Table of contents for No. 196 in AUTO & DESIGN

The French motor industry is in real trouble, with a complex mixture of serious negative factors — top-down mismanagement, bottom-up insistence on keeping unneeded factories open even if they lose tens of millions of Euros every month, overall product ranges unsuited to market requirements — combining to make it conceivable, if not yet probable, that the French might go the way of the British. That is, find that their companies belong to less obtuse and more rational foreign owners. Sixty years ago the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland was the number two automotive power in the world. Now tiny Morgan is the biggest native company. All the others belong to and are run by American, French, German and Indian companies. It is not easy to characterize French…

“There are designers who create very freeform concepts intended to eventually influence those who actually work on production models. But I belong to the older generation – I like starting from an existing base to produce an innovative prototype.” And Giorgetto Giugiaro has produced an astonishing number of innovative concepts – over a hundred models and research prototypes have been produced to date by his Italdesign style studio since 1968, and this number is destined to keep growing now that the company has become part of the Volkswagen Group. The most recent creation is the Brivido, a flame red GT with supercar performance and a surprisingly roomy interior, with which Giugiaro has continued his research in areas that have always fascinated him, chief among which maximising interior space usage and accessibility.…

Not just anyone can design a Lamborghini. As well as the abilities needed for the normal aspects of a design project – defining the aesthetics and reconciling form with function – an extensive knowledge of the most advanced technical processes is also essential. The Sesto Elemento concept presented at Paris in 2010 (see Design story in A&D No. 187) is one of the most eloquent demonstrations of this. It is a genuine rolling lab testing cutting edge carbon fibre manufacturing technologies that make it possible to achieve extreme, faceted forms with almost razor-sharp edges, and which encapsulate an astonishingly essential, focused cabin. This has been achieved while keeping weight down to below 1000 kg, creating an object dedicated to pure performance. Once again, virtual design methods were fundamental in the…

“Bertone’s centenary is not a festival of nostalgia, nor is it a commemoration. It is a watershed, a bridge between past and future. Between the Bertone that was up to the recent past and the new Bertone with its eyes on the future”. Spoken by Lilli Bertone, these words opened the end-of-June exhibition at the refurbished Car Museum of Turin, interpreting the events that have marked the history of the prestigious Turin bodyworks from its origins to the present day and created the bases for its future at a particularly difficult time for Turin and the art of coachbuilding. Binding yesterday and today are the intellectual and entrepreneurial affinities between founder Giovanni, enterprising cartwright who went to Turin from his native agricultural town of Mondovì at a young age to…

A touch of romanticism – which no cabriolet should ever be without – with plenty of substance under the skin resulting from the concerted efforts of different elements in the Fiat group. Operation Flavia was conceived to bring a new open-topped model into the Lancia range which, while not built in Italy, perfectly interprets the style and atmosphere of the “dolce vita”. To discover its origins, you need to look across the Atlantic to Michigan. It was here that the Chrysler 200 – of which the Flavia is the Lanciarebranded version – was designed, and where the car itself is produced, in the Sterling Heights plant. After the debut of the Chrysler 200 Convertible in January 2011 at Detroit, Lancia presented the Flavia Cabrio Concept (alongside a proposal for a…

The young and enterprising design studio Up Design was founded approximately a year and a half ago in Turin as an initiative by designer and project manager Umberto Palermo. Formerly design director of IDEA Institute, Palermo has many years of experience working with automotive and industrial brands such as Fiat, the Chinese FAW, Indesit and Hotpoint. Through the new Up Design studio and its staff of around fifteen employees, plus the contribution of a few external consultants, he continues his collaboration with major clients, focusing primarily on creativity and advanced research. But as well as developing ideas for clients, Up Design also creates on its own account, as shown by the Vittoria concept car unveiled in a world preview presentation at the 2012 Qatar Motor Show and exhibited in March…

The Station Wagon formula on the one hand, the Cadillac brand on the other. Two symbols of the American car industry that come together in the CTS Sport Station Wagon, a luxury supertourer close to five metres in length (489 cm to be exact) that is proposed with three petrol engines and automatic transmission: V6 3.0/203 CV, with rear wheel drive, the V6 3.6/237 CV, with rear or all-wheel drive, and the V8 6.2/415 CV, with rear-wheel drive and optional manual gearbox. Inherited from the saloon, the line is a modern reinterpretation of a number of classic American themes, the main one being the emphasis on volumes through sharp edges. The majestic front with its big prow-like grille and the vertical lighting clusters that mark the wings are eye-catching. The…

To form an objective opinion of the style of French automobiles, I believe it is necessary to retrace the history of its evolution. For three thousand years, the art of the coachbuilder has been the expression of a timeless tradition in pursuit of the elegant and functional, sustained by continuous evolution in technology. During the reign of King Louis XIV, the elegance of French coaches reigned resplendent throughout all of Europe. From the 1920s to the mid 1930s, the skill and style of our great coachbuilders impressed a new generation of American designers – among whom Harley Earl, who would go on to found the General Motors design centre. Sadly, from the end of the Second World War in 1945, prevailing political and ideological currents obliged all French carmakers to…

