My Short, Happy Career in Car Design

It's great to be a critic. Critics ‑ of movies, politics, football, automobiles, etc. ‑ are allowed to pass judgment without putting their own intellectual capital on the line.

For instance, if I complain that BMW's original iDrive interface was designed for superintelligent extraterrestrials with dual sets of eyeballs, well, it's not as if I had any say in its creation. I'm just rendering an opinion at the long end of a process I had nothing to do with.

I'm sure many car designers, movie directors and offensive coordinators have read a harsh column and said, "O.K., genius, let's see you try this."

Read the full article from the New York Times, April 8, 2010