car design thread

I can think of a bazillion grille textures, somehow a spiderweb isn't one of them

 

interesting article/interview with Chief Designer at Hot Wheels, Jun Imai:

Exclusive Interview: Hot Wheels Head of Design Jum Imai Shares Inside Look at Design Process | The News Wheel

 

Well then....
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cool historical photos of some Design Studios from the past

Step Into The Studio - Petrolicious
Step Into The Studio

When automotive styling studios began to prove their worth after the Second World War, every automaker tried to not only hire the best designers they could find, but also to keep future creations hidden from prying eyes.

These days, decades after the curtains have been lifted on numerous old cars and concepts, we’re now able to have a look into how automaker styling studios used to look.

Whether it’s in scale form or with full-sized mockups, the work done in these studios looks attractive even today, and it’s impossible to not be drawn into these photos. The suits, the smoking, the sketches, and the clay models are a captivating reminder of how much work goes into the designs that ended up being produced.

If you’d like to learn more about the people behind some of these vehicles, take a look at our Designer’s Series, featuring

Gordon Buehrig
Larry Shinoda
Ercole Spada
Paul Bracq
Giovanni Michelotti
Virgil Exner
Giorgetto Giugiaro
Flaminio Bertoni
Sergio Pininfarina
Battista Pininfarina
Harley Earl

 

cool,thanks!

 

Even though currently they are the 'competition' for my current employer, CCS, I am an alumnus, and this described the experience quite well. From Los Angeles Magazine.

Why ArtCenter’s Auto Design Program Is One of the Most Influential on the Planet
The modern Mini, the original Ford Taurus, and the Ferrari F430 are just a few of the iconic cars styled by the program’s talent

May 3, 2016 Preston Lerner Business, Education, Transportation 0 Comments

It’s a few minutes before midnight on the first Sunday in December, and Room 216 at ArtCenter College of Design is a bright workshop full of manic energy and the acrid odor of drying paint. Clipped conversations in English, French, Italian, Korean, and Mandarin float above a rising undercurrent of tension. Several eighth-term seniors wearing respirators hustle back and forth from nearby paint booths. Others, helped by conscripted friends and relatives, feverishly sand, stripe, and assemble the scale models that represent not only their visions of the automotive future but also their hopes for a toehold in the car design industry.

These aren’t flimsy plastic replicas built from kits. Sculpted out of clay or milled from foam, the models are larger than microwave ovens, and they’re sprayed with paint so lustrous that they still appear to be wet. They’re the product of three months of painstaking effort, and they represent the final step each of the school’s transportation design majors must take before graduating next week. There was a similar scramble for other seniors in April.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Giancarlo Foschetti says of the see-through lattice bodywork he’s fashioned for a Mercedes-Benz supercar. He exudes an easygoing vibe that’s at odds with his imposing six-foot-six-inch frame, black beard, and visible weariness. “I just didn’t want to be a stage monkey who does what he’s told and ends up with the same thing as everybody else. I wanted to do what I wanted to do and add something of my own. That’s what the car companies are looking for. In a way, these models are a job application.”

ArtCenter houses what’s arguably the oldest and most influential transportation design program in the world. The school’s location in Pasadena is one reason almost every automaker has a design studio in Southern California, and you’d struggle to find a single manufacturer without a few alumni on staff. The split-window Corvette, the Boss 302 Mustang, the original Ford Taurus, the Audi TT, the BMW Z8, the modern Mini, the Lamborghini Murciélago, the Ferrari F430—all of these iconic cars were styled by ArtCenter talent.

But before students can land a job designing real cars, they must first survive the hell known as the senior presentation, when their work will be critiqued by working car designers in search of new blood. So for the past 14 weeks, 17 students have been sweating over the models and portfolios that serve as their senior theses. At this stage they’re virtually living under the glare of the fluorescent lights in Room 216. (Foschetti catnaps here on a couch he’s pulled into the studio.) “I have a huge checklist on my door at home so I know what I have to do every day when I leave, and I’m just right on schedule even though I’m really pushing it,” says Chris Yu-Jen Tsai, a slightly built native of Taiwan. “I can’t afford to get sick. I have cough medicine with me all the time.”