Every time a new Lamborghini is revealed, its visual impact is so striking that you wonder how it would be possible to take the theme even further. And yet the brand continues to evolve, and continues to push back the boundaries, because that’s what written in its DNA. “For a Lamborghini, extreme design means, above all, protecting the identity of the brand. It has a unique formal and graphic language which makes it unmistakeable” says Volkswagen Group design director Walter de Silva, who is also a great fan of the house of the raging bull. But it’s more than just skin deep. With supercars like these, form and proportion are intrinsically intertwined with the underlying engineering, and this was precisely why, a few years ago, de Silva took the most…

The evolution of the Lamborghini species is driven by a close symbiosis between design and engineering. This is confirmed by Research & Development director Maurizio Reggiani, who, together with his team, makes it possible to turn the extreme and sometimes even provocative concepts of the style centre into reality. “We make technology available to the designers, who in turn shape it to their ideas. Every project must strike the ideal balance between design and engineering. In this regard, the Aventador project was the most complex, as it even involved extensive work on less obvious aspects, whereas the Sesto Elemento was like an open book, in whose pages this symbiosis can be read more clearly than in any other project: the resulting monocoque bodyshell is a perfect fusion of design and…

If these are good times for Zagato, it is perhaps because in the 1990s, the company streamlined its organisation and got rid of its assembly facilities which, in more recent years, have proved to be the downfall of a number of great coachbuilders. By becoming a studio focused on pure creativity – explains Andrea Zagato, the current helmsman of the studio that has written significant chapters in the history of car design – his company attracted the attention of and earned lucrative contracts with brands such as Aston Martin and BMW and, more recently, the Chinese. But it’s more than just a matter of creative flexibility. “There are three things”, says Zagato, “which set us apart from other coachbuilders: the first is that our origins lie in aeronautics, not in…

As soon as he arrived in China in 2009 with the assignment to set up a new Mercedes-Benz advanced design centre, Olivier Boulay was astonished by the incredible numbers of bicycles and scooters in the country’s cities. His immediate response to this was to propose two Smart-branded city vehicles, which were presented a year later at Paris. Boulay is not new to the theme of electric mobility (years previously, as chief of Mitsubishi design, he worked on the iMiev project), which has been a top priority for Mercedes China advanced design since its inception, and Mercedes management welcomed the idea of an electric show car with enthusiasm. The project is called Denza – the name of the joint venture brand foundedinearly2010between Daimler-Benz and the Chinese company BYD, one of the…

Revolution in the revolution: this in synthesis is the new Mercedes-Benz A Class. Nothing remains of the model of the same name launched in 1997 and updated in 2004 (more than a million units sold). The luxury compact MPV formula which, together with a number of technical and structural solutions, had marked an epoch-making new departure, gives way to a sporty and technically more traditional hatchback set-up. A sea-change triggered by an analysis of the way the market is moving, which indicates that this type of car is on a strong upswing and is involving a broad user base consisting in the main of young people. In this sense the new A Class comes to market to win over new clients, without forgetting female users who are historically “in love”…

The Korean manufacturer SsangYong is focusing on content and style as the keys for its future. The recent acquisition by the Indian Mahindra injected new lifeblood into the company, leading to the launch of the Korando compact SUV last year. This was also one of the last projects by Giorgetto Giugiaro as an independent designer before joining the Volkswagen Group. With its all-new 2.0 litre petrol and petrol/LPG variants, the Korando marks the beginning of an evolution for the whole brand, which has now also spawned a new generation of the Action Sport pickup. And between now and 2016, the brand will launch a new full size SUV and an A segment car. But back to the Korando. The introduction of the new 2.0 petrol (149 hp) and petrol/LPG (147…

Peugeot design ventures beyond the realm of the automobile with the new Peugeot Design Lab, which caters for clients outside the car industry. Based within the French marque’s design centre, the lab makes use of the centre’s technical and human resources – at both the Vélizy headquarters in Paris and the centres in Shanghai and San Paolo – and is headed by Cathal Loughnane (34 years old, born in Ireland and with PSA Peugeot Citroën design since 1999), who answers to Peugeot design chief Gilles Vidal. The area of competence of the new division is global brand design – in other terms, everything from the definition of a brand to the design, development and industrialisation of its products, which also includes communication – making it not dissimilar in function to…

In France and elsewhere around the world, the coachbuilder’s art started to flourish in the 1920s. It was during this decade that the automobile acquired a style of its own, and new technologies were discovered which made it possible to create cars that were no longer bound to the old horse and carriage. The Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, which opened to the public in Paris on April 29, 1925, symbolised the meeting point between two contradictory eras and schools of thought. Two trends gained a foothold in this period: the first was a conformism inherited from before the First World War and steeped in historical nostalgia, while the second was a modernism which looked to a future built on progress in science and technology. The conformists…

