The rear wheel arches seem a tad lower than the fronts so i just followed those. But really I only wanted to quickly show the germs of an idea
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/alfa-romeo-name-revealed-206mph-v6-supercar?fbclid=IwAR014K-RdM37iB__BfIlf0FDKckaPtwz5Ls4YlRtRYi2cHhxvQQbr6kv7yE
Thanks for this (sort of ) Exclusive? check! Limited production? check! Stupid price point? check! I'm three for three!
https://www.motor1.com/news/678283/alfa-romeo-supercar-maserati-mc20-derived/?fbclid=IwAR0WEceK3lHLbK-8mLZsgkMLIvZ9bYItTuZp7uQafKChYLE20SlPpdry9OU
No one other than Stellantis know what the car will look like. I hope it looks as good if not better than the MC20. 90% of the pre orders so far are said to be for the ICE hybrid version
Better?....or worse?....Diablo redesign/mashup/midjourney 'imagineering' whatsit.... Image Unavailable, Please Login https://www.designboom.com/technology/eccentrica-restomod-lamborghini-diablo-hypercar-3d-printed-titanium-07-27-2023/?utm_source=designboom+daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eccentrica%27s+restomod+lamborghini+diablo+hypercar+in+3D-printed+titanium+oozes+retro+look
The annual car designer gathering Cars in My Yard took place yesterday. Huge turnout with an eclectic selection of rides. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
additional photos from Cars in My Yard car designer get together Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
And a few more Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Women in design from the '50's. Hard to believe some of the dialog. The Museum of the City of New York, in conjunction with GM, hosted a tribute to the women of automotive design on Monday night. The event featured lots of documentary-style interview clips, politically incorrect GM promotional videos from the day and, the best part, live digital sketches done on the big screen by Cadillac's Christine Park (see design progression after the jump). You might be familiar with Christine's exploits on Cadillac XTS, the dashing concept that precedes the brand's next generation flagship. Pictured here, GM's famous "Damsels of Design" posed with none other than Harley Earl, GM's first VP of Design. Earl created the need for an Art and Color Division at GM and brought us the industry's first concept car, the Buick Y-Job. Wise beyond his years, Earl not only ushered in a sense of style and personalization to mass produced cars but hand picked a team of female designers to impress the papers and present a unique perspective to the design process.
Genesis X Convertible Concept Heads to Production Image Unavailable, Please Login In April, the convertible received the Car Design Award in the Concept Cars category at the Car Design Award 2023 ceremony in Milan. The Genesis X convertible is now quite likely to be a production car for the 2026 model year, the company’s dealers were told. Luc Donckerwolke, Genesis’ chief creative officer, announced the production intent at an annual meeting Image Unavailable, Please Login “To say it in front of a couple of hundred Genesis dealers—that’s a pretty good sign,” Lanzavecchia said “I don’t know if it’s going to be over US$200,000 or US$300,000, but I guarantee we’re going to see a lot of Bentley Continental convertible trade-ins on that when it comes to our showrooms.” Image Unavailable, Please Login Anyone betting against Hyundai/Kia at this point is a fool. The company has been having one home run after another. And the Genesis is certainly one, though it’s likely to be built in small numbers. As a brand enhancer—getting Genesis firmly established in the luxury fold—it could be invaluable. If Genesis are able to convert the unique lighting, smoothness, and presence into production, it will smack up the convertible GT market.
They're nice to look at, but I was struck by how unergonomic and cramped it was when I sat in one. I think they designed it for someone 5'7" and 175 Ibs soaking wet. I'm only 5'9"-5'10"ish and 215 Ibs, but it wasn't a comfortable fit. No clue how bigger people have owned and driven them quite happily. I've the same perplexion over the Lotus 7, which has a cabin so small you end up hanging outside of it to drive and frequently smash your elbow on the "door" sill. If we're taking Jags (or just interesting British cars), I might be a philistine, but, I'd opt for the mid-1990s Jaguar XJS Coupé with the 6.0 V12. Jags are supposed to be comfortable as well as cool. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login All the best, Andrew.
I test drove a GV80 a few days ago and was very impressed. Although the interior still has an "tablet" or sorts sticking out of the dash, it was still a very nice place to be. I might have to change cars in the next 12-18 months (mileage is getting high on my Ford Edge), and the GV80 is currently top of the list as the replacement - the 2024 3.5t AWD Prestige spec looks great. All the best, Andrew.
