Table of contents for 258 - January / February 2023 in AUTO & DESIGN

Mitsubishi XFC Concept car It wouldn't be Japanese if it weren't accompanied by curious little words to indicate its character. In the case of the XFC Concept, as Seiji Watanabe, Design General Manager at Mitsubishi, explains, the words are kaku, tan and jun: “Kaku stands for confidence, simplicity, ability to foresee a potential danger. Tan implies an athletic design, dynamism and agility. Jun stands for great purity, authentic essence, in short it encapsulates the concept of Timeless Modernity which is our new design philosophy: simplicity but in a strong design that represents the mitsubishness of the future.” Without thereby cancelling the dogma of the house, “Robust and Ingenious.” In reality, the XFC compact concept is not only an exercise in style but a precursor to a B-segment production car due out…

Waiting to arrive at the right time. This was Polestar's choice for the Polestar 3, its first SUV in the range revealed seven years after the brand's début. A choice that on the surface would seem to go against the demands of an increasingly high-wheeled market. The reason? “To wait until the brand's stylistic maturity was at the right point,” explains Maximillian Missoni, head of Polestar design. “Our first Polestar 1 model was the production version of the beautiful Volvo Concept Coupé concept car from 2013, this is where our brand's identity journey started. We worked for a long time to move away from Volvo's philosophy and build our own, and hence came the even more different Polestar 2, and now it's time for the Polestar 3: an electric and…

For the past 113 years, in a location 60 km from Birmingham, they have hand built three cars a day using craftsmanship principles from an age that seem to have stood still. There are only 250 employees at Morgan, but the name of this legendary Malvern company is known all over the world and the creation of bespoke models gives it a come-and-see appeal for every designer. Perhaps that is why Jonathan Wells, Morgan's head of design, has spent his entire career here, along with a group of eight passionate creatives who work in constant contact with the engineering and production departments. The stakes this time were pretty high: to breathe new life into the 3 Wheeler, Morgan's iconic model that dates back to 1909. A vehicle halfway between a…

Jeep Avenger Cover story 4x4 Concept Few automotive brands have such an authentically American image as Jeep does. That is why the Avenger surprises in every respect: apart from being the first pure electricpowered Jeep and the most compact one ever produced with the exception of the original Willys –, it is entirely conceived, designed and built in Europe. Design included, confirms Ralph Gilles, Chief Design Officer of Stellantis - who is, truly, American: “To design a new model we usually have an international competition between our style centres, but this time the project was assigned directly to the European team only, since it is an additional model solely for Europe”. A project carried out in Italy, in Turin, where designing Jeeps is nothing new, “We have always had a Jeep design…

Commanding. Confident. Invincible. Three words that explain soul and appearance of the Super Duty, the F-series heavy work truck that Ford deploys next to its jewel F-150, the best-selling pickup in America. Ambitious words, chosen even before putting hand to pencil and paper and completely renewing, for this fifth generation, the range of heavy-duty vehicles that have dominated the scene since 1998. “Super Duty is the trusted brand for the toughest jobs”, proclaims Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO. “Those three words – says Ehab Kaoud, Chief Designer of Ford trucks, North America – do not necessarily describe the aesthetics of the Super Duty, but rather what this truck represents for those who use it.” The Super Duty is a whole family. There are three pickups: F250, F-350 and F-450,…

“T he 4L is a myth, and myths never die”. It was with this premise that Luca De Meo, Renault CEO, presented the 4Ever Trophy concept car in Paris, a preview of the future generation of the Renault 4, a B-segment SUV based on the CMF-Bev platform that will be launched in 2025. This reincarnation of one of the French marque's most popular models ever will in fact, ça va sans dire, be electric-powered, and that is one of the reasons why this first concept has been given off-road styling, explains Renault Design Director Gilles Vidal: “We were inspired by the historic 4L Trophy cars, although they were certainly less extreme than this, to show that you can do exceptional things with electric cars, on a level with and even…

For a mobility services brand, the creative team's job is to design customer experience in an ever-changing scenario, And it was using this approach that the Mobilize projects presented by the Renault group were developed for the last Paris show, where we had a word with Patrick Lechrpy, head of design for the brand until 31 December last year, when he passed the baton to the new Mobilize design chief, JeanPhilippe Salar. “The imagery is different from the motor car's. Different visions are needed for a service brand”, Lecharpy explained. “We have to look at all the means people use to move around, from scooters to bicycles. One of the inspirations, for example, comes from the world of manga, which is enjoying a popularity in France second only to Japan.…

“I weighed up all the pros and cons of opening a studio in Milan and found I there were so many pros that I was amazed no one else had already done it. It is an ideal place: fashion, creativity, lifestyle, great food. It is historical but also very modern, very close to industry but not too close to be disrupted by it. So vibrant, a perfect place”. Fan Zhang has no doubts about the choice of location for the first advanced design center in Europe of GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd.), the Chinese carmaker that sees him in the role of Vice President R&D Center, i.e. head of all design activities. We converse with him in Milan along with Pontus Fontaeus and Stephane Janin, directors respectively of GAC's…

Half a century of steady progress, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “The time has come to throw open the doors to the past and explore our design heritage to help us build the next fifty years”, says Luc Donckerwolke, Chief Creative Officer of Hyundai Motor Group. We are in Seoul, where he and Sangyup Lee, Hyundai's Design Executive Vice President, have organised a meeting with a special guest: Giorgetto Giugiaro, the creator of the Pony presented at the Turin Motor Show in 1974, the point of departure for the Korean manufacturer and today a styling benchmark for its creatives. Also unveiled at that same show was the Pony Coupe which, unlike the hatchback, never made it into production. The original model was lost, but its appeal lived on:…

Alpine Alpenglow Concept car I mpervious, hazardous and technical. But also compelling, enjoyable and fulfilling. Those are what the roads of Europe's highest mountain range look like in the imagination of drivers and the valuable inspirations they arouse in the minds of those who designed this prototype. “We wanted to show what we are capable of”, says Antony Villain, head of Alpine style. “The work team has grown from ten to thirty members in the past year, allowing us to put together a show car capable of making the public dream, as in the Shows of years gone by. Suffice it to say that it is as long and as wide as the cars of the Le Mans 24 Hours, so it is to all intents and purposes a reminder of…

MG now has a flagship. It's called the MG7 and is a four-door with sinuous lines and the elegant stance typical of fastbacks. The model is more than just a whim for a Chinese manufacturer best known for its high volume cars, given that it sprang directly from the pencil of Shao Jingeng, Design President of SAIC Group R&D Innovation Headquarter and Global Executive Design Director, to which MG belongs, and was designed at the SAIC Design Centre in Shanghai. In the company's intentions, the MG7 is the styling manifesto of the brand and embodies its three fundamental values - style, performance and driving experience interpreted in a spirit of sportiness and luxury. The design is reminiscent of the past, with a nod to the steeply dipping roof line of…

When you think of a motorbike, your first thought is to categorise it: road, touring, naked… In the case of the Biancaneve, a twowheeler designed by the start-up Dotto Creations, everything stemmed from a different idea and first thoughts were for its form. The people behind the bike are Gianluca Bartolini and Francesco lannuzzi, two car designers working respectively at the Scandinavian style centre Geely Design and the Turin atelier Granstudio. Their idea was to experiment with something new alongside their bread-and-butter work on four-wheelers. “To design the Biancaneve, we asked ourselves what a motorbike was for us”, Bartolini explains. “The answer? Two wheels, an engine and how to ride it. So we thought we would strip away everything superfluous, seek the essence of things and emphasise them”. The result…