car design thread

I'll let Mr. Kennedy speak for himself, but I'll add my personal viewpoint for whatever it's worth, and understand almost every car design organization has embraced retro design at some point or another, from Ferrari to Mercedes to Ford and almost everyone else.

Having said that, i'm coming from a different POV. As a designer, it's important to understand the brand's past and to honor and respect it. But I also firmly believe the future is looking forward, not backward. Mr. Ferrari when asked what his favorite car was , he responded "the next one". That's been my mantra as well. My duty as a designer I believe is to show the way forward, not recapture the past. Understand, my viewpoint does not align with the thinking at major corporations. A large number of car companies have designed and marketed retro designs with varying success. The current gen Camaro is such an example. The thinking was the 1969 Camaro was the quintessential iconic Camaro. The design team slavishly captured the essence of the '69. Crosstown at Ford the Mustang Design team did likewise with the renewed Mustang, and Chrysler, not wanting to get left behind aped the original Dodge Challenger to varying success. All 3 mfg went all in on retro design with varying degrees of sales success.

Certainly Mini, Fiat 500, VW Beetle et al did likewise. For me this approach always seemed like a dead end design wise. The buying public however has embraced the nostalgia. wave. I find it depressing. What? Is everyone bereft of ideas?

So while I'm in the minority here, the public responds to retro/nostalgic design. No question. Look at home design, fashion, etc. Looking in the rearview mirror sells. Everyone it would seem wants to feel warm and fuzzy about the past. Look at all the discussion on F-Chat re: Pininfarina designed Ferraris. I also love those designs. But I also want to move forward. Guilty as charged.

I believe there is a certain malaise gripping automotive design recently. Overwrought, over complicated is the design de-jour. Some of what I see has me scratching my head at how ugly they are to my eyes. The electrification of the automobile is still in its infancy. No one has established what an electric vehicle should look like. We're judging everything through our glasses from our 100 yr history of ICE powered vehicles. Maybe that's right or maybe it's wrong.

But I will cling to my belief that the future is indeed in the windshield and not the rear view mirror.

 

There is a space for design that worships its past. Porsche has done it successfully for over 50 yrs.
But should every car use that philosophy?
Volvo finally broke from their 'shipping crate design' 'Safety car design' vocabulary. Now Volvos look cool and contemporary.

 

Id argue all auto design is retro to some degree. Theres no such thing as a new design language in my eyes. Its all based on whats come before.

The last time i saw something truly fresh in auto design was during the Syd Mead/Bladerunner era. All of these designs like that new Polestar are simply based on Syd Meads concepts.

 

Appreciate that you provided more than a sentence.

Ive retyped the following several times because i have so much respect for your perspective and dont want to come off as argumentative, but I dont see this 'windshield' or forward looking auto design anywhere. From where im standing nothing new has been done since Syd Mead, and other designers/futurists of the 70s and earlier. I havent seen anything since the 70s thats actually new.

 

I think conceptually you’re right. Of course everything we do is based on what came before. Film, literature, art are all influenced somewhat by what came before. My comments are based on becoming a slave to the past. Most movies have a relationship with what came before as well as the music of today. No argument there.

 

To your point, yesterday, while driving, one of these was coming at me from a long distance and my mind began thinking "Wonder what kind of an EV that is without a grill?" When I was close enough, it turned out to be this- a 50+ year old design.

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I also believe art has the same predicament. When Marcel Duchamp displayed a urinal at an art exhibit in 1917 the art world was never the same. It not only broke from the past, it set the past on fire. I agree Mr. Mead changed much of the course as to how the future might look, technology has changed the way the automobile looks. Besides, I’m not so sure the buying public wants or would accept a total departure from what we know and accept as ‘good’ design.

 

Id agree 100% and Id add being a slave to 'different for different sake' is just as bad. Being a slave to any design language is a negative.

A good example of both is the new SRT concept on the bad side, but KIA design on the good side.
When i look at the EV6 I think its very fresh, but Id be fooling myself if I didnt also say theres nothing truly original about it. All of its design cues can be found in vehicles decades past. It was just done exceptionally well on the EV6.

