Table of contents for No. 200 in AUTO & DESIGN

Lamborghini has given itself a truly spectacular present for its 50th birthday: its name is Egoista and it is a breathtaking single-seater supercar that pushes the multi-faceted forms and volume inter-sections with which Lamborghini’s have continued to astonish us in recent years beyond all previously known standards. A tribute desired by Walter de Silva, “an Italian fan of a great Italian brand like Lamborghini”, as the head of Volkswagen Group design pointed out: “We aimed to get across the idea that Lamborghini’s have always been built with passion and with the heart more than the head”, he explained to the thousand guests at the gala evening held at Sant’Agata Bolognese. Passionate certainly describes the Egoista and its most effective visual impacts derive from the unusual front that seems to be…

With 12.7 million cars sold in 2012 and 15 million forecast for this year, the Chinese market has become the benchmark for all the world’s manufacturers. The 15th Shanghai Motor Show was there-fore not to be missed with its wealth of debuts, starting with the premium brands: from Maserati to the German big three Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and Citroën with its DS (a brand in its own right in China), all came with new proposals, particularly three-box saloons and compact Suv’s, types that are much appreciated in the Chinese market but no less so in other continents too. Innumerable debuts from the Far East – Japan and Korea, in many cases in joint-ventures with local manufacturers – and obviously from China itself. In these pages we preview a few…

The salutary effect of competition would seem to extend to railways. It was probably the arrival of Ntv as the first private player in the European high speed rail sector that gave Trenitalia the idea that it should have a look at its own offering and what marketing strategies it should employ with regard to a direct competitor. Trenitalia, a member of the Italian State Railways group, played some early moves by refurbishing its Etr 500 high speed train (Etr stands for Elettro Treno Rapido though it is internationally identified as Emu, Electric Multiple Unit: the Etr 500 is not exactly an Emu because it consists of carriages towed between two locomo-tives), known commercially as the Frecciarossa. The budget for the 2011-2015 industrial plan earmarks a total of 110 million…

Mercedes-Benz openly says that its new CLA has the style of a rebel. The new model brings the avant-garde character of the Concept Style Coupé to the four-door sedan genre with record-breaking aerodynamics (a Cd of just 0.22), relatively compact dimensions (4.6 metres in length, and 1.8 and 1.4 in width and height respectively), and the content of the larger CLS. In short, this is a worthy heir to the line introduced in distant 1982 by the 190 – the predecessor of the Class – which astonished the world by offering upmarket levels of equipment and performance in a package much smaller than the brand’s traditional segments. The style of the CLA is an evident evolution of the design of the CLS, with sculpted forms and a flank intersected by…

The battle on Formula 1 racing circuits moves to the road. Responding to Maranello’s latest creation, the stratospheric LaFerrari, heir to the Enzo, McLaren has come out with the P1: this too a hybrid with spectacular performance (and price) which cannot be ignored when speaking of design either. When he set to work, Frank Stephenson, head of McLaren design, found himself in the presence of a hypercar (one step up from a supercar) with 903 bhp (727 from the V8 petrol biturbo of 3.8 litres and 176 from the electric motor), breathtaking acceleration (0-100 in less than three seconds, 0-200 in less than 7, 0-300 in less than 17), a top speed that would have been who knows how high without the electronic limitation of 350 kph. “My work”, Stephenson…

“Ferrari was an incredible challenge for my father, and he worked together with the company for over fifty years, from the time he was a young man. So when we decided to dedicate a show car to him for Geneva, the choice was natural.” Paolo Pininfarina, now chairman of the family company, fondly recalls his father Sergio who passed away on 3 July last year, as he describes how the idea to create a Ferrari roadster bearing his name was born. While delicate, the process to decide the type of car was equally spontaneous. “We chose the 1965 Dino as reference, for both technical and human reasons: it was the progenitor of the mid-engined coupé genre and also the first project conducted entirely under the responsibility of my father. We…

“Provo – is the beginning of the word ‘provocation’. Because that’s what it is: a 2+2 that you can enjoy driving on a twisty country road, but also a kind of urban café racer. It’s very compact and very powerful – a small but tough animal: it’s precisely the kind of emotive car that I and many others want to see in the B-premium segment.” This is how Kia design overlord Peter Schreyer presented the provo concept (the lower case ‘p’ is mandatory) at the Geneva motor show. But Gregory Guillaume, the Korean brand’s chief designer for Europe and the person in charge of this project, which is clearly destined for production, adds another two aspects: "It’s not just premium, it is sports premium. And in particular, in the same…

