THE DRIVING FORCE: KEN LEE WANTS CAR DESIGN HIS WAY
(SPONSORED STORY)
Ken Lee has always been drawn to the path less traveled. Growing up in Hong Kong, Nissan’s Senior Design Director admits his family were not ‘car people’—but the transportation-dense urban environment sparked his interest in vehicles of all kinds. When his family relocated to Los Angeles, a 9-year-old Lee encountered a seemingly endless array of distinctive autos lacing through highway traffic and darting down city streets. A trip to the ArtCenter College of Design, where he saw students sculpting vehicle models out of clay, solidified his dream of becoming a car designer at a time when most people weren’t even aware such a job existed.
After graduating from design school, he began working for notable industry names—but fate steered him in another direction, in the form of the 2003 Nissan Murano. The trailblazing crossover was brought into the studio where he worked for benchmarking, instantly enchanting him with its then-unprecedented crossover appearance.
"I thought, 'Oh, I have to go to Nissan. They're continuously being so innovative, I’ve just got to go work there,'" he reminisces.
Two decades on, Lee has established himself as a driving force behind inspired, one-of-a-kind designs, pushing the Japanese automaker and the automobile industry at large to the cutting edge. Nowhere is this more evident than in the all-new 2025 Nissan KICKS. The inventive SUV balances its desirable agility with road-ready toughness, turning a dichotomy into a duality through its ingenious composition. When conceptualizing the next-gen vehicle, Lee and his design team forced themselves to think outside the box—literally.
“One of the designers in the San Diego studio, Marcus Quach, had this concept that it doesn't have to look like a box to be protective. A football helmet is protective, [alongside] the shoulder pads. That, conceptually, was something very unique,” Lee notes. “When he made the actual design, we thought, ‘Wow, it's very fresh’—especially in the context of today's world where everything is either a box or a sleek, wet-shaped thing with diving lines and lots of character.”
As the creative process accelerated, the 2025 KICKS took on another accessory-related influence: sneakers. Lee first started paying attention to popular footwear during the 2020 pandemic, when hype around sneaker culture grew exponentially—the Nike x Sacai collab remains his personal favorite—and the trend of bringing the casual style statement into the office post-pandemic kept the shoes on everyone’s minds. Yet he admits the connection between cars and sneakers has even deeper roots.
Such parallels are unified in a seamless fusion within the all-new 2025 Nissan KICKS. Just as a sneaker’s sole and interior are optimized for comfort and durability, the vehicle’s exceptional craftsmanship ensures a smooth driving experience, whether commuting on city streets or charting new horizons. Lee and his team placed equal importance on giving the car a standout style meant to turn heads—its two-tone, red-roofed design evokes countless iconic shoe colorways, while its uniquely textured cladding nods to distinctive sneaker soles that leave a lasting impression with every step. The result: a car that turns the familiar SUV on its head, all while proving that great design elements don’t need to stay in one lane.
