car design thread

Correct, THIS was the '4 rendered farkle', I stand corrected.
I should know better

That separate rendered theme had been floating around for some time...
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Andrew, more on the Mini, cause I know it's one of your faves
Mini Vision Next 100 Concept Revealed - AutoConception.com

 

Great insights, Andrew. And I agree with your assessment of what's happening.
I think some of what's happening is the dreaded, 'I didn't do it, so it must not be any good' or NIH (not invented here) syndrome
It's a situation with any brand that has any history at all.
name your brand.....Ferrari, Lamborghini, BMW, MB, Audi, Cadillac, Rolls, Bentley, etc. etc.
A new guy comes in and says, well, that's the old design, now I'll givem' my design.
And you're spot on with the 911. Very 'old' design, continually updated........makes the owners happy........not on my consideration list
To me, the Mini lost the plot somewhere along the line. Too big, too fat. Nowhere near as cool as the original. But trendy nonetheless.

What you are pointing out is a constant conversation within the design studios around the globe.
How far do we go? How true to our brand heritage do we remain?
Do we walk away from our heritage, or do we remain anchored to it?
How far is too far? At what point do we no longer retain any cues from the past?
I'm confident Ferrari considers this with every project they do.
You can tell from the running commentary here on F Chat how customers feel when you walk away from the past.
Some embrace the change........others not so much.
But at the end of all the conversation, the goal is to sell cars and make the customers happy. No more.....no less.


http://www.cardesigntv.com/mini-vision-next-100-every-mini-is-my-mini/
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Dan Neil from today's WSJ really gets into the design of the new Fiat roadster. Can't say I disagree with his observations.
LIFE CARS RUMBLE SEAT
The Fiat 124 Spider: Now, That’s Not Italian
Too much influence from its Mazda collaborators has given the once legendary car an inauthentic feel
The 124 Spider is available with the highly recommended six-speed manual transmission as well as a superb six-speed automatic supplied by Aisin, with paddle shifters.
The new Fiat 124 Spider’s name recalls 1960s-era sport convertible designed by Tom Tjaarda, for Pininfarina in Turin, debuting first as a Turin show car. The design proved so durable, in form and function, the 124 Spider model was produced until the 1980s.
Note the imitative details on the new car, right, such as the angled graphical treatment of the taillamp, with a body-matching inset, suggesting the curves of the classic car’s rear wing. In fairness and by way of historical accuracy, the new car is actually a Spider, while the classic 124 Spider, a 2+2 convertible, was always misnamed.
While sharing vehicle architecture with the Mazda MX-5 Miata, and built in the same shed in Hiroshima, the Fiat 124 Spider departs meaningfully from its sister with 100% unique sheet metal and lighting instruments, as well as its own Italian-built turbocharged four cylinder, the 1.4L MultiAir, regulated here to produce 160/164 hp.
One visual landmark that claims attention is the windshield surround, which is a shared part with the Mazda, except that the Miata’s windshield surround is painted black, while Fiat offers a choice of three looks, including gunmetal gray. The Mazda’s eternally brilliant top is also duplicated in full.
Everything that the owner/driver can touch has been re-skinned to reflect the car’s Italian self-imagining: Euro-style upholstery, including a very nice-handed Saddle leather in the Lusso package, and door and dash trim. But everything of an operative nature is shared with the Miata. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Miata’s driving workspace is impeccable, and the Fiata’s is that plus nicer seats.
<br>

