I'm just back from Southern California, home to more automotive design studios than anywhere else on the planet.

Some of them come and go but there are at least twenty advanced design studios in SoCal at the moment representing automakers and suppliers from North America, Europe and Asia.

I happened to visit Nissan Design America (NDA) which is in fashionable La Jolla just north of San Diego. It looks and feels like an expensive, private club.

There are beautiful gardens, a small waterfall and spacious open studios with the California sunshine pouring in.

It is probably the climate that brought most of these studios here in the first place; along with the mountains, beaches and California's past reputation for a culture of expressive freedom. Today the state is crowded, choked with traffic and broke but the California aura still survives.

SoCal is also totally dependent upon the car. The Los Angeles freeways were some of America's first (and worst) and LA also developed such automotive-related wonders as drive-in restaurants, banks, movies, liquor stores and marriage chapels. Customized cars were born here and car-mad Californians truly believe they are the automotive world's trendsetters.

Design studios in Northern Italy may have a greater cachet but SoCal tops them in numbers and in distance removed from the major centers of manufacturing.

The Japanese recognized California's attraction as a design centre very early on. American automakers established here too, although some have downsized and some have moved out. The Europeans and Koreans got the California bug next and they can all point to models in their line-ups designed principally here.

Nissan Design America has 60 designers who create vehicles primarily for the North America market. They've done the Altima, Maxima, Xterra, Frontier and the 350Z. They've also done large yachts, Airstream trailers and kids' furniture.

You don't get much of a look at these places when you visit because the stuff they're working on is all secret. In the lobby I saw a concept for what the Nissan of the future might look like and I did have a good conversation with the chief designer, Alfonso Albaisa.

What his team has been busy with in the past couple of years was unveiled at the L.A. Auto Show recently. It's the new Infiniti JX. The JX is a large, luxurious seven-passenger crossover.

It has all-wheel drive and a V6 and a beautiful interior. There is a section of the La Jolla studio that deals only with colours. You can get a new JX in Organic Olive, Airy Mist and Dark Cherry Moche.

Albaisa says the California atmosphere really helps the design process and I can understand that you're probably happier coming to work when the sun's shining and the air is warm than through the sleet and slush of a Detroit winter.

But one of the most important influences on the development of the California car culture and the establishment of so many design centres here must be the Art Center College of Design, one of the world's foremost transportation design institutions which is located in nearby Pasadena.

The place has been around for more than 80 years, building a reputation for interdisciplinary industrial design. Famous alumni like Chris Bangle, Ken Okuyama, and Henrik Fisker return to tell students about their most famous works.

California will probably continue to draw designers and studios and students. But Canadians who see themselves as potential automotive designers can check out Humber College in Toronto.

Since 2001 Humber College, now officially Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, has offered four-year bachelor's degrees in Applied Technology.

The Industrial Design degree can be taken with an Automotive Design option in the third and fourth years. All that's missing is the weather, the beaches and a dozen or two famous studios in the neighbourhood