Ever admired vintage automotive sketches in a museum? Thank Fred Sharf Ronnie Schreiber 16 June 2021 Image Unavailable, Please Login Brezniak Funeral Directors Thanks to a pandemic-related extension, you have months rather than weeks to experience the Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City, 1950–2020 exhibit on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts until January 9, 2022. (It was originally scheduled to depart at the end of this month.) While his name isn’t mentioned in the hardcover book published to accompany the exhibit, nor are any of the works in it from his personal collection of original automotive studio drawings, there’s a very good chance that the Detroit Style exhibit, and similar shows at art museums around the world, would never have happened if it were not for the late Frederic A. Sharf (1934–2017). Detroit Style incorporates 12 significant automobiles along with dozens of sketches, drawings, and full-scale paintings used in designing automobiles. It was Sharf who did the most to convince the fine art world that the work of automotive designers was worthy of museum display. Image Unavailable, Please Login Frederic Sharf Collection It wasn’t just the art world that Sharf influenced. His collecting, curating, and publishing helped convince the automotive industry that its drafts, sketches, and renderings were indeed art and deserved to be archived, not discarded. The very existence of the Detroit Style show at the DIA—in part sponsored by General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis (Chrysler’s current corporate parent)—shows that. Image Unavailable, Please Login Frederic Sharf Collection There was a time when very few of the drawings or paintings produced in automotive styling studios left the studio. The artwork would be discarded to make room for the next project, just as the clay used to render those studies in 3D would be recycled for the next product cycle. What wasn’t thrown away was considered proprietary information and kept far away from public eyes. Of course, nothing is 100 percent secure and artists, proud of their work, often snuck their prized sketches home for safekeeping. Image Unavailable, Please Login Frederic Sharf Collection Described by a close friend as a “true renaissance man,” Frederic Alan Sharf’s passion for history and its artifacts began in his childhood. His family was affluent thanks to M. Sharf and Co, a successful wholesale distributor of sporting goods started by Fred’s grandfather in 1892. Fred purchased his first painting, an antique landscape, for $11 before he reached his teens. He attended the Phillips Academy prep school before going to Harvard, where he earned a master’s degree in history. Rather than continue as an academic, he decided to work for the family business. Under Fred Sharf’s leadership, the company transitioned to become the Sharf Marketing Group, representing professional hockey and tennis players. By the early 1980s, Fred estimated that his firm was the agent for about 25 percent of the world’s top women tennis players.
Uwe Bahnsen: An Unsung Design Hero Patrick recalls a giant of automotive design. Image Unavailable, Please Login A Hamburger he was — from the city of course — because Uwe Bahnsen was a gourmet. Germany’s ‘city on the Elbe’ is where he was born, and it was here he studied; an ‘arty kinda course’ as my American friends would say, which led him to become a shop window designer, and a damned good one at that! This however was not to be his long and winding road to fulfilment, for he had already fallen in love with that addictive invention called the motorcar. Having in 1956, gained a position in Ford’s Cologne Design studio — named at the time Formgestaltung (form givers), where the missionaries of American styling reigned — he quickly rose to become Studio Chief. Two years later, Ford’s Detroit HQ sent an excellent Senior Design Manager, Wesley P. Dahlberg, to hold fort in Cologne-Merkenich. Usually, Ford’s US Design leadership tended to populate these remote outposts of civilisation (like England or Germany) with either near-retirees or former convicts like Roy Brown, the unrepentant culprit charged with styling the disastrous Edsel. Roy however did take charge of the Dagenham-based Styling studio which came up with a real winner, the Ford Cortina Mark I. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Meanwhile, back in Germany, Dahlberg hit it off with his impeccably dressed and highly talented Studio Chief, Uwe Bahnsen, who loved both modern European and the best of American design. They immediately entered into the design development of what was to become a remarkably well designed vehicle, the Taunus P3 17M. This was to replace a rather heavy looking model that had been created in Detroit by designers who had made a ‘just passin’ thru’ visit to foreign lands. The new car however, designed in Cologne, would embody leading-edge European aesthetics. Its overall design theme was oval, confirmed in all the design language of its detailing, which incorporated unique oval shaped headlamps and curved side glass — a first in Europe, and an instantly recognisable signature. When the car was launched in 1960, the press contemptibly nicknamed it Badewannetaunus or ‘Bathtub Taunus’ but… the public loved it and it went on to sell 669,731 units. The success of the P3, together with his undoubted management skills, propelled Uwe into the ‘high potential’ category established by the company which automatically led, in 1962, to his two-year assignment to Motown, a period he thoroughly enjoyed and where he learnt to appreciate very dry Martinis. Image Unavailable, Please Login I first heard about Mr. Bahnsen when, as a neophyte designer, I was hired by Ford of Britain in late 1968, and forced-marched to the interior design department despite my ardent wish to design car exteriors rather then their inners. I was told by my new colleagues that the boss was a tall German — but nevertheless a nice person — and I could not help but be impressed when I first saw him enter the design studio shortly after my arrival. He was an 1.87m tall and slender man, whose presence was written in capital letters and highlighted by his sideburns which were just as spectacular as those of The King himself. Yet even later, despite Uwe becoming a close friend, I never got around to ask him if he actually liked Elvis. Yet despite his impressive manner, when he talked to people he actually listened to the answers he was given. This was to be my studio for just a year, and during that time I never seemed to climb onto