Automobile designers and automobile engineers are as different as architects and civil engineers. While an architect designs a house, a civil engineer executes that design.

Design is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of products is defined or improved. Design aspects specified by the designer include the overall shape of the object, the location of details with respect to one another, colors, texture, sounds, and aspects concerning the use of the product ergonomics. This discipline applies the knowledge of ergonomics and the artistic skills to create attractive, user-friendly, innovative products. The approach is that of outside in.

Engineering focuses on the way things behave when they are subjected to various types of forces. Engineers’ emphasis is on achieving functionality. As opposed to designers, engineers typically take a sort of an inside-out approach. Thermal and structural analysis is sometimes used to predict the behaviour of the product under various kinds of stress. Engineers focus on functionality, while designers focus on appearance and aesthetics.

Design includes actively imagining and anticipating the future. It starts with identifying customer needs or a market opportunity, or it can start from new scientific or technological knowledge and an analysis of the opportunities such knowledge might be capable of creating.
It involves a complex system of decisions often made by different individuals with different mind-sets depending on their specialist knowledge and skills, and within which function they sit in the company. The process is neither smooth nor linear. It is dealing with the changes in a dynamic market and a technological environment. It continually has to adapt and accommodate new information along its way

Automobile designers work from outside in, applying the knowledge of ergonomics and the artistic skills to create attractive, user-friendly, innovative products. Automobile engineers on the other hand, focus on the way things behave when subjected to various types of forces. As opposed to designers, engineers typically take an inside-out approach. They focus on functionality. 

It is also important to understand the role Computer Aided Design (CAD) plays in the design process. CAD is a family of elegant software tools for creating geometrical forms. CAD is a tool. However, knowing CAD does not mean knowing “how to design”. Think of CAD as a tool… like a hammer. Everyone who picks up a hammer to pound a nail is not a carpenter. There are many good designers who are skilled in the use of CAD systems, and there are also many not so good designers who are skilled in the use of CAD.