Tomorrow the students will rehearse their presentations, then perform them for an audience of professional designers the day after that. ArtCenter students are accustomed to thrashing to meet implausible deadlines; Tsai likens his first semester to a boot camp that weeds out all but the most committed newcomers. Now, though, the stakes are higher. “We need to make an impact in the ten minutes we get with the designers,” Thomas Belhacene says. “If you do, it’s almost like they don’t even need to see the rest of your portfolio.”

Intense and driven, the French-born Belhacene has dreamed of designing cars since he was ten. For his senior thesis he’s built a series of fanatically detailed models, including a rally car with an exoskeleton sheathed in mesh fabric. “It’s like a rib cage protecting the major organs,” he explains. While he uses a carpenter’s level to hang sketches and renderings on a corkboard partition, his classmates refine fender lines, apply decals, and rethink business cards. “Even though they say the small things don’t matter,” Josh Tang says, “everything matters.”

The senior presentations of Giancarlo Foschetti (top) and Thomas Belhacene (above) are shown in their best light during ArtCenter’s Industry Night, during which professionals assess the handiwork of students

The senior presentations of Giancarlo Foschetti (top) and Thomas Belhacene (above) are shown in their best light during ArtCenter’s Industry Night, during which professionals assess the handiwork of students
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON CASAREZ
Los Angeles has long been renowned for fresh takes on automotive styling, be it for race cars, hot rods, movie fantasies, futuristic concept cars, or customs conceived by local luminaries such as George Barris and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. As Stewart Reed, chair of the ArtCenter transportation design department, puts it, “You can’t teach a passion for cars, but the environment out here fuels it. You can’t imagine the Meyers Manx dune buggy being designed in Minnesota, can you?”

During the 1920s, movie stars and business tycoons frequented local coachbuilders, who offered custom bodywork for exotic Duesenbergs, Packards, and Pierce-Arrows. The most celebrated shop was the Walter M. Murphy Company in Pasadena, but the most successful stylist was a flamboyant Hollywood native named Harley Earl, who would later be immortalized as the father of the tail fin. In 1927, he founded an industrial design department at General Motors called the Art & Colour Section. This evolved into GM Styling and established the template for the modern automotive design studio.

In 1930, advertising executive Edward “Tink” Adams was inspired to open what was then known as the ArtCenter School, located in downtown Los Angeles, which employed working professionals to teach advertising, illustration, photography, and industrial design. In 1948, he hired Strother MacMinn to lead the first classes in transportation design. MacMinn was the perfect choice to invent a new academic discipline. Besides being an inspirational educator with encyclopedic knowledge of automotive styling, MacMinn was a product of Southern California who had apprenticed at Walter M. Murphy before working for Earl at GM Styling.

The transportation design department prospered under MacMinn’s Yoda-like tutelage, and its influence in the industry flourished after ArtCenter moved in the 1970s to a cubist glass-and-steel building sited dramatically on a hillside overlooking the Rose Bowl. In 1973, Toyota became the first automaker to set up a design studio in the region. (The founder was an ArtCenter grad, and MacMinn was a major player.) Nissan and Chrysler followed, and the race was on. These days it’s easier to name the manufacturers without satellite studios than to list all the ones that have them.

Most of these studios focus on advanced design, creating concept cars displayed at auto shows and formulating the styling cues that a company will use for a decade or so to come. But the design outposts are also responsible for some cars that go directly into production. The original Mazda Miata was designed in Southern California—by an ArtCenter grad. So was the New Beetle. And studios continue to open here, with Tesla and possibly Genesis—the new high-line Hyundai brand—being the latest arrivals.

Inevitably ArtCenter has changed with the times. When aspiring car designer Peter Brock visited the school in the mid-1950s to ask about applying, he was told that he had to submit samples of his work. So he hurried back to his car, furiously sketched hot rods in a three-ring binder for several hours, and returned with an instant portfolio. “Will this do?” he asked. It did, and he later designed the Cobra Daytona Coupe, one of the most memorable shapes in motorsports history.

Although the ability to draw remains a sine qua non of car design, the curriculum at ArtCenter has become broader and more technical, embracing everything from power train technology and vehicle architecture to human factors analysis and creating a brand image. So while Tsai shows off an exquisite model of a Mazda luxury sedan circa 2025—“This is an exploration of what Japanese premium could be,” he says—his presentation is supported by countless “ideation” sketches, “package” drawings showing how passengers would fit inside, and dramatic renderings that look like movie storyboards.

