Table of contents for No. 215 in AUTO & DESIGN

Reality sometimes transcends the imagination. The year ends with two surprise changes at the top of the design departments of the two European groups offering most car brands: Volkswagen, with Walter de Silva who is resigning from all his responsibilities except that of consultant, and Fiat Chrysler with the arrival of new people from abroad to rule over Emea (Europe, Middle East, Africa) design. Changes that will also have inevitable repercussions in Turin and throughout the network of companies offering design services. We recount significant aspects of this world in the present issue. Producing it we realised that pages are no longer enough on their own: which is why we are introducing Augmented Reality to give the printed page a new dimension that interfaces with mobile devices, smartphones and tablets.…

Smiles, relaxed faces and an air of satisfaction are everywhere you look – it’s rare to see a genuinely happy design team. But this time, there’s a definite sense of unchecked bonhomie at the Alfa Romeo Centro Stile, which clearly expresses the hopes set on the new sedan. The room in which the stunning preproduction Quadrifoglio is unveiled is charged with tangible enthusiasm. “This really is a much-awaited car. But above all, it’s a project that fulfils the dream of every designer: to work with the perfect technical package as a base”, explains the design director for the brand, Marco Tencone. “The rear wheel drive, location of the engine and general architecture – which includes aspects such as the track and wheelbase – gave us the perfect layout to build…

The Mission E was the shock of the Frankfurt motor show, not only because it was an unexpected debut but because of what it is: the first all-electric car from the Stuttgart-based manufacturer better known for producing sports cars. “Electric mobility is something that Porsche didn't ignore,” says Porsche Design VP Michael Mauer, citing that the design team had already developed some ideas together with engineers before the decision was taken to do a concept car. “It was an on-going process that didn't just start half a year ago.” One task of the exterior design was to visualise a new generation Porsche based on an entirely new architecture and technologies. “It really had to show that it is a sports car,” Mauer says of the design brief. “We said:…

Designing from a blank sheet of paper, beginning with style and introducing the added value of creativity. This is the mission of Altran, a leading international engineering concern with operations in Italy since 1996, and which opened a design centre in Turin this September. “We begin with design because it is the stage in a project that gives shape to the quality of the product” explains Franco Baraghini, Director of the Automotive Division of Altran Italia. “Our aim is to augment the capacity for autonomous development of complex, innovative systems.” The suite of services offered encompasses everything from initial style sketches and mathematical surface modelling to configuration and macro-feasibility analysis, and from CAS and virtual modelling to letting clients explore digital models in an immersive environment. But you can’t just…

A bridge between two worlds, the motor car and future mobility. That is the image Lowie Vermeersch and his team use to describe the activities of Granstudio, the design centre that the Belgian designer set up in Turin in 2011 when he left his position as creative director at Pininfarina to start an independent business. “The world is changing faster and faster and you can’t design a new car without considering the context it will move in and how its owners will use it”, he explains as he traces two intersecting circles on a sheet of paper. The intersection indicates the point where Granstudio steps in: “We find the new IT players along-side automotive manufacturers. To design an interior, for example, it’s not enough to come up with a nice…

“A dynamic task force with an established reputation all over the world”. That’s how Roberto Piatti sums up the growth of the Italian company Torino Design that he founded with Giuliano Biasio in 2006: “We will be celebrating our 10th anniversary in March 2016 and we are in excellent health, financially and otherwise”. Before setting out on his glittering career as a designer/entrepreneur, this Turin engineer worked at I.De.A and headed up the Bertone Style Centre. His success story is one he tells today with pride. “We have become a major player, with 60 employees and 120 outside contractors, suppliers and modelling experts. Our strong point is that we have grown by paying great attention to workforce turnover but always with the same people in key roles. We have hung…

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Aglance into the future at Gorden Wagener’s “sensual purity 3.0”. But above all, says the Daimler design chief, “the Mercedes IAA (Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile) is a four-door coupé of irresistibly attractive design which is at the same time a paragon of aerodynamics”. It also respects the sensual purity principle introduced by Wagener to Sindelfingen design. This has not only brought with it the concept of modern luxury but has also established an all-time record: a Cx of 0.19. “A fusion”, says Wagener, “of beauty and intelligence: a sexy car, like all our models, but with an intelligence rooted in aeronautical language that has been inspiring us with the teardrop shape since the Thirties”. The intelligence of this concept, whose structure and externals are the work of the team under Steffen…

A car called Fractal - a name that will be talked about in the near future. The concept presented by Peugeot at Frankfurt is an important test bench for ideas that will feature in the French carmaker’s forth-coming production line-up, which address at least three different areas of future development. Firstly, Fractal offers a vision of an urban electric car, with a system with two 102 bhp electric motors (one for each axle) delivering respectable performance combined with a range of 450 kilometres. Secondly, it is a forward-looking study for the i-Cockpit which, as well as sight and touch – with solutions already extensively tested in the RS1 concept from 2010 and, since 2012, in the production 208 – also stimulate the hearing, with a sophisticated acoustic system and anechoic…

The beauty of an object depends on more than just how well it follows the golden rules for originality and emotive impact. There’s another very important factor: light. Put simply, the way light changes throughout the day also changes how it is visually perceived by those around it. This is of no minor importance for a product like a car, which has to be attractive at all times and in all situations on the road. And things get even more complicated in the case of models marketed in different continents. This was explained to us by Tetsuya Ozasa, director of the Suzuki Italia Style Centre in Robassomero (Turin), which opened in 2009 and now employs a team of six designers (five Japanese and one Italian), that is destined to grow…