the podium, being characterised as the Frenchman who was a bit of a futurist, but Mr Bahnsen liked what I did and he would more often than not enter into conversation with me on his visits to the design studio. Image Unavailable, Please Login This is not my story, but that of this awe-inspiring designer and human being, but I cannot nevertheless resist saying that, since he believed I had management potential, he sent me to further my studies and obtain an MBA at the Anglia-Ruskin University. This I consider to have been a great advantage, since no one else from the Design Department ever did thereafter. From my side, I learnt to appreciate the management of this consummate professional who was always so rigorous, who shared with some of us his vision of the Design department becoming a significant strategic partner within the company. He simply abhorred when design personnel would arrive late for a meeting, triggering the chairperson to quip: “Let’s wait until all the artists arrive!” In 1970, Uwe Bahnsen moved back to Germany to become the head of the Ford AG Design Centre, working under the overall direction of the newly appointed American Vice President of Design. Joe Oros had been exiled for having come second in the race for the succession to head Ford worldwide Design, which was won by Eugene Bordinat Jr. But worse, this was the man who had been responsible for the design of the epoch-changing Mustang — evidently a man to be exiled. Image Unavailable, Please Login The first few years under Uwe Bahnsen’s tenure saw the birth of some rather modern cars that were often plagued by a carry-over platform policy, which invariably were associated with a demand for wider bodies, resulting in cars that displayed lateral overhangs and cavernous wheel openings which, when explored, often revealed the presence of wheels. There were also some quite striking designs like the second generation Capri but it was later that an explosion of modernity appeared. The Erika programme was the first front wheel drive Escort, whose XR3 model was very much a ‘Bahnsen design directed’ project. The XR3 is a magnificent example of his ‘design resilience’. He managed to withstand the continuous flow of suggestions from thrice-yearly US management reviews whose members could not understand the lack of stripes and fake scoops on a sporting model — for Uwe preferred to take his inspiration from Porsche rather than Mercury. Uwe Bahnsen – photo: speigel.de " data-medium-file="https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg?w=236" data-large-file="https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg?w=471" class="size-full wp-image-7419" src="https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg?w=840" alt="" srcset="https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg 471w, https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg?w=118 118w, https://spct2000.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/bahnsen-spiegel-de-lhlj.jpg?w=236 236w" sizes="(max-width: 471px) 85vw, 471px" style="-x-ignore: 1"> Image: speigel.de In 1976, Uwe was finally named Ford of Europe’s Design Vice President, and this is where serious thinking took place leading to the development of the Sierra. I was there with him and our team, as well as Europe’s Ford President, Bob Lutz, to deploy the strategy that led to the birth of this car which, to employ Edith Piaf’s words, I can hum “Non, je ne ne regrette rien”, (No, I have no regrets), and yet something was evidently wrong. The biggest mistake being, to have jeopardised Ford’s position on the all important UK market by not offering, from the first day, a notchback saloon. Image Unavailable, Please Login I was also present at the lunch convened by Ford’s Global Chairman, Red Poling, who wanted to have his pound of flesh for the slow sales of the Sierra on the British market. The culprit being the one and only Uwe Bahnsen, even though I was the man who had replaced him in Germany, and that amongst that group of eight persons around the table was my planned successor — for I was on my way to Detroit to receive a two-year indoctrination course before replacing my highly esteemed boss. When the blame came, with its cruel corporate ritual of humiliation, I noted that all those who had had a hand in the Sierra development looked the other way, something dogs tend also to do when a piece of crockery mysteriously falls off the table. He was condemned and became a marked man, aware that his future as an influential designer in Ford had come to an end. I was to be his successor but… I decided otherwise, nauseated by what I had witnessed, and so whilst having served only two months as a Foreign Service Assignee in Detroit, I resigned. Image Unavailable, Please Login In 1986, Uwe Bahnsen left Ford to join as director of the famous American design school, Art Center, which had just opened a college in Vevey, Switzerland, and there he shared his design vision with several generations of automotive designers. Uwe passed away in 2013 and in a communiqué published by Art Center, George Wardle, who at the time headed the graduate programmes in Transportation wrote this message which I have kept as a memento: “I have always acknowledged Uwe Bahnsen along with Patrick le Quément his protégé, as the two automotive designers who most effectively invested their considerable intellect and energy to elevating the importance of Design within the car industry and to the outside world. They did this in a way that has helped all of us who followed their path”. Above all, Uwe Bahnsen was an honourable man. Postscript: This may read as a laudatory portrait of a man written by an admirer, true enough, but there is something I can bring forth that is tainted with slight criticism; his walking habits. Bahnsen, who had been a rally driver, walked as he drove — cutting corners, and I always seemed to be in his path. That’s about it. Image Unavailable, Please Login Uwe Bahnsen: 30 May 1930 — July 30 2013 — RIP. Image captions: Publicity shot from launch of Capri II. Presentation of Taunus/ Cortina in 1976 which I designed. Design Studio Merkenich 1976. Left to right: Uwe Bahnsen, Claude Lobo — Manager Fiesta exterior, Peter Müller — Modeller and Ray Everts — Design Executive at the time. Photo of Uwe Bahnsen and Ford Cargo truck model. Taken in my office with Uwe Bahnsen (centre) and Andy Jacobsen (right). Then my N°2, Jacobsen became my successor. Discussing details about the Scorpio/Granada with Uwe Bahnsen. UB smoking a Benson & Hedges. All images (unless otherwise indicated) ©Patrick le Quément collection.
