This was quickly followed by fellow Opel refugee Stefan Lamm joining in autumn 2004 as Chief Designer for Exteriors at Ford. Smith was also reunited with another former colleague, Chris Bird, who moved to Ford as Design Director from Audi in 1998. This reorganised staff quickly made its aims clear: to move Ford of Europe design its New Edge design philosophy towards the ethos of 'Kinetic Design' which roughly translates to 'Energy in Motion', a language that consists of clean angles and complex surfacing to give Fords a sportier, more dynamic, exciting look. This language was first implemented by Smith and his team on the Ford SAV Concept, and has progressively been developed in a series of other concepts including the Ford Iosis, Iosis X and Verve concepts. These designs, or at least elements of these designs, have increasingly been adopted on production models, with the 2006 Ford S-MAX, 2006 Ford Galaxy, 2007 Ford Mondeo, and 2008 Ford Kuga all designed within the Kinetic Design paradigm. Under Smith's leadership, the Ford of Europe design team rolled out Kinetic Design onto numerous models including: the 2007 Ford C-MAX Facelift, 2008 Ford Focus Facelift, 2008 Ford Fiesta, 2008 Ford Ka, 2009 Ford C-MAX, and 2012 Ford B-MAX. In line with the One Ford strategy, Smith and his team were given lead responsibility for the global 2010 Ford Focus, whilst also supporting the development of the 2013 Ford Fusion and 2014 Ford Mondeo. In addition to his responsibilities at Ford of Europe; Smith has since May 2006 also been responsible for overseeing vehicle design in the Australian, Chinese and Asia-Pacific markets, with the task of giving the line-up a more consistent look. Retirement In May 2014 it was announced that Smith would be stepping down as Executive Design Director for Ford of Europe in July 2014, to be succeeded by Joel Piaskowski, before retiring completely from Ford in December 2014. In his last 6 months of Ford he worked on a global project studying the future direction of Ford design, working closely with Moray Callum, vice president, Design, Ford Motor Company. References External links Brief Biography on Ford's website Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of the University of Liverpool British automobile designers Ford designers General Motors designers Living people People educated at King Edward VII School, Sheffield 1949 births People from Broomhill and Sharrow Vale