and drive it to the club."
Would you consider sharing a car with your husband so you could afford these other things?
"No. We need two cars."
Would you share a GPS system between a boat and a car?
"Yes."
How much would you pay for it?
"Whatever it costs."
Where are you going next weekend?
"To visit my in-laws in North Georgia. My father-in-law is building a big media room. I think it’s dumb."
What do your in-laws drive?
"Matching station wagons. They are proud that they can haul things around in them. They claim they can haul more cubic feet than an SUV."
What do they haul?
"Lumber for their new media room."
How would you like your car shopping experience to be?
"First I’d want to look online. Then I’d want to drive by dealers’ lots to look at the car. Then I’d want to sit down with a sales person and design the car."
What do you think your next car purchase will be?
"I don’t know. Gulfstream has special deals with car companies. I’ll probably try to get a good deal on a nice model through them, although they don’t have deals with Jeep, Mercedes, Volvo, or Jaguar. Ford, GM, Acura, and Infiniti, I think."
Would you rather get a high-end Ford, GM, Acura, or Infiniti, with a company discount, or pay a little more for a mid-priced Jeep, Mercedes, Volvo, or Jaguar, since those are the brands you prefer?
"Probably the high-end Ford, GM, Acura, or Infiniti, if it makes only a little difference, but only if I can get a really nice model. Otherwise I’ll get what I want."
--Asked interviewee to design online a car that she’d like to have. She designs a $50,000 Volvo SUV with many nice features, such as GPS, parking assist, third-seat air vents, adjustable rear seat, DVD players, headphones, etc. She can’t afford the car now, but if she had children, she’d make other sacrifices in order to afford the Volvo. Cites safety reasons and ease of travel with small children as influencing factors.--