It’s now Tuesday afternoon. In an hour a contingent of industry pros will arrive at ArtCenter to critique the students’ work. (A second group is expected in two days, on Industry Night, when students throughout the school present their products to professionals.) Foschetti comes back from a desperate last-minute session in a paint booth. “I was freaking out. Paint was literally dripping off my model,” he says. There’s a long pause. “Sorry if I’m not making any sense. I haven’t slept more than two or three hours a night in a week.” He gazes at one of his models with a quizzical look. “My steering wheel is missing,” he says, too exhausted to betray any shock. “That’s nice.”

Room 216 undergoes a magical transformation as tools, supplies, worktables, garbage cans, and extraneous cartons are dragged into a hallway. When Reed, the department chair, walks in, the aisles are clear; the exhibits, pristine. With him are eight working designers, including a pair of industry legends—2005 Ford GT supercar designer Camilo Pardo and Luc Donckerwolke, the former chief of the Lamborghini and Bentley design offices.

Tisha Johnson feels something like déjà vu as she steps inside. “The smell of the paint and the Bondo gave me a sense memory of exhaustion and stress and not eating right,” she says. Sixteen years ago she was an eighth-term student laboring right up until the deadline for her senior project. Today she oversees all design work at Volvo’s studio in Camarillo. “We’re doubling our numbers [of designers],” she says, “so I’m here scouting.”

Students and visitors move en masse from display to display. At each stop a student briefly summarizes his or her projects, then listens as the pros offer on-the-spot critiques of remarkable breadth and savvy. Much of the feedback is packed with designspeak, but most of the comments are generous, and even when they’re critical, the designers are upbeat. The formal review lasts all afternoon. Then designers browse through the room, peering more closely at models and portfolios and chatting one-on-one with students. Pardo examines the foam supercar studies made by Italian Marcello Raeli while Johnson searches for interior designs. “It’s always good to see what kind of talent is out there,” says Doncker-wolke.

Foschetti is pleased with the appraisals he received. But despite downing a Rockstar, a Red Bull, and two espressos, he’s in no condition to celebrate. “At this point all I want to do is sleep,” he says. Thursday is Industry Night, and he may be pulling another all-nighter tomorrow.

 

I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was many, many yrs ago.
All nighters, then a trip to get a Tommy Burger! Or fries at Tiny Nailer's on Western.
Pure heaven.

What's interesting, is that now that i'm teaching, the students are still doing the same. Sleeping on the floor, all nighters, no sleep for days. Everything changes & nothing changes

 

nice!

 

Designing the new Continental from Pursuitist:
Designing The New Lincoln Continental: An Inside Look - Pursuitist



The Lincoln Motor Company is hoping to make a comeback. Once the ride of choice for prime ministers and presidents, movie stars and captains of industry, from the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s it’s lineup had gone from elegant to ordinary, their cars nothing more than poorly disguised Fords with a little leather added to the interior.

A few years ago executives at Ford set out to change that, setting up an independent team for Lincoln vehicle design, development, sales and marketing. The team is led by Kumar Galhotra in a newly created roll of President of the Lincoln Motor Company. Mr. Galhotra is an engineer by trade who had previously been VP of engineering for all of Ford and led product development for the Asia Pacific region. Thus he brings a wealth of understanding of the all-important China market to the company at this pivotal point in its history. In place since 2014, he’s overseen the launch of their two latest products, the MKC and MKX crossovers, and has led the charge on the most critical vehicle to Lincoln’s resurgence, the all new Continental.

With the Continental just a few short months away from hitting the road, I’ve spent the past few weeks interviewing Mr. Galhotra, Lincoln Design Director David Woodhouse and other key members of the design and engineering teams to better understand the thought process behind the new Continental and get a first-hand account of the details they feel will set the Continental apart in a crowded full-size luxury sedan market.



Interestingly, when the project to create a new luxury sedan was initiated, it wasn’t decided that the Continental name would even be attached to the final product. Mr. Galhotra said, “We needed a large, premium sedan in our line-up so we started exploring.” After seeing the first round of designs and not being happy with the overall direction, he told me “Names are powerful. So I told the team, ‘You know you’re designing the new Continental’ and then everything changed.” The key in that statement was “new Continental.” Mr. Galhotra was emphatic that they weren’t to create a retro car, but one that translated the spirit and promise of the original into modern times. “We have an awesome responsibility of living up to that iconic name.”