The transition from Murciélago to Aventador was already a challenge, but the fact that the new 12 cylinder supercar was to be launched after the extreme, stealth fighter-inspired Reventón, made the job even harder. “But the styling language was intentionally different – the Aventador is not as knife-edged, and has very sophisticated surface tension” explains Filippo Perini, going on to say, however, that the style centre often conducts more than one project in parallel, and it is only natural that one may influence another. In the Aventador, the same predilection for aeronautical themes and the hexagon fuse with an even more advanced application of solid geometry: “we were inspired by crystals and the way they grow and develop, intersecting one another at random yet with such perfection”, continues the chief…

‘Brawny’ is how Filippo Perini and his designers describe the Urus, the SUV concept destined to evolve into the third model in the range within the next few years. “It’s brawny because it isn’t only powerful, and neither is it heavy – as many SUVs are – but muscular, ‘mechanical’ and unmistakeably masculine” explains the chief designer, as he describes this vehicle, which explores almost entirely new ground for Lamborghini. Almost – because there was a precedent, the chunky LM 002, although the designers maintain that the only reference is in the genre, and not in the styling. And indeed, the graphics and proportions of the Urus are very far removed from those of its boxy forebear. At the very beginning of the project, however, the designers explored every possible…

BMW design chief Adrian van Hooydonk calls it “automobile haute couture”. While Andrea Zagato, whose legendary surname accentuates the sports spirit of the BMW Zagato Coupé presented this summer at Villa d’Este, sums up his company’s collaboration with the German marque as “an ideal exercise in sharing two mutually complementary DNAs”. Conceived as an idea at the 2011 Geneva show and transformed into reality in just over a year, the car was met by unanimous approval and now seems destined for limited production. It could even be joined by the roadster variant – also created in partnership between BMW and Zagato – revealed in August at the Pebble Beach concours d’elegance. “The most important thing – explains Zagato – was to create a positive working environment to bring out the…

Opel, the cash-strapped European arm of General Motors’ global brand portfolio, is fighting hard to save its European, or even just its German face, against big brother Chevrolet. With success, since in particular the Astra, Insignia and Meriva have expressed such strong identity that their design has been seen as leading edge within the GM family. But sometimes, it can go wrong, as with the Korea-developed and built Chevrolet Captiva and its Opel lookalike Antara. The market clearly did not like it. So without saying so publicly, the design brief for Opel’s new compact crossover SUV Mokka is said to have included one message: make it different. Based on a dedicated all-new Opel-developed platform architecture, chief exterior designer Carsten Aengenheyster was able to start with a blank sheet of paper…

The Ford Research Centre in Aachen, Germany, is the group’s only facility of this kind outside the US, and since 1994, its researchers and engineers have been developing and experimenting with advanced, innovative technologies. Ford Revealed, a recent twoday event presenting the American carmaker’s latest applications and technologies, gave a concise view of the state of progress of Ford research today. The many different directions pursued at Aachen and by the Ford group as a whole can be summed up in the four keywords quality, sustainability, safety and intelligence. This is the way that the American group has decided to approach the future: “we’re not just a carmaker, we’re lifestyle facilitators”, said Ford Global Trends and Futuring manager Sheryl Connelly in her scenario assessment. Let’s start with quality. The sophisticated…

Innovative styling combined with off-roading traditions describes the essence of the second generation Mercedes-Benz GLK. An evolution of the first gen GLK presented in 2008, the new model targets the compact SUV segment (at 4.5 metres in length) with, as its key selling points, a bold personality and genuine off-road ability telling of its parentage with the timeless G Class. Completing the package are generous levels of equipment and a choice of clean Euro 5 engines: with a 2143 cc turbodiesel in 143, 170 and 204 bhp variants (the latter only available as the Blue Tech Euro 6 version, which is also offered for the 170 bhp unit), a 265 bhp 2987 cc turbodiesel, and 306 bhp 3498 cc petrol. Both front and 4Matic all-wheel drive are available, with either…

Ivo ter Hennepe is the winner of the competition “Design the car of your dreams” promoted by Ied of Turin together with Auto&Design and launched on the occasion of the last Geneva Motor Show. Of Dutch origin, Ivo carried off the scholarship that was at stake and can now attend the three-year post-diploma course in Transportation design – car design at the Turin school starting in the next academic year. “The project”, comments César Mendoza, Director of IED Turin, who picked the winner together with Fulvio Cinti, Editor of Auto&Design, “clearly highlights the desire to seek a stylistically innovative, clean solution. The young designer shows good organisation of thought and professionalism, important characteristics for undertaking this profession”. Ivo ter Hennepe è il vincitore dell’iniziativa “Disegna l’auto dei tuoi sogni”, promossa…