The 200B summer internship program run by DaimlerChrysler's Product Design Office in Auburn Hills, MI, was meant to give a small group of design and engineering students a 13-week taste of what it's like to develop a vehicle, and give company executives a chance to scout new talent and design trends. And that was enough until Shim lmai dropped a bomb with his design for a Jeep for Hong Kong.

"It wasn't the design as much as it was the research behind it that forced us to sit up and take notice," says Dan Zimmermann, senior product designer, Jeep, and the design coordinator for this program, lmai, a student at The Art Academy of Design (San Francisco, CA), followed the rules and researched the current market conditions in Hong Kong and extrapolated how they would change by 2015. From that he evaluated the market needs for an indigenous Jeep (minimum volume: 100,000 units], choose a current DCX vehicle From which to draw platform hard points and build occupant space, and worked with an engineering student to create a Feasible product. The research lmai unearthed, analyzed, and interpreted showed there was real potential for an actual Jeep vehicle in Hong Kong by 2015. "The business case he created is being scrutinized by our management For action," says Zimmermann. "It was a real shock."