David Woodhouse felt the responsibility as well. “When we learned we were designing the new Continental, it reset the expectations for the project.” he said. “You can imagine there were literally thousands of ideas, the key was to find a look that was appropriate to the nameplate, appropriate to the contemporary luxury landscape and befitting the brand today. We didn’t want anything too classical or retrospective. It was all about finding just the right sensibilities of the theme.”



He went on to say, “We’re one of the few marques in the world that has not just one, but three iconic cars attached to that name. We have this greatness in our past that we have to get back to. I want to see us have design icons in the future, and this car is putting us on that road.”

When I asked about the design process, he talked about understanding the desired experience that owners want to have and then designing the features around that. “We’re all about quiet luxury.” Woodhouse explained, “A great example is the electronic door handle and latch. This is the first touch point with the customer and it is very special, very unique not just by its position, but in what it enables in the design, the cleanliness of the design. The door’s bereft of any pocketing and handles and complication. But also that experience of the actual interaction with the machine. The soft closure, the soft cinch, the effort that’s involved are so low, you have to retrain yourself in a good way. All you’re doing is presenting the door to the latch. You don’t have to throw it closed. That epitomizes the quietness, the effortlessness, the beauty that we’re trying to communicate.”



The other examples he focused on were the perfect position seats, which adjust thirty ways, and even have independent thigh supports for each leg. He also talked about the attention to detail, right down to the start up screen on the dash that “provides a little bit of that flamboyance, that glamor of Hollywood. I wanted it to sparkle that glitter dust that becomes the name. It’s a small thing, but I hope it brings owners a smile everyday. We have another 20 things like that, but it shows the kind of attention the team has paid to deliver the experience and feeling for the customer.”

This theme was echoed by Lincoln Interior Design Chief, Soo Kang. “Our goal was to create a serene interior environment that’s clean, clever and creative. We know our customers are very busy, so we wanted to simplify everything allowing them to enjoy elegance and luxury.” This shows in the smooth flowing surfaces on the interior as well as the choice of materials, especially in the Black Label trim. It’s also reflected in the way technology is presented. “We want the technology to be there to deliver on the experience.” Kang said. “It supports the product and life experience people expect from a Continental.” You see that in the simplified instrument panel and improved interfaces for all the controls.



When it comes to handling and performance, the words that came up throughout the conversation were “poise and grace.” The idea is not to create a performance car, but a car with ample performance. The 400 horsepower twin-turbo V6 should offer plenty of power and with a choice of either front or all-wheel drive, Lincoln hopes to offer a calm, confident driving experience.

For a final word I’ll turn back to Mr. Galhotra who summed Continental up this way. “We all know how hectic life is and we want to provide a sanctuary. A place to unwind. We’re privileged that they are spending their time with us and we want to reward them for that.”

 

Paolo Martin, designer of the Modulo:

Video: Paolo Martin on his Life and Career | Form Trends

 

yes he did, that's when the Italian Carrozzeria had their act together.

 

Great question.
Legend has it that when the Chaparrals were being developed at GM, Mr. Shinoda did indeed design that particular wheel. Allegedly, yrs later BBS copied the design to very close to the 'original'.
The Chaparral 2A in 1965 was the 1st use of that design IIRC.
I never had this story confirmed 100%, but several designers reiterated the story, so I thought there must be some validity to the claim. If you look at the Chaparral wheels from the '60s - '70's that particular design is very distinctive. BBS came along later. Copy? Your guess

From Wikipedia:
In 1972 BBS pioneered the development of a three-piece racing wheel, a revolution in motorsport design.[2] Most recently BBS has engineered the Air Inside Technology (AIT) where hollow chambers are created within the wheel structure to compensate for the small air volume in modern ultra-low-profile tyres, reduce unsprung weight, improve handling dynamics, and increase fuel efficiency without sacrificing strength and rigidity. This innovation earned BBS Kraftfahrzeugtechnik the Automechanika Innovation Award 2006 in the tuning segment.[4] BBS entered into a technical cooperation agreement in 1990 with ASA, a Korean company that was starting wheel production.[5]
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1973 video of inside Ford Motor Co Design and how safety regulations were being dealt with. Those first yrs trying to adapt to the then new bumper standards created some horrific design solutions, IMO. The industry was trying to figure out how to do crashworthy bumpers that didn't look like railroad ties.
The '70's apparel is also eyeopening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2v8-nXmEPM