Table of contents for No. 197 in AUTO & DESIGN

Roberto Giolito has been appointed head of Design EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) for Fiat Chrysler. His new post (effective 1 October) sees him head of the Turin Style Centre and of all activities for the EMEA area, a region currently headed by Alfredo Altavilla, Chief Operating Officer, who has recently taken over from Giovanni Coda. Like Ralph Gilles, head of Chrysler design, Giolito answers to Lorenzo Ramaciotti, coordinator of the group’s whole Design function. His deputy since 2011, Giolito has thus far led the Fiat and Abarth brands of which he retains the interim. Responsibility for the Fiat brand goes to Andreas Wuppinger, former head of the brand’s exterior design. The positions of Marco Tencone and Peter Jansen remain unchanged. “It is important for us to guarantee the continuity…

Externally, the Golf 7 maintains an evident continuity with the image of its predecessors, and this has always been one of the strengths of the model. The shape is sleeker, however, visually expressing the substantial work done to lighten the car (by up to 100 Kg). This has also been achieved by moving the cab further back, which is a typical solution of more premium segments. The face has a friendly look, the sideon view reveals an all-new roofline terminating in the model’s trademark chunky C-pillars, while the tailgate is traversed across the middle by a crease that links up with the character line in the flank. On board you immediately notice the roomier cabin, which is a result of a length, wheelbase and width increased respectively by 56, 59…

Non-specialist manufacturers are regularly faced with the question of the world car. But imagining a vehicle capable of selling well in all continents is no easy task. Not without a touch of elegance, PSA Peugeot Citroën have shouldered this burden in the shape of a new programme destined to conquer the world. One of the first manufacturers that attempted to create a world car was Chrysler. In November 1977 it launched the Simca Horizon in Europe and the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon on the other side of the pond. (At the time the three brands were part of the same group). A few years later Ford tried its luck on the same playing field with the Escort, presented in September 1980. The car was produced with a similar shape…

Redesigning an iconic car always places a heavy burden of responsibility on the designers assigned to the task. “If you push the design too far, there’s a risk of producing a generic result and watering down the heritage of the model, but if you don’t push far ahead enough, you become retrospective and create something that is already dated. As always, it’s that balance that’s fundamental” says Gerry McGovern on the genesis of the new Range Rover, the latest creation of the Land Rover design centre he has headed since 2006. This was indeed a challenging job: designing the mother of all sports utilities, a model born over forty years ago, before anyone had ever thought of crossing limousine luxury with off-road capability. And seeing the Range Rover unveiled at…

Gordon Wagener, Daimler’s head of design, says it all in just a few words. “The Forstars illustrates Smart’s all-new future design language which will be quite different from today’s,” is how he describes the fourth of a series of recent design concepts that preview further developments in Daimler’s small car brand. But this latest attempt is clearly more than a new front end with rectangular headlamps and perforated grille. “The car’s concept will express more selfesteem, with a broader footprint resulting from a wider track. The new style no longer features sharp corners, just round, emotional shapes. But do not call it organic. The design is clear-cut and has a different expression compared to anything that has come before. The Smart is a premium brand and it has to evolve…

For some it is a workshop on car design, for others an unmissable chance to see design icons close up, for others again it is more like a get-together among friends. The Autostyle International Design Competition, the annual competition created, promoted and passionately cultivated over the years by Roberto Artioli, Berman CEO, together with Auto&Design editor Fulvio Cinti, with the enthusiastic backing of Iveco Suzzara, Milan Politecnico (Mantova section) and the University of Florence and under the patronage of the Chamber of Commerce of Mantova and the Province of Mantova, is all this. Among the novelties featuring in the recent ninth edition was the enchanting Villa di Bagno location, eighteenth century residence surrounded by a magnificent garden with greenhouses and lawns that took over from the equally splendid monastic complex…

The latest generation Malibu, a 4.85 metre long three-box sedan at the top of Chevrolet’s European range and with a name evocative of the Californian coastline, makes its debut in the European D segment. This, the latest iteration of a historic model originally launched in 1964 which has sold 9.6 million units to date, has now become a global car: the versions sold in the Old Continent are built in Korea (there are also plants in the US and China) to precise specifications. With its generous dimensions and an individual style with American cues, the Malibu has a strong road presence. The roofline is reminiscent of the four-door coupé formula while the front has a distinct Chevrolet character, with the large, chrome-framed split grille and the raised bonnet. The designers…