Side topic. We are very lucky to have lived through the earlier stages of auto design where true originality was happening. Things no one had seen before. Laying the foundation for auto design for the foreseeable future.

 

I’m with you 100% on that one!

 

My biggest eye rolls come when i get a client ask for something 100% original. Umm yeah thats not going to happen in 2023. All design languages that are possible with existing tech are already on the table. Everything now is just a variation of...

We wont see anything truly original again until theres a massive breakthrough in tech. At that point things can be re-thought from scratch as we did when we transitioned from horse and buggy to ICE.

 

Made me laugh. Many yrs ago when I was just a punk designer I would have so many car enthusiasts and regular Joes come tell me how cool it would be if GM would design a car that looked like the ‘55 Chevy.

 

i prefer the Nova. can you make that happen?

 

Anything is possible with enough money.

 

Flying cars come to mind........

 

This was posted on LinkedIn today. Posted the 'author'
AI is just in it's infancy.

Brett Patterson
Automotive Designer | AI+VR specialist | Founder of Car Design News
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AI in automotive design: A conversation with designer Ehab Kaoud
Brandy RyanAnanda ArasuSEPTEMBER 13, 2023
7 MIN READ

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It’s impossible to be in any field right now and not have AI creep into the conversation. Automotive design is no different.

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So Ananda Arasu and I had a conversation with designer Ehab Kaoud, one of our AIF presenters, to go deeper into AI and automotive design.

You can listen to our conversation here and scroll down for more context and visuals.

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Midjourney aims to “scale, explore, and build humanist infrastructure focused on amplifying the human mind and spirit.” You can see some of their community gallery here.

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Co-created (with Kaelan Richards) by former car designer Jordan Taylor, Vizcom is the natural evolution of Taylor’s Instagram community page Designerspen. Like Midjourney, Vizcom is working to resolve the burn-out that comes with repetitive creative labor.

“The idea was originally meant to explore ways to accelerate
the car design process with artificial intelligence using
generative design methods. This idea quickly outgrew the niche
of car design and started to show potential in other creative fields
such as concept art and Industrial design and continues to find ways
to impact other creative fields.”
Jordan Taylor

AI design process
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We were curious about what an AI design process might look like. Ehab shared his:

• Begin with a verbal prompt, sometimes just a keyword
• AI engine generates initial designs
• Insert the image(s) you like back into the engine to create a new image
• Provide feedback via prompts – do more of this, less of this, etc.

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Examples of AI prompts and iterations
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• You can also begin with an external image (even a mix of them) if it feels right, to give the AI engine more inspiration to draw from
• When you’ve got an iteration that feels close to your concept, you can take the finished rendering and explore it more on your own, move it into Photoshop and do your refinement.

It is a responsive process. The AI usually gives you four images from your prompts or initial ideas – and usually one of them is a bit off the grid, unexpected. It’s entirely possible the creators of the AI engine do this on purpose, to explore what the AI can create and to allow for surprise and spontaneity.

Giving feedback on AI design
Feedback can be either verbal or with other images, and this is one area Ehab notes is getting better.

For example: if you put one of its iterations back into the chat and say, “I want this area to be changed,” the AI will simply erase or modify that area, leaving everything else intact.

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This is one of the exciting things about this technology—the creators of the AI engine are learning from how designers are working, just as the AI itself is. And that makes for more responsive technology and design.

The more you work with a particular engine, the more coherent the imagery is. Ehab used to say that if he were to show the initial AI designs to his boss, he’d be fired on the spot.

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Refined AI image
That’s changed. Now the images reflect what the AI is learning about Ehab’s design aesthetics and process, giving him tangible iterations to build upon.

Merging art and design in AI
Ehab notes that as a designer, he is always looking for something new, different, special. That kind of inspiration can come from anywhere – architecture, fashion, nature. You aren’t limited to feeding only vehicle images into an AI engine. You can also build off a fish or cheetah, an arch or doorway, the lines of a sleek dress.

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This is part of the trial-and-error process with AI, and it’s an intriguing way to push what the AI can produce for you. Because new design is often a mix of other elements, having the AI put them together in its own ways can prove exciting.

It’s as if the collaborative process of design that your brain does automatically is externalized.