The 124 Spider’s stitched-leather steering wheel bears a large Fiat badge, which will serve as your only indication of the car’s Italian lineage. Climate and door switchgear, display graphics and infotainment interface are all shared. As in art history, the similarities between the cars make the differences more eloquent and expressive.
The indicated redline at 6,500 rpm is not actually the maximum safe speed of Fiat’s 1.4L MultiAir, but rather a best-practices number balancing durability against performance. Otherwise known as warranty protection device. But the fuel cutoff threshold can easily be dialed in. In the case of this 1.4L MultiAir turbocharged four, the rated horsepower is 160, while the Abarth produces 164 hp, by virtue a slight lift in allowable engine speed. The engine is not direct-injected.
Fiat offers the 124 Spider in three trim levels: Classica, Lusso (luxury) and Abarth, the sports version. The Abarth comes with uprated suspension: autocross-ready, 17-inch sport tires; and a menu of Mopar branded dealer-installed upgrades available, including a lurid-sounding turbocharger pop-off valve that sounds like one has just disconnected a pneumatic nail gun. PWWWISHH!
The 124 Spider interior is seen here wearing the Nero Black sport leather upholstery with contrasting white stitching.
The 124 Spider is available with the highly recommended six-speed manual transmission as well as a superb six-speed automatic supplied by Aisin, with paddle shifters.
The new Fiat 124 Spider’s name recalls 1960s-era sport convertible designed by Tom Tjaarda, for Pininfarina in Turin, debuting first as a Turin show car. The design proved so durable, in form and function, the 124 Spider model was produced until the 1980s.
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The 124 Spider is available with the highly recommended six-speed manual transmission as well as a superb six-speed automatic supplied by Aisin, with paddle shifters. FIAT The new Fiat 124 Spider’s name recalls 1960s-era sport convertible designed by Tom Tjaarda, for Pininfarina in Turin, debuting first as a Turin show car. The design proved so durable, in form and function, the 124 Spider model was produced until the 1980s. FIAT Note the imitative details on the new car, right, such as the angled graphical treatment of the taillamp, with a body-matching inset, suggesting the curves of the classic car’s rear wing. In fairness and by way of historical accuracy, the new car is actually a Spider, while the classic 124 Spider, a 2+2 convertible, was always misnamed. FIAT While sharing vehicle architecture with the Mazda MX-5 Miata, and built in the same shed in Hiroshima, the Fiat 124 Spider departs meaningfully from its sister with 100% unique sheet metal and lighting instruments, as well as its own Italian-built turbocharged four cylinder, the 1.4L MultiAir, regulated here to produce 160/164 hp. FIAT One visual landmark that claims attention is the windshield surround, which is a shared part with the Mazda, except that the Miata’s windshield surround is painted black, while Fiat offers a choice of three looks, including gunmetal gray. The Mazda’s eternally brilliant top is also duplicated in full. FIAT Everything that the owner/driver can touch has been re-skinned to reflect the car’s Italian self-imagining: Euro-style upholstery, including a very nice-handed Saddle leather in the Lusso package, and door and dash trim. But everything of an operative nature is shared with the Miata. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Miata’s driving workspace is impeccable, and the Fiata’s is that plus nicer seats. FIAT
The 124 Spider’s stitched-leather steering wheel bears a large Fiat badge, which will serve as your only indication of the car’s Italian lineage. Climate and door switchgear, display graphics and infotainment interface are all shared. As in art history, the similarities between the cars make the differences more eloquent and expressive. FIAT The indicated redline at 6,500 rpm is not actually the maximum safe speed of Fiat’s 1.4L MultiAir, but rather a best-practices number balancing durability against performance. Otherwise known as warranty protection device. But the fuel cutoff threshold can easily be dialed in. In the case of this 1.4L MultiAir turbocharged four, the rated horsepower is 160, while the Abarth produces 164 hp, by virtue a slight lift in allowable engine speed. The engine is not direct-injected. FIAT Fiat offers the 124 Spider in three trim levels: Classica, Lusso (luxury) and Abarth, the sports version. The Abarth comes with uprated suspension: autocross-ready, 17-inch sport tires; and a menu of Mopar branded dealer-installed upgrades available, including a lurid-sounding turbocharger pop-off valve that sounds like one has just disconnected a pneumatic nail gun. PWWWISHH! FIAT The 124 Spider interior is seen here wearing the Nero Black sport leather upholstery with contrasting white stitching. FIAT The 124 Spider is available with the highly recommended six-speed manual transmission as well as a superb six-speed automatic supplied by Aisin, with paddle shifters. FIAT The new Fiat 124 Spider’s name recalls 1960s-era sport convertible designed by Tom Tjaarda, for Pininfarina in Turin, debuting first as a Turin show car. The design proved so durable, in form and function, the 124 Spider model was produced until the 1980s. FIAT

By DAN NEIL
June 23, 2016 12:06 p.m. ET
60 COMMENTS
Fate is strange, that I should find myself driving a thing called a Fiat 124 Spider. Forty years ago, this was my first car, with Carolina blue paint and mildewed black vinyl interior. It had sat out a while.