The story of the iconic Golf seems to have no end in sight. The first lines of chapter seven – that of the Golf 7 which, to some extent, is Wolfsburg’s defiant gesture in the face of the recession afflicting the Europe auto industry – are still fresh on the page, and yet some at Volkswagen’s design centre are already thinking about a theme for the eighth chapter and – perhaps - even for the ninth. While all stories must eventually come to an end, after 38 years and over 29 million units sold all over the world it’s impossible to deny that the Golf has rightfully earned a place among the handful of cars that have written the history of the automobile. And yet as soon as the Golf…

The Golf 6 had a complicated birth. When Walter de Silva was appointed design director for the Volkswagen group, the design of the Golf 6 had already been defined by his predecessor Murat Günak. VW’s management, however, was not convinced by the design. New group president Martin Winterkorn, who succeeded Bernd Pischetsrieder, called for major plastic surgery to give the DNA consolidated by five previous generations back to the jewel in Wolfsburg’s crown. Giorgetto Giugiaro, who was still not part of the VW group and who had conducted a study for the car on behalf of Günak, which was then dropped, was also called in as a consultant: “My opinions were the same as De Silva’s, and there were lots of things about the model presented I didn’t agree with.…

The question Auto & Design posed was simple: is “platform strategy” a meaningless buzzword or a real basis for success in the automobile industry. I have an answer, but before giving it to you, let me discuss the history of the idea. It’s not new, having been used, in one way or another, for well over a hundred years. There are a number of widely-held ideas popularly expressed in just a few words: “Seeing is believing,” “the perception is the reality,” and “out of sight, out of mind.” All of them, although they are common elements of folk wisdom, also pertain very precisely to the automobile industry, and they really ought to be much more widely considered. Once production of automobiles ceased to be a craftsman’s business and industrial processes…

The Concept Active Tourer presented by BMW at Paris is strategically important for a number of different reasons: as well as prefiguring a new model due to join the range in the near future, it also introduces the brand’s first ever front wheel drive platform (UKL), which will also be used to underpin the next generations of the 1 Series and Mini (project F56, scheduled for launch in a year). “Making a car that has no precedent in the brand is always very exciting” says BMW group design director BMW Adrian van Hooydonk, referring to both the front wheel drive layout and the ‘compact multispace’ genre explored by the Active Tourer. “It was important for us that a true BMW came out of this project, irrespective of where the drive…

“This is a symbolic car for us, and my hope is that it succeeds in seducing the public and making it fall in love with the Renault brand again.” Laurens van den Acker, the inspired Dutch designer who came to Renault three years ago from Mazda to take over the reins from Patrick le Quément, looks at the fourth generation with an air of pride. This is the first production model to fully embody Renault’s new design language, and it has also managed to keep the promise to carry the style and emotion of the concept over into the car sold to the public. From the front view in particular, with the more visible Renault badge against a black background that neatly links the headlights, but also in the lines…

Almost 30 years since its birth, the Panda 4x4 is still the one and only off-roader in the A-segment. Originally launched in 1983, the 4x4 variant returned in 2004 with the second generation Panda, and a third iteration, based on the new Panda introduced this year, is about to hit the market now. “It’s not just a version”, Lorenzo Ramaciotti, design vice president of the entire Fiat Chrysler group, is keen to point out, “but a car that plays a key role in further defining the global image of the Panda”. It’s a multipurpose Swiss army knife, with a double-sided character that goes beyond the dimension of a city car.” In light of the huge success of the previous generations, that a 4x4 would be included in the new series…

The transition from one Golf to the next must take the most sensible path possible. How do you capitalise on the legacy of a car that took the world’s markets by storm without debasing it? The answer from Herbert Schäfer, head of VW-Design since 1972 and the man responsible for steering its rapid development, followed the route with the least possible risk. “The new Golf – he explained during its presentation in 1983 – has been made to reassure the public and maintain the ground gained by the previous version.” His words reflect the increasing influence of VW’s marketing division, and its unwillingness to take blind leaps of faith. The direction followed for the new model trod a line between the lure of bold innovation and the safe choice of…

