Table of contents for No. 256 in AUTO & DESIGN

“It has been clear to us for quite some time that the 7 Series should be electric.” There is no doubt on this for Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW Group design, who we met at Villa D’Este where the new flag-ship of the range was presented to the public at the historic Concorso d’Eleganza. “We have seen a growing demand for electric mobility by customers. Going through the pandemic everyone has rethought every aspect of their lives. But I believe - and we have been thinking this for quite some time - that they don’t just want an electric car, they want to be part of the new form of mobility, part of the future. They want a car that is different in appearance and perception when they drive…

It is no coincidence that Hyundai chose London to present the Ioniq 6, the second model in the Ioniq range, the Korean manufacturer’s electriconly brand. «This place is really inspiring for us creatives. It’s an incubator of trends», says Simon Loasby, Vice President, Head of Hyundai Style Group, who we meet in the British capital for the car’s presentation. Speaking of trends, «the Ioniq 6 follows the one aiming to maximise aerodynamic efficiency through a few lines and a pursuit of styling that is as pure as possible», continues Loasby, pointing to the Ioniq 6’s roof defined by a single line that starts at the first pillar and reaches the rear seamlessly. «This arched section was the starting point of an exciting project, developed in just 38 months with an…

What’s the image that comes to mind when you hear the word 'aerodynamics'? Probably the shot of a sleek sports car flashing by in an undetected but crucial search for the balance between drag and downforce. Half a century ago, in Grugliasco, near Turin, a similar spirit permeated the inauguration of a state-of-the-art facility for perfecting the flow of air over a car body, at the time the only one in Italy capable of accommodating full-size cars and one of only seven in the world. "Ever since the 1930s, in the world of the Lancia Aprilia and Cisitalia, Battista Farina had observed the intensity of the wind and its effect on nature, trees or roadside snow, and aimed to exploit its effect on moving vehicles”, says Kevin Rice, Pininfarina’s design…

Luxury products aren’t needed, they are desired. And desirability is one of the three founding pillars for the design of the new Range Rover, an expression of modern luxury according to Land Rover. The other two key concepts are integrity and purpose: they indicate how much modernist design culture and discipline on the part of the designers is behind such an admirable end result, that combines a strong identity with an extreme formal elegance. “Our design is modern but not minimalist. The first impression you get is of an elegant object: then you discover the level of extreme sophistication as you get closer,” says Gerry McGovern, Chief Creative Officer of Jaguar Land Rover. “By modern luxury we mean a clarity of design, without excessive ornamentations. It is not a matter…

Cupra UrbanRebel, act two. The debut of the production version is still three years away but the Spanish compact has already been heralded by two concept cars. The first, unveiled at the Munich Motor Show in 2021, showed a rather radical interpretation of a high-performance B-segment city car, while the second, unveiled in Spain at the Terramar circuit, has shed some of its more extreme features (including the huge rear wing) and boosted its height to be more like the production version. The kernel of the project has remained unchanged: to develop a city car with dynamic, fresh, highly sporty lines. “We wanted to concentrate all our DNA here, like a perfume that contains all the essence of a brand”, says Jorge Diez, head of Cupra design, emphasising how stimulating…

The compact sedan is dead. Or is it? The designers of the Citroën C4 X are trying to prove that statement false, with a fastback silhouette that seeks to elevate the typical three-box shape into something more lyrical and dynamic. “We know that limousines today are not products that excite our core customers anymore, and to bring something like this to the market is much more emotional, exciting, sexy,” Citroën’s design director, Pierre Leclercq, said in a recent interview at Stellantis’s design and technical center here in Velizy, outside of Paris. For Leclercq, who arrived at Citroën at the end of 2019 after stints at Kia, Great Wall Motors and BMW, among others, the C4 X project offered a chance at a clean sheet. It was part of the brand’s…

Group: ANTARCTICA - Name of the project: AURORA By: Nikkesh Arulprakash, Mohnad Elwan, Giacomo Lesma, Andrea C Lorenzin Benedito and Shrihari Sadagopan The worldwide beefing up of automotive design regulations, particularly as regards technology and safety, is putting designers increasingly in the position of skilled mediators capable of striking a compromise between vision and reality, idea and feasibility. The four projects developed by the students of the Master in Transportation and Automobile Design at Milan Polytechnic, led by Prof. Fausto Brevi, are part of this perspective. In contrast to the idea that the burgeoning of constraints curbs creativity and leads to vehicles looking more and more alike, the student teams developed highly differentiated proposals able to respond functionally and appropriately to forms of mobility that are increasingly variegated and efficient…

It’s easy to say “New Chapter”. It is another thing to give it a shape and, in order not to betray this innovative exercise, Koichi Suga has designed not one but three SUVs. At the head of Lexus design for four years, he has seen realised his new design philosophy, with which the Toyota group’s prestige brand moves away from the sedate image that accompanied it. He started with the NX, now in its second generation, continued with the RZ, the Japanese brand’s first fully electric SUV and, while waiting for new non-SUV models, concluded with the fifth series of the RX flagship. "We need to focus on a design that has its roots in the essence of function," says Suga. It is "Functional Beauty", the core around which the…

The famous architect Le Corbusier maintained that tradition derived from the unbroken chain of innovations. While accepting this thesis wholeheartedly, when reflecting on one of Ferrari’s most advanced tailor-made plans, it is easy to wonder, in a logic of reversal of assumptions, whether sometimes innovation does not instead derive from the chain of traditions. With a hint of irony, the doubt emerges when one observes that the TailorMade programme and its brilliant future often draw their content from the company’s history. «Our roots are so rich in grandeur known to all Ferraristi, that giving them the possibility of quoting them in “on-demand” set-ups seemed natural and consistent», confirms Andrea Bassi, Head of Personalization, recalling the beginning of the operation. Flavio Manzoni, who heads Ferrari’s entire Design department, nods and adds:…

The first generation ROEWE RX5 was launched in 2015 and was officially the world’s first internet car, utilising a connected OS system developed with Alibaba. This SUV, designed specifically for the Chinese market, quickly became the best-selling model for ROEWE helping the brand to build its reputation across the country. In 2019 SAIC Design’s advanced studio in London was set the brief to develop a new language for the Next Generation model, which was recently launched. Continuing the legacy and strengthening the models’ images as a symbol of modern China was a challenge. The UK design team, led by the Advanced Design Director, Carl Gotham, had to draw on their experiences and cultural knowledge of China, and its symbolism, whilst embracing wider design influences and trends. ROEWE is a brand…