car design thread

There is no such fanciness in the Dacia Hipster concept, revealed outside of Paris as an antidote to the SUV epidemic. CDN’s Lucy Abbott was on the ground and caught up with the design team behind Europe’s answer to the Kei car. Although it is a concept for now, it is running and driving, and “is serious, it’s not a toy” according to design boss David Durand.
From Cardesignnews.

 

Very cool. "Product designy"

 

And in other news;
EyesOn Design Announces 2026 Lifetime Design Achievement Award Honoree

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Top car designers select Gorden Wagener for the 2026 EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award

A group of the world’s top automotive designers has selected Gorden Wagener as the winner of the 2026 EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award for his outstanding career in vehicle design. The award is unique as the recipient is chosen exclusively by previous winners of the award.



Wagener is the chief design officer for Mercedes-Benz Group AG. Before joining Mercedes-Benz in 1997, he worked as an exterior designer at Volkswagen, Mazda, and General Motors.



Born in Essen, Germany in 1968, he studied industrial design at the University of Duisberg-Essen after which he focused his studies on transportation design at the Royal College of Art in London. Joining Mercedes-Benz in 1997, he has headed the global design division of the company and all its brands since 2008 and has been the company’s chief design officer since 2016.



Wagener has said his goal is to build the most desirable cars in the world, using a design philosophy of “Sensual Purity,” which defines the specific styles of the different Mercedes-Benz brands. With each, he aims to create new visions of iconicity while satisfying a desire for beauty and the extraordinary.


“I think Mercedes is one of the most challenging brands to design for,” Wagener has told Forbes, “because you have to respect the brand’s history while looking to the future.”

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“We are excited to celebrate Mr. Gorden Wagener as the 2026 EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award recipient," says EyesOn Design Chief Judge Glen Durmisevich. "Mr. Wagener has energized Mercedes-Benz products with beauty, style and purity of design while retaining the brand’s recognition. He was chosen by the past recipients of the award, making this one of the highest forms of peer recognition within the automotive design community.”



Previous winners of the Lifetime Design Achievement Award include Chris Bangle, Nuncio Bertone, Peter Brock, Ian Callum, Wayne Cherry, Walter de’Silva, Willie G. Davidson, Leonardo Fioravanti, Tom Gale, Ralph Gilles, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Chuck Jordan, Robert Lutz, Syd Mead, Gordon Murray, Shiro Nakamura, Patrick le Quement, Sergio Pininfarina, Stewart Reed, Peter Schreyer, Jack Telnack and Ed Welburn.

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Wagener will receive the 2026 Lifetime Design Achievement Award at a black-tie event at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club on June 19, 2026, as part of the weeklong series of EyesOn Design activities. These culminate in EyesOn Design at Ford House, the annual automotive design show held every Father’s Day on the lakefront grounds of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan.



EyesOn Design is unique among auto shows in celebrating vehicle design, not rarity, restoration, or celebrity ownership.



Other auto-related DIO events include the EyesOn Design Awards at the Detroit Auto Show, which will be held January 14, 2026, honoring exemplary design among new concept and production vehicles.

 

Coolest. Car. Ever.

 

Full disclosure: I was referring to the Stratos Zero!

 

Lamborghini Manefesto is indeed a thing:
Lamborghini Manifesto Concept
Conceived as a "sculpture on four wheels", the Manifesto concept distils Lamborghini design into a philosophy of radical purity and powerful presence. Every surface, angle and proportion is sculpted to evoke immediate emotion, merging the essential with the iconic. Manifesto is a declaration of intent, created to guide the language of the brand in the years ahead. Just as the Terzo Millennio, presented in 2017, went on to inspire elements of the Revuelto and Temerario, Manifesto now takes on the role of the new reference point for future Lamborghini models.

Its details, from the Y-shaped lights to the hexagonal patterns, reaffirm the marque's DNA while introducing innovations that will influence tomorrow's cars. More than visual recognition, it seeks to create lasting impact, transforming each design into an emotional statement and a cultural symbol.

"Manifesto is fantasy and inspiration made tangible," says Mitja Borkert, Design Director of Automobili Lamborghini since 2016. "It shows how we connect surfaces, how we create purism, how we project our DNA forward. It is not about an engine or technology, but about imagination - about keeping the Lamborghini dream alive."

Twenty years after its foundation, Centro Stile Lamborghini is more than a design studio. It is a laboratory of imagination, a melting pot of cultures and disciplines, and the guardian of a dream that has captivated generations. With Manifesto as its latest expression, and with a team driven by curiosity and vision, its role is clear: to shape the Lamborghini of tomorrow while remaining unmistakably Lamborghini.
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https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68879699/lamborghini-manifesto-concept-revealed/

 

Special design projects at Ferrari:

 

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Ever present change, Never a Dull Moment, Ch.23

https://driventowrite.com/2025/10/14/never-a-dull-moment-john-manoogian-ii-gm-design-part-23/#comments


Driven to Write
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Never A Dull Moment — Part 23
Brand Management and time for a massive change.

