GM FYI Blog

By Brian Baker
GM Design Center

When 17-year-old Allan Robinson of Philadelphia received his first set of crayons at age 4, the first thing he drew was a car. He’s been drawing them ever since. So it’s only fitting that Allan, his life threatened by leukemia, thought of cars when the Philadelphia Make-a-Wish Foundation decided to grant his wish.

More than anything, Allan wanted to know how GM’s auto designers would react to his drawings of futuristic vehicles. So the Philadelphia organization joined forces with WishWorks, the field activation team that facilitates the GM and UAW’s national sponsorship of The Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Allan and his mother, Janet Harley, traveled to Detroit recently. They knew they would tour the Warren Tech Center, check out the concept cars and tour the Heritage Center. They knew they would meet a number of GM’s top designers. But they didn’t know the folks at the Design Center had another surprise in store: GM’s virtual reality team had worked with GM Designers to interpret Alan’s design into a life-sized image.

“Wow,” said Allan when his design appeared. “Oh boy! Man!”

Wow indeed. Moments like these remind us why GM and the UAW are so proud to sponsor The Make-a-Wish Foundation. For GM Design to be Alan’s Make-a-Wish choice (even over meeting George Lucas) is a tremendous honor. Hosting him for his dream of seeing the future of car design was an inspiration to us all. Based on what we saw from Allan that day, not too many years from now that he’ll be the one making dreams come true for other young people. We just hope he’s designing cars at GM then!

By the way, Alan’s story is so inspiring that he was invited to tell it on The Today Show and Good Morning America.