I grabbed my dad’s tools and crawled up its bunghole for about three months. I replaced the engine, which then blew up on its first pass over 100 mph in a cloud of rust. I replaced the engine again, fitted with tube headers and all, got it back on the road, and the following weekend the car was smashed to bits in a rear-end collision by a friend driving the exact year-make-and-model Fiat.

MORE RUMBLE SEAT

The Fiat 124 Spider: Now, That’s Not Italian June 23, 2016
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Toyota Tundra: Supersize Isn’t Always Super May 19, 2016
How Battery-Powered Rides Could Transform Your Commute May 12, 2016
He probably saved my life. That car’s oversteer was satanic, and I don’t think the tires had been changed since the first owner shipped off to Vietnam.

At the press event in northern San Diego County, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles execs noted that the Fiat 124 Spider was one of the most popular sports cars of its era (1966-1985), with over 170,000 sold. Even more amazing, the briefing went, 8,000 of these cars are still on the road in the U.S. So remain vigilant.

There are two assertions I would like the reader to value equally, if at all. The first is that my 1971 Fiat 124 Spider—penned by the prolific Tom Tjaarda for Pininfarina in Turin—was a fantastic-looking car: A lithe, graceful cabriolet, smart as paint, with 2+2 seating and a very sound umbrella top, come to think of it. Even as the 1970s wore on, and the federally mandated baby bumpers got clumsier, the 124 Spider maintained its visual lightness, like a scarf in the air.


Second, this new Fiat 124 Spider, this Mazda with Italian chest hair pasted to it, is less than fantastic, styling-wise. And not because Fiat is invoking the sacred memory of my old car. You could call it Luigi Pepperoni and it still wouldn’t be Italian.

Is the 2017 Fiat 124 Spider just a re-bodied, re-engined version of the Mazda MX-5 Miata? WSJ Rumble Seat columnist Dan Neil thinks so, and joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero to talk about it. Photo: Fiat
I’m not even taking prisoners here. I’m baffled. This car—emerging out of a deal between Fiat and Mazda in 2012—is a re-bodied and re-engined version of the Mazda MX-5 Miata. That itself is a bit of a nettle, since the fourth-generation Miata is a superb car on its own that one alters at one’s peril.

Built by Mazda hands in Hiroshima, Japan, on the same assembly line as the Miata, the 124 Spider—nicknamed “Fiata” to the despair of the PR department—shares Miata’s architectural hardpoints: same wheelbase (90.9 inches), front and rear track, and overall height, within a 10th. The engine and all the body panels are unique to the Fiat.

However, the “Fiata” is 5.5 inches longer, and much of that length is ahead of the front wheels, in overhang, which—elephant in the room—spoils the proportions. The front-end styling is heavy, bulky, and evidences a strain in the styling department to meaningfully depart from the sinuous curves of the Miata.

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The additional mass in the rear bumper clip is an attempt to visually balance the front.

The attempts at historicity don’t connect. The glowing headlamp shape should be round, not ovoid. The central grille should be more three-dimensional, with graphic inset mesh.

One particularly naked emperor at the press briefing noted that the historic 124 Spider had a lovely, undercut front valance, the classic barchetta profile. He then turned to the new car as to suggest the same. This thing has a chin like Victor Mature.

Actor Victor Mature. The face of the future?
Actor Victor Mature. The face of the future? PHOTO: THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
Yes, yes: aero, cooling, pedestrian crash. These are problems to solve, not conditions to accept.

So this is my problem: The immaculately drawn Miata looks like the Italian car and the Fiat looks more like the Japanese car. Actually, since we’re recalling the era, it looks more like a latter-day British MGB. Yet if you can divorce from your mind the knowledge of the Miata, the 124 Spider works on its own: a compact, ripped sporter. What’s lost in translation is the exquisiteness, the aching, Italianate urge toward beauty, as in the Alfa Romeo 4C.

By way of issuing the Mazda an Italian passport, Fiat gifted their version with FCA’s stellar turbocharged 1.4-liter four cylinder (160 hp/184 pound-feet at 2,500 rpm) out of the 500 Abarth, buttoned to the Miata’s perfectly perfect six-speed manual transmission, or a slick six-speed automatic with manual shifting paddles.