1996 concept. Source GM Design
GM had undergone enormous changes since I had joined in the mid 1970’s. Downsizing, Government regulations, reorganizations, etc. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. We were about to experience a titanic shift in how we approached designing cars and how the corporation would be managed. In 1992 the corporation decided to replace the Chairman, Bob Stempel and the President, Lloyd Reuss at the same time. Calling that a bold move would be a gross understatement.

My MBA education didn’t prepare me for the shift that would be taking place to transform General Motors from top to bottom. A coup of sorts was one thing, but GM was redefining its whole approach to product development and design.In addition to all this, Chuck Jordan was nearing retirement, and this would be transformational. Mr. Jordan was the last link to Harley Earl and the origin of the car design profession. Earl, Rybicki, Mitchell and Jordan had built GM Design into a pre-eminent design organization globally. Period.

GM’s board hired John Smale, former Procter & Gamble CEO as the new GM Chairman and installed John Smith, fresh off an Opel assignment as CEO. Smale was famous for his Brand Management philosophy that had proved successful at selling P&G’s household products like soap and disposable consumer goods, and had no real experience with cars as products. Smale would go on to hire Ron Zarella, from Bausch & Lomb, another non car person.

There were a multitude of reasons for the Board’s decisions, but one of the most serious was the belief that GM lacked rigorous analysis and business philosophy in its product development process. Could “cookie sellers” transform an automotive giant? We were about to find out.

Grand Am 1993 Concept. Source GM Design
Coinciding with all this change, Chuck Jordan’s departure created a pivotal moment for the design staff. Our studio was completely full, wall to wall with the Grand Prix and Grand Am projects, along with several minor facelifts needing attention. The early ‘90s financial predicament had delayed the Grand Prix repeatedly, and it would slip from a ’94 to a ’96 program, even though we had the design locked in long before, with the cover of Automobile magazine tipping our hand early on.

The announcement of the new VP Design, came late in 1992, with Wayne Cherry, of Opel/Vauxhall fame, being named as Jordan’s successor. Jerry Palmer was named the Director of Design or Wayne Cherry’s assistant. Jerry was, to say the least, disappointed, but he made it clear he would support Wayne.

1994 Grand Prix showcar. Source GM Design
Wayne Cherry believed Design’s entire culture needed changing, along with a complete overhaul of the design process. And that included everything. The existing Studio Chiefs, myself included were told we had to reapply for our positions and our titles were to be Design Directors rather than Chief Designers. The Brand studios, Pontiac, Chevrolet, etc. were to be disbanded and realigned as Platform Studios so that vehicles sharing a platform would also share the same studio space.

Interiors and Exteriors would now share the same spaces, collocating Interior and Exterior teams. Where the previous organizational structure of Divisional Studios created and fostered a ‘family’ structure, the new organization would bring designers, sculptors and engineers together solely for the duration of the project much like the film industry operated. When the project was finished, the team would be reassigned to another project.

My belief was the new structure would sacrifice the ‘tribal knowledge’ of having an assignment to a specific brand in favor of a ‘hired gun’ approach. Knowing what the heart and soul of a Chevrolet or a Buick was, was no longer considered an asset.



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Source: GM Design
The new era of Brand Management would prove to be all-consuming. Rather than the importance of a Division, i.e., Cadillac, Pontiac, etc., the focus would now shift to the individual vehicle models. Each vehicle would have their own ‘Brand Manager’, who was typically hired from the packaged goods industry with little to no vehicle background. Selling cars should be no different than any other products, right? Not.


This was a completely different way of designing cars. Each platform team developed Brand Character cues for the respective brands with the key elements as attributes defining the brand. Five spoke wheels for Chevrolets, vertical taillamps for Cadillacs, etc. A cookbook recipe for design. In addition, consumer clinics (focus groups) would have much more say in the outcome of a given design. A Design Director’s salary would now be partially conditional on clinic results.

There is a phrase for this sort of design process: “Design by Committee”. Everyproduct would be analysed, and scrutinized, and re-analysed. Data was considered all-important. To many of us, it seemed the data had become more important than the designs themselves, and I could just hear Bill Mitchell’s voice in the back of my head. It wasn’t positive.



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1986 concept. Source GM Design
And yet everyone embraced the changes and tried hard to execute and get the designs right. The current clay car ‘in the rail’ was THE most important thing. Always. Everyone at Design was there because of their passion for design. No one lost sight of just how important design was and we weren’t about to throw in the towel and quit just yet. Design was too important. The legacy of Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell still loomed large.


The Brand Management experiment would evolve and ultimately lead to some questionable results by the end of the ‘90’s. The most visible would ultimately be the Brand Management poster child, the 2001 Pontiac Aztek. That whole program should be a Harvard Business School case study in what NOT to do. It met all the consumer acceptance criteria, met all the brand requirements and yet the vehicle never lived up to it’s potential.

In some ways, it was the beginning of the end for the Pontiac brand. While I didn’t work on that program, I watched in horror from the adjacent studio. So much talent wasted.

During this slide into chaos, we were about to launch the ’96 Grand Prix at the January 1995, Detroit Auto Show. The Wide Track Pontiac was finally ready to debut and the excitement was palpable. Our Four-Door Coupe project would finally see the light of day for the public to pass judgement on.

 

Well, I wasn’t involved with any of those cars, but I did watch them unfold.