Automobile designers, it seems, have assumed a glamour that once was the exclusive province of fashionistas and interior decorators. Will the day arrive when we boast of our cars having being designed by Karim Habib or Laurens van den Acker? Perhaps that's the rationale behind the recent job-hopping as outlined in a New York Times article entitled "Upheaval Among Designers." According to the Times, Peter Horbury, Volvo's design director from 1991 to 2002, will return to the company as vice-president for design. Franz von Holzhausen, formerly of Volkswagen and General Motors, left Mazda to join Tesla, the start-up electric car company in Silicon Valley. Mazda followed up with an announcement that it had replaced its global design chief, Laurens van den Acker, with Ikuo Maeda, who has been with Mazda since 1982. His successor will be Derek Jenkins of Volkswagen's design studio in Santa Monica. In February of 2009 I was privileged to visit the transportation section of the Art & Design school in Pasadena, from which the next generation of designers will graduate. It gave me an opportunity to see tomorrow's car designs as envisioned by the students, who, by the way, came from all over the globe. Relax. The future is in good hands.