It was 1967 when a young Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin Braddock, took to the road at the wheel of his Alfa Romeo Duetto in “The Graduate”, and Alfa Romeo captured the imagination of the Americans. In a twist of fate, almost 50 years later it is now the American market’s turn to inspire the imagination of the popular Italian sports brand, which hopes to find success on the other side of the Atlantic with its latest arrival, the 4C. Inspired by the brand’s rekindled international aspirations, the IED institute in Turin – which, each year for the past decade, has taken a full-scale model created by the students of its Master’s Course in Transportation Design to the Geneva Motor Show – has also decided to interpret the theme. Gloria is…

After getting over the surprise of how silent it is – making it unlike any other compact hatch – the next thing to catch your eye is its exuberant, original design. The story of the Renault Zoe began in 2008 with the presentation of four concepts at the Paris motor show, which was followed by Renault-Nissan alliance CEO Carlos Ghosn’s announcement of the carmaker’s intentions to commercialise a whole family of electric vehicles centred around a core model – named project X10 – a fully electric compact hatchback destined for large scale production. So exactly a year later – in 2009 – the designers presented another proposal responding to the revised new brief. This was the Zoe, an extremely innovative 100% electric vehicle which, while maintaining the familiar architecture and…

Maximum exhilaration – this sums up the essence of the new McLaren 12C Spider compact supercar, which now joins the 12C coupé launched in 2009. From the exterior design to the cabin and from the architecture and engine to the equipment, everything about the car – the result of a development project beginning two years ago – speaks of extreme performance, and yet, as we saw for ourselves, can also be enjoyed during normal everyday usage. Merit for this goes to the engineers of the Production Centre, the futuristic facility inaugurated in 2011 which, with a workforce of approximately 2000 employees, continues the adventure embarked upon 50 years ago by Bruce McLaren and a handful of assistants. These are the same people designing MacLaren’s Formula 1 race cars, from which…

It would seem that nothing could be easier than to stretch the roof of an elegant 4-door coupé and convert it into an equally elegant shooting brake. That’s the way it might seem, but it is not so easy. Mark Robinson, Bertone’s design director would have something to say about this. At Geneva he presented a one-off derived from the Aston Martin Rapide and commissioned by an English collector. This was the first public appearance of Bertone Officina, the company’s new division organised along the lines of a high fashion atelier for cars and dedicated to the production of special models in the historic tradition of this Turin bodyworks. “A fairly straightforward operation”, he recalls. “It was only a question of adding a bit of roof, but the first chalk…

Nothing about the life of Gianni Agnelli could be called ordinary. And neither were his cars, which he took great pleasure in driving himself and which, a decade since he passed away, are now on display at the National Automobile Museum in Turin until June 2. It would be impossible to include all of the countless models ever owned by Agnelli, and while the exhibition does not include some of the most significant cars (which are unfortunately no longer traceable or have since been bought by other private collectors), the ten chosen are unique and extraordinary examples of design: the Fiat magnate wanted exclusive automobiles, and oversaw their development personally, dealing directly with the directors of the Centro Stile and special projects division tasked with making the modifications. Among the…

The car was the co-star of the Milan Design Week alongside furniture and all the other aspects of the initiative. But this is not something new, and is, rather, a continuation of what we saw in previous editions: with competitions to give the designers of the future a chance (Lexus), new models unveiled as if it were the Geneva motor show (Renault), workshops involving the general public (Mini), exhibitions and installations (BMW and Hyundai), and new product collections (Ford). The topic of mobility was evident throughout the design week, as demonstrated by Smart with its electric bicycle, showcased on the dedicated routes of this year’s Smart ebike design tour. To get a comprehensive picture of transportation design, we – as a magazine that takes an active interest in industrial design…

The acronym SAV – standing for Sport Activity Vehicle – chosen to define the Paceman sounds rather sterile for a car that is actually vivacious and original in design and youthful in concept. The seventh model in the Mini range is a three door hatchback interpreting the very contemporary SUV/coupé crossover genre. The car is derived from one of the brand’s biggest sellers, the Countryman, but not many will notice the shared parts – namely the front module and part of the interior, dash included. The character of the car is decidedly sporty, with a descending roofline and a beltline ascending towards the tail giving the single-doored flank an agile, dynamic look. The view of the tail, with its raked rear screen, reveals an exclusive new feature for the Mini…