The limits of AI
Ehab notes that the human brain is more capable of generating more inspired designs than AI is currently able to do, in its Perception AI wave.

But should AI reach an Autonomous AI wave, all that could change. In that stage, AI understands the nature of intellectual tasks, can operate without human direction (no prompts necessary), and can make its own decisions (it decides when the design is done).

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Right now, the engine is able to look at what’s out there (understanding and interpreting sensory experiences) and give you feedback based on that. It can’t think beyond what’s currently available, as humans do. That’s why Ehab will often feed the engine images outside the usual scope of vehicle design: to inspire it to think beyond what it currently knows about vehicle design.

Stage 1: Graphic elements fed into AI generator

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Stage 2: Using graphic elements in different ways

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Stage 3: Graphic elements become interior designs

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It’s important to remember that at this stage inspired iteration, rather than quick iteration, is still a human realm. If AI gets there, though, everything we think we know about design could change.

Teaching students about AI design
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Student AI project – boxy front end
AI is no small controversy in the visual world, and perhaps even larger in the academic world. But it’s not going away.

So the question we should ask is: how do we harness the technology so that it becomes educational rather than plagiarizing or poaching? What if we treated AI as a way to tailor education based on how particular students learn?

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Elementary School Class: Teacher Uses Interactive Digital Whiteboard, Explains Lesson to Diverse Group of Smart Children. Kids getting Modern Education, Learn Computer Science, Software Programming
If, say, Ehab doesn’t understand calculus very well because the language of numbers is not one he intuitively understands, he’ll struggle. But if the same material could be taught in a visual language, he stands a much better chance of really getting it.

AI in the automotive design industry
Even if they’re not enthusiastic early adopters, most designers are looking into AI engines and how they might impact design. And some OEMs have announced that they’re using AI to design wheels, for example.

The ideal would be for the industry to see AI design as an opportunity to be explored in particular ways, not a looming threat to individual designers.

When it comes to an OEM’s bottom line, AI offers real benefits. The same is true in manufacturing. Not to replace designers or engineers, but to take on the tedious and repetitive tasks that take up a lot of human time.

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Blank conveyors on a blurred factory background
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People working on packing line in factory
If we embrace and integrate AI rather than fearing and rejecting it, we can solve problems and create better designs.

If a designer’s priorities are to come up with something new, something better, to solve certain issues that a customer may have … whether the designer solves it with AI, on their own, or a combination of the two is less important than to resolve the issue.

If AI makes it easier and faster to arrive there with better answers? How could we not explore it?

The future of AI design
AI offers incredible assistance in automating repetitive and mundane tasks, allowing designers to focus more on the strategic and creative aspects of their work. As AI continues to develop, its ability to analyze user data and preferences will increase its efficiency and output.

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Sample Dynamo script in Alias
Just think about the possibilities for AR and VR…. AI can enhance both experiences through its analysis to provide real-time feedback, improve immersion, and adapt virtual environments.

But there are ethical concerns to AI development, particular in responsible design practices. Algorithmic bias, data privacy, and transparency can have huge impacts on AI systems. Developers need to ensure that AI systems are fair, inclusive, and aligned with humanist values.

 

Design
The Neue Klasse concept instills hope for BMW design
Matteo Licata
08 September 2023
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When it comes to BMW’s latest design exercise, the Neue Klasse concept that debuted last week in Munich, I can’t help but think of how some rules of design evolve and change. Or perhaps it’s our understanding of them. For instance, a quote: “Negative surfaces have no place in automobile design.” That’s what my professors used to tell me during the first year of my bachelor’s degree in Transportation Design. That was 2003, the same year BMW launched a positively controversial interplay of negative and positive surfaces for the E60-generation 5 Series sedan.

Under the direction of Chris Bangle, BMW’s designers were ripping to shreds the very same rulebook I was being taught to follow. As you can imagine, Bangle’s BMWs were a hot topic of discussion between us design students and our seasoned professors, and there seemed to be no middle ground. People either appreciated BMW for its courage or vehemently hated it for “ruining” the cars we grew up loving so much.

