Harald Belker is a force of nature in the area of automotive design with a list of design credits that include the Mercedes Smart Car, the Batmobile for the Warner Bros. Batman and Robin film, and the futuristic cars of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report including the sporty red Lexus. Other movie credits include vehicle design for Armageddon, Inspector Gadget, Fahrenheit 451 and The Cat in the Hat, and concept designs for Spider-Man, XXX and Stealth (coming out in ’05).

Automotive design
Belker’s initial interest in all things automotive started by hanging out with a childhood friend who unwittingly laid the foundation for his design career. “He was car crazy and I liked it, but for different reasons“, he explains. “I wanted to change things all the time. Drove him nuts, but he was the one that sent me a magazine about the schools where one can do automotive design and therefore he had a hand in my career and sort of helped me to get me into the right direction.“

At 42, Belker has been involved in the design field for roughly 15 years. “I started dreaming about car design pretty late. I was about 26 and had finished a degree in engineering before I even heard of the Art Center College of Design“, he admits. “But once I saw what they did, I was pretty sure that this would be my future as well.“

After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Belker fell into the dream design job of designing cars for Porsche. “Though my time at Porsche was short“, he explains, “I made some long lasting friendships“. From Porsche, Belker then moved to another iconic automotive company at Mercedes Benz in California where he worked on the Mercedes Smart Car as well as the ‘S’ and ‘M’ class models.

Entertainment vs. industrial design
Though Belker’s early design work centered on the industrial design of cars, he gained a taste for entertainment design when he was offered the opportunity to design the Batmobile for the Batman and Robin movie. “Since then I have worked on many fun projects“, admits Belker. “Some of the projects have been hard to watch movies, but nevertheless they were a blast to work on. My work on Minority Report was an absolute highlight of my career because aside from the manpower behind it, it gave me a chance to show a future sense of vehicle design that we had not seen before.“