Table of contents for No. 226 in AUTO & DESIGN

Amagical moment of growth and continuity at the same time. The appointment of Robin Page to Senior Vice President Design of Volvo Car, a role in which he succeeds Thomas Ingenlath, appointed CEO of Polestar, the division that the Swedish group intends to develop as a separate brand dedicated to high performance electrified cars, is part of this scenario. Ingenlath will retain global design supervision as Chief Design Officer. A "win-win" situation, Page told us a few days after his promotionwas announced. "I am fortunate to be able to move Thomas’s work forward with the same group that has worked on this thoroughgoing evolution in our design language, while not losing the chance to engage with him again”. Page has three main objectives that he aims to develop: "First of…

A "baby Suv"? A little breezy crossover? However you want to look at it, the Seat Arona represents, in the words of Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos, "this cycle’s maturity". He is referring to the new departure that started in 2012 with the León, and on the back of which the Spanish manufacturer rose to the upper echelons of European design through its subsequent incarnations in the Ateca Suv and the new Ibiza. If Mesonero-Romanos sees it as the crowning point of this cycle it is because the next car (in 2018) to roll off the Martorell lines will be the bigger Suv derived from the 20V20 concept that he, head of Seat design, already sees as a link with the new cycle due to start later with the new León. A cycle,…

The Tiggo Coupe concept is a look into the future design direction of the Chery brand, a Chinese automaker that has made huge strides since executive design director James Hope was brought in to oversee design in the company’s studios in 2012. While the Chery FV2030 concept shown in 2016 showcased the company’s design vision from a brand perspective – lining up the company’s design DNA – the 2017 Tiggo Coupe concept is a look into the design language that will be used on forthcoming production projects. Designed to cater to the progressive modern mainstream (PMM) buyer the Tiggo Coupe concept tells the future story of Chery’s “fun to drive” brand tagline through a sporty, electric, four-passenger hybrid coupe/crossover vehicle. The idea was born from a sketch penned by exterior…

Drive designer imagination beyond the automotive. That was the goal that led to the making of the Lexus Sport Yacht, a working prototype of a sports boat for 6/8 people, powered by two Lexus V8 engines, of advanced design and optimal handling. Designed in Japan at the Toyota City Lexus Design Centre, two teams of designers headed up the project, under the direct supervision of Akio Toyoda, President of the Toyota Group as well as CEO of Lexus International. "This project gave us an understanding of how the Lexus styling code could be applied to the nautical sphere. A really exciting prospect for the Lexus Design Centre, because for us an effort is only worthwhile if it manages to light up our creative energies and drive the imagination beyond the…

Seventeen house moves in twenty-two years. This fact is not reported in the CV of Amko Leenarts, freshly appointed Director of Design of Ford Europe, but it is symptomatic of his propensity to re-programme himself whenever it seems advisable. Ideal, therefore, for keeping pace with the developments of recent months within the Blue Oval’s design structure. We reach him on the phone in the United States, intent on packing up the last boxes at the Dearborn Design Centre – where until early July he headed Global Interior Design of the Ford Motor Company – in view of his imminent transfer to Merkenich, Germany, as successor to Joel Piaskovski. “A total reorganisation of our design activities is underway”, he explains. "We felt that it was time to change orientation, from a…

When you sit next to Anthony Villain, design chief of the glorious Dieppe brand, you immediately feel that any conversation with him about style will unfold in a rather different way than usual. A few steps away, a body in white shows off all the rough splendour of unpainted aluminium, already a suggestion of an original approach, perhaps more genuine and visceral than some of the more inflexible automotive standards. No full-width LEDs, multifaceted surfaces or other expedients: here the only intention is dynamism, direct, expressed with clarity and purged of superfluity. Just like the voice of Villain, who with passionate precision tells us what inspirations animated his creative team during the project: "We started from the Alps. They are the "territory" par excellence for this car, they mean driveability…