According to Walter de Silva “the two most sensational past generations were the Golf 1 and the Golf 4”. He says that Hartmut Warkuss, Volkswagen design director in the late 1990s, “succeeded in achieving the same formal purity of the Golf 1 while defining a completely new order for its styling cues, taking the model to the next evolutionary step with respect to the Giugiaro original”. In short, the Golf 4 sums up the essence of the style of the model. “There are Golf 4s around today that look so fresh you’d think they had just come out of the factory. It’s a car we looked long and hard at when we defined the sixth generation and, in particular, the latest generation - the seventh.” Today, it’s easy to recognise…

The great expectations for this car are already clear in its name. Naming a Jaguar sports car ‘F-TYPE’ (all in capitals, mind you) means harking back to not only the motorsports glories of the C-Type and D-Type but also – and most significantly – to the success and iconic status of the legendary E-Type (written more modestly with a few lower case letters). It means, as emphasised by the design director for the Coventry-based brand Ian Callum, having a lot of faith in the new two-seater Jag. “It’s an excellent car and I believe that history will prove that it is not only on a par with the E-Type, but actually better with respect to its competition.” Its presentation at Paris was on the cards since the C-X16 concept was…

The impression of something energetically new transmitted by the looks of this car is reiterated in the cabin. The fourth generation Clio gives a huge personality welcome to its guests. In particular, the present integrated dashboard solution which “conceals” the technology has been revolutionised: once aboard, in fact, your eyes are captured by a kind of slim floating black lacquer tablet located in the centre which integrates navigator, radio, climatisation and – in a short time – the R-Link system to control on-board facilities and internet connection. Another distinguishing feature is the instrument panel with its two round dials linked by an elliptical one with a metallic finish that is borrowed by the air vents and the base of the gearshift. The sporty three-spoke steering wheel presents a generously diametered…

It just takes one test run round city streets on board the MiAmore – the white and orange version of the Mia classic, the special limited edition presented recently at the Paris Motor Show – to realise how much such an apparently tiny car can offer in terms of practical solutions and space. The story of the Mia-Electric began in 2009 when Edwin Kohl, present company Chairman, realised the potential of the project created by the French company Heuliez – the small electric Friendly car – took it over and assigned the restyling work to Murat Günak, co-founder and brand director for Mia. “We observed the everyday behaviour of people in the street, the way they move, how they get into and out of cars”, says Murat Günak, “and we…

The top brass at Mercedes-Benz are calling it the “station wagon of the future”. In effect the formula proposed by the new CLS Shooting Brake shows the traditional image of the family car in a new light, attaching it emotively to a number of well-defined periods of motoring history, particularly the vehicles used by well-heeled British hunting enthusiasts. In the beginning this function was performed by carriages mounting light, versatile outfits to carry all the necessary; then came cars, often coupés, modified for the same purpose with roomy luggage compartments and tailgate. The manufacturers also came up with their own ideas: the Reliant Scimitar estate, the Aston Martin DB5 shooting brake and the Volvo P1 ES come to mind. The new CLS Shooting Brake goes down this road in a…

Success is contagious. The third generation Golf, launched in 1991 and sold until 1997, continued the unstoppable charge to market domination of the first two versions. 4.96 million examples of the Golf 3 found owners, and during its tenure, in 1994, Golf sales hit the 15 million mark. While, just as the Golf 2 was, this also had to be a chip off the old block, the third generation introduced a number of changes attenuating the original rigour to suit the 1990s taste for softer-edged cars, with a formal language based on clean, less angular surfaces. Meddling with the “Golf spirit” was of course out of the question, but Volkswagen design chief Herbert Schäfer also knew that “from a styling point of view, we had to break away from the…

The fifth generation, built from 2003 to 2008, added another 3.27 million to the number of Golfs sold in this remarkable success story. The Golf 5 has dual parentage: the project began under Hartmut Warkuss when he was still head of Volkswagen design, and its final stages were completed under former Audi design chief Peter Schreyer, when he took over from Warkuss. “It’s more dynamic, more wedgeshaped, with a more sloped bonnet and a shoulder that just brushes under the C-pillar” explains Marc Lichte, who designed the car and would go on to be team leader for the Golf 6. “There was perhaps”, says Walter de Silva, “some divergence in proportions in the Golf 5, but it remained nonetheless a recognisable expression of the model and the brand”. Right from…