2017 FIAT 124 SPIDER

Front interior of the 2017 Fiat 124 Spyder. ENLARGE
Front interior of the 2017 Fiat 124 Spyder. PHOTO: FIAT
Price: $24,995 (Classica); Lusso ($27,495); and Abarth ($28,195)

Powertrain: turbocharged and liquid-cooled 1.4-liter sequential-fuel injected, SOHC in-line 4-cylinder; 6-speed manual or 6-speed automatic transmission; rear-wheel drive (limited-slip differential in Abarth).

Power/torque: 160 hp (164 in Abarth) @5,500/184 lb-ft @2,500 rpm-3,200 rpm

Length/weight: 159.6 inches/2,436 pounds (manual)

Wheelbase: 90.9 inches

0-60 mph: 6.8 seconds

EPA fuel economy: 25/36 mpg, city/highway (automatic); 26/35 mpg (manual)

Cargo capacity: 4.9 cubic feet

Fiat’s turbo-four is a splendid, sonorous little widget, and its defining character—a giddy wind of turbo torque and an edgy throttle coming in at low rpm (2,500 rpm)—makes it easy to do the tiny dancer thing, balancing the little car on power, skittering and sawing around corners. The 124 Spider Abarth, the high-performance edition with a limited-slip differential, can be kitted out with a hilariously aggressive Mopar exhaust system that sounds like a drum-line showdown.

In the Abarth, one can switch off all driver’s aids except anti-lock brakes and go for autocross glory. For this event Fiat had laid out the mother of all parking-lot cone courses, with 14 unique corners of changing camber and a long back straight where pilots started braking and downshifting from third gear.

The 124 Spider Abarth strafed this course like a mad bumblebee. One tribal curiosity is the Abarth’s available turbo pop-off valve, which noisily relieves excess turbo pressure when the throttle demand is reduced. From corner to corner, our Abarth test car issued shimmering, Stanley Steamer-like bursts—PWISHH!! PWISHH!!

But with all due respect for the delicate chassis tuning the Fiat team did, and the tens of thousands of miles of validation and calibration, the 124 Spider drives at the limit pretty much like the Miata. The Miata’s naturally aspirated engine needs to be kept a’boil, because that’s where the horsepower is. Far from being laggy, the Fiat’s turbocharged engine pulls for all its worth at low rpms, so it’s actually more tractable than the NA engine but doesn’t rev quite as high (6,250 rpm fuel cutoff, compared with the Miata’s 6,800 rpm).

You know, the Fiat has a bit more compliance overall. The Abarth could use a little more front sway bar, which I’m sure Mopar will be happy to provide. Otherwise, the Fiata sort of ends up where it started, which is with a very fine roadster indeed.

My problem with the turbocharged engine is its apparent lack of necessity. It pains me to point out that the engine that the Miata already uses—a torque-y, rev-happy 2.0-liter twin-cam four, naturally aspirated—is exactly the kind of engine that came in the old 124 Spiders. Indeed, these engines powered generations of
Fiat and Alfa Romeo sports cars.

The new 1.4L MultiAir has a 5 horsepower advantage over the Miata mill (9 hp more in the Abarth), but the Fiat’s additional weight of around 100 pounds means the power-to-weight ratio of the two cars is nearly identical. It also concerns me that the packaging of the turbo engine, with its various cooling requirements, is actually the factor that has bulked out the front styling, with cascading consequence from nose to tail. If so, that was no kind of bargain.

Mazda already builds a classic Italian sports car engine. If you could change anything, why change that?

 

you don't realize how small that car is until there is someone standing next to it

 

McLaren Design

https://www.facebook.com/formtrends/videos/984598894986537/

 

Any aspiring car designers, here are the latest rankings of design schools from Cardesignnews:

Car Design News global league table of transportation design schools - Car Design News

 

I'm very shocked at Art Center's standings as well

 

I too was surprised at the Art Center showing
last week at the Eyes on Design Concours, I had dinner with several Art Center people
they assured me that things were doing great, they were placing grads in jobs and all was on the upswing

 

Not being on the "portfolio team" anymore, it's difficult to have a very accurate sense because I don't see all the Art Center graduates portfolios, but my gut says CCS would be #1, followed closely by Art Center for US schools. RCA is still near the top as well.

 

Guess I can't answer that

 

yes, i had seen that.
that's me in my earlier life on the right of the photo taken from the video......we were doing a design review on the patio that day
still using those 'old' photos!
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That's one of my PG one's too.

 

BMW Design

https://www.facebook.com/BMW.Design/videos/1227976897236474/