Sabelt’s far-sighted view of the world of cars has distant roots. It was 1972 when the company, one of the first worldwide to focus on safety, began to make seat-belts with the ambitious aim of spreading their adoption on production cars, before the law making them obligatory had been approved. An avant-garde in which they strongly believed, so much so that the company was named for it, Sa-belt, safety belt. The Sabelt-safety binomial soon extended to other sectors: from rallies to Formula 1 – first in the world to meet the new FIA homologation standards for seatbelts, with fully eight out of ten teams equipped in the 2017 championship; from aviation to aerospace as a supplier of ThalesAlenia Space Italy for the containment belts of cargo modules headed to the…

The first impact brings to mind the signature light blue which, with other pastel shades, brought cheer to the streets of European cities in the years of the economic boom. But when you get nearer and look more closely, the colour reveals all its fine sparkling effect, which is different from the classic metallic look that the head of Seat design Alejandro Mesonero calls "metallic twist": "I asked the paint people to create a shade that appeared uniform and a bit retro from afar, but became slightly metallic and very modern close up”. The chemistry of the Seat 600 “BMS” (the name comes from the acronym of the Barcelona Motor Show, where it was exhibited last May, and celebrates the sixty years of the Spanish version of the Fiat utility…

Not many years ago, the Mazda designers tended to find their inspiration in nature: first a fish, then a bird, or an impetuous wave. Now that the password is Kodo – the soul of motion – they need new labels. Which is why the CX-5, an SUV launched in 2012 and now at its second generation, after a million and a half have been built, aims to deserve the title of “Car as art”. Its designers insist that they “want to take the quality of Kodo design to an artistic level”. How? “We have studied premium brands like BMW and Volvo which embody Bauhaus and Scandinavian design respectively,” explains Shinichi Isayama, the car’s chief designer: “We tried to emulate them, introducing a Japanese type of beauty, i.e. trying to simplify…

Learn at first hand what happens behind the curtain of discretion that veils a style centre; become part of the process of defining a design; actually help to create it from scratch together with the professionals. All this can constitute an incomparable entry point into the values that underpin a styling language. That’s why Mazda invited some journalists, each with their own specific idea, to experience the mechanisms that move a designer from conceptual hypothesis to rendering, during an extraordinary day of experimentation at the Frankfurt headquarters (one of the three, together with that of Irvine in California and Hiroshima in Japan, where the lines of new models are decided). Of course the car designed for Auto&Design by the present writer will not go any further, and nor will the…

How will we move around in 2704? Lexus’s answer is the Skyjet, created in partnership with film director Luc Besson and produced by EuropaCorp film studio. The little jet was conceived and designed to be the means of transport of the lead in the science fiction film "Valerian and the city of a Thousand Planets", released in cinemas in July. "We know that technology is constantly moving forward and how difficult it is to plan the future, but I assure you that no one in Lexus is lacking in imagination. The cars of the future will also be able to fly, but we know that one of the most important things is to keep their charm intact”, said Takeaki Kato, Chief Engineer of Lexus. The Besson team’s request of Ben…

A new way of perceiving the design of nautical interiors is emerging. This is inspired more and more by the idea of "home living" that directly involves architecture and design, expanding what was once only a functionalist, furnishing approach to the spaces, large or small, of a yacht. For example, the interior design of the first yacht from the recent series of SX88 crossovers by Sanlorenzo has benefited from the consultancy of architect Piero Lissoni who enhances the interior by thinking, in spatial terms, of an open space to be furnished with selected pieces of design, without adapting them to the spaces but arranging them freely as in a house. The idea, pursued by totally ‘flattening’ the bulkheads and fitting floor-to-ceiling windows, is to offer a uniquely seamless environment from…

To what extent might good aerodynamics affect the eco-sustainability of tomorrow’s cars? How would the cars that populate our urban and suburban areas change if their design had to meet the same criteria that underlie the design of racing cars or high performance supercars? An answer to these questions has been attempted by students from the eighth edition of the Master in Transportation and Automobile design of Milan Politecnico as part of the "Ecodesign – Aerodynamics for Sustainability" project. This was conceived and developed together with Volkswagen Group Design - for over five years partner of the Master course -and Dallara Automobiles, the Italian company leader in the production of racing cars, which with this first experience inaugurates its collaboration with the Milan Polytechnic course. A complex project whose protagonist…