“We felt really free to go wild”, said Alexandre Malval, head of design at Automobiles Citroën, concluding his explanation of the Cactus M. design process. Looking like a chopped-off version of the popular French model at first sight, the idea behind it is more intriguing and challenging. Not least because the Mehari, the open-top plastic leisure vehicle of which Citroën produced 145,000 between 1968 and 1988, was so inspiring. “It belongs to the archetypical Citroën model lineup of 2CV, DS and CX because of its noble simplicity, yet makes you smile when you first see it,” Malval said. “The current Cactus saloon already expresses a certain calmness and is open-minded with its human, emotional and smart expression, so we talked to our director Linda Jackson and Citroën’s head of product…

Founded in 1946 by Mario Levi Gattinara with its last 50 years dedicated successfully to the automotive sector, Mario Levi is today closing in on its 70th anniversary. The company’s beginnings are rooted in post-war Cirié, not far from Turin, where Mario Levi, 21, was a founding partner in a tannery; production targeted the footwear sector as at that time supplying the car industry was something for the future. Mario Levi Gattinara had learned his trade at the school for tanners in Turin, at the time the most prestigious in the country along with Naples, graduating subsequently in industrial chemistry. For many years a United Nations consultant for the industrial development of South America, as well as a consultant for Industrialconsult of Rome for feasibility studies in South America, Dr…

Innovative scenarios made up of original solutions and futuristic insights at the service of the user. The activities of Seac02, a Turin company with more than twelve years’ experience in digital innovation and more than 600 projects to its credit, were born out of this meeting of technology and design. Ever focused on the skills and technologies linked to augmented and virtual reality applied to design (particularly in the automotive and industrial sectors), the Seac02 team supports its clients in the choice, design and implementation of ad hoc solutions for work processes. The company’s achievements include: virtual centres for Pininfarina and Fiat Powertrain, technical assistance to the FCA Group, the creation – for the Geico paint multinational – of a 3D virtual navigation solution in an immersive environment, multiple partnerships…

Imagining future scenarios is always appealing to aspiring young automotive designers. This year, the students of the three year course in Transportation Design at the IED institute in Turin were given the chance to address exactly this topic by the PIXELS project organised with FCA for four of its brands: Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Maserati. The brief was to imagine developments of the automobile over the next twenty years, considering how user habits and mobility needs will evolve over this period and using an innovative approach – the graphic concept of the ‘pixel’. This was a challenge for the 34 students, who embarked on the design of a new car by first deconstructing it into its individual parts, from the inside out, while simultaneously devising a communication plan placing…

The Car Design Award, for many years the most coveted award in car design, is back. Established in 1984 by Fulvio Cinti, founder of Auto & Design and its editor for more than 30 years, the award was an annual event supported by the City of Turin and the Region of Piedmont until the last edition in 1998. 2016 will see its return with the award-giving ceremony taking place against the backdrop of Parco Valentino, an event that has brought the motor show back to Turin with an original formula that includes great public as well as professional involvement. As in the original edition, the Car Design Award will be assigned by an international jury (about ten members of different nationality, journalists and writers from the trade press, including Auto…

It’s the end of a cycle at Mercedes-Benz but we are at the start of another that will be even more exciting: “What you have seen so far is the concept of sensual purity 1.0”, enthuses Gorden Wagener, Daimler group design chief. In a short time with the new E Class, you will be meeting sensual purity 2.0 which will be followed as early as next year by 2.1, 2.2 and so on”. Speaking at the Frankfurt Show he was basking in Mercedes’ success there, a handful of new models revealing the German company’s increasingly planetary ambitions. The star is the latest S Class, the open-top version of the “most beautiful S Coupé ever built.” “It is the highest expression”, he explains, “of the modern luxury we are pursuing, a…

Among the many rumours doing the rounds of the car world is one that claims Ian Callum, Jaguar design chief, never wanted a big cat Suv. “The truth”, says the man in question, “is that when I joined Jaguar 16 years ago, Suvs were flavour of the month. I said no because at the time there were other priorities. But things change. We have managed to put a new face on our illustrious brand and today I have no doubt at all that this is the right path to take, providing we remain loyal to Jaguar values”. The F-Pace presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show is the British brand’s response to the booming luxury Suv market. Slightly smaller than its direct competitors, the Cayenne and Bentayga, but also the Q7…

“Torq is a technological laboratory that’s ready for take-off: it would take an investment of 10 million to go from the stand to setting lap records on the circuit. But the whole world is moving in that direction, progress never stops.” MikeRobinson – CEO of ED Design (the creative facet of the world-class industrial group founded by Davide Pizzorno) – describes the future prefigured by his incredible self-driving electric supercar unveiled at Geneva. “The car and information technology can create new functional services simplifying life. We need to turn the car into an object as sexy as a smartphone. It’s not the 1960s any more, when horsepower was all that mattered.” Robinson calls himself a researcher who’s also a realist, “because research costs, and has to be funded”. The American…

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A book in which Enrico Fumia – one of the most renowned Italian designers of the 1980s and '90s, who penned many successful Alfa Romeo and Lancia models – is both protagonist and narrator, offering a detailed and distinctly personal account in a colloquial style which, more often than not, favours the candid truth over diplomacy. It is the story of a career that began back in 1966, when an 18 year old Fumia won the junior category of the Bertone Grifo d’Oro prize. Ten years later, after graduating in aeronautical engineering, he fulfilled his dream of joining Pininfarina, where he would stay until 1991, when he moved to the Fiat Group as director of the Lancia Centro Stile. In 1999, Fumia founded the first company of his own, Master…