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2004 BMW 5 Series BMW
I admit I was closer to the latter camp, and it took me a few years to come around to cars like the E60-generation 5-Series mentioned above, or the E85 Z4 roadster. Twenty years on, these cars arguably look fresher and more modern than their current equivalents, and I revere them as genuine design landmarks. Much of my peers do, as well.

Even though many other BMWs from the “Bangle Era” haven’t aged nearly as well, there’s no denying the lasting impact he and his team’s work has had on the evolution of automobile design. But that was a long time ago, and I’m certainly not the only one who’s now failing to see any rhyme or reason behind the design choices that characterize the most recent crop of BMWs.

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E85 Z4, launched 2002. BMW AG
In fact, I’ve grown so accustomed to BMW’s repeated recent assaults on our retinas that I was ready to dismiss the latest Neue Klasse concept car as yet more proof that BMW has lost the plot. But that would have been unfair, because the more I look into this project, the more I realize that BMW may be onto something this time.

 

This part stuck out to me "Right now, the engine is able to look at what’s out there (understanding and interpreting sensory experiences) and give you feedback based on that. It can’t think beyond what’s currently available, as humans do."

While its true i think it comes with the caveat that maybe, at best, .01% of humans can think beyond 'whats currently out there'

 

Ain't that the truth!

 

As ugly as i find the new BMWs, I still think they are better looking than most of the Bangles. It saddens me young designers look at them fondly.

 

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From Car Design News
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Mercedes-Benz on exterior design, new tools and why specialism still matters
By Freddie Holmes01 August 2023
Car Design News recently caught up with Achim Badstübner, head of exterior design at Mercedes-Benz. Here he looks back on past trends in exterior design and where things are headed amid the influence of AI, marketing and evolving skillsets

With the onset of EVs, AVs and AI, exterior design is in a real state of flux. Aerodynamics seems to have been pushed up the hierarchy but alongside an increasing appetite for unique, futuristic designs that feel in-line with a battery-powered vehicle that can in certain situations drive itself. It is becoming quite the juggling act.

At Mercedes, the man tasked with leading exterior design is Achim Badstübner, who joined from Audi in 2013 and has had a hand in models like the GLE and CLA. Car Design News took the opportunity to sit down with him during the Munich-based Car Design Event to talk all things exteriors, hiring and how the role of the designer is evolving.

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Achim Badstübner in his Audi days pictured with Norbert Weber (far left), Stefan Sielaff (centre) and Harald Schwonburg (far right)

We have heard a growing narrative from some OEMs that cars are being designed from the inside out. As an exterior designer, does this resonate with you?

I don’t really agree with that thinking, personally. It is a bit of a marketing angle. In a way it is true because you do have a package to work with – you need to know where the steering wheel is, how much space you have to play with – so you have to start with the technical things. But you don’t necessarily start with the instrument panel. If you look at our EQS with the Hyperscreen, of course the screen is a major part of the design but we didn’t start with that and build everything around it. The interior is a very early input and one aspect, but not the jumping off point.

Exteriors will always be my focus but other elements of car design can decide whether the customer buys the car

The approach will vary from brand to brand, I suppose, but yes – the exterior is usually what draws you in.

Exterior is and always has been the first trigger for our customers. You see a car on the road or in a commercial and go for a test drive. So it is and always has been a main issue. But just as there are so many more motorsports than just Formula 1 these days, the same thing is true for exteriors. Exterior design is important, but it is not the only thing. As an exterior designer that will always be my focus but other elements of car design can decide whether the customer buys the car these days.

Which areas of car design do you feel have grown in importance of late?

UX in particular is becoming more important; about eight years ago we established a new department just focussing on this. For a customer ten, 20 years ago it was important that you had enough space and headroom – basic ergonomics. Now I think you might consider not buying a car if it did not support Apple CarPlay, have a certain sound system or in-screen navigation. It’s a no-go if you don’t have these things.

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Badstübner with the CLA (four door) Shooting Brake

You’ve been in exterior design across multiple brands. How has that process evolved over the years?

The process has changed tremendously. I recall the good old days where you had weeks to just finish a clay surface but now you mill it overnight and everything has already been calculated for tooling. It is much, much faster than 20, 30 years ago. The other thing is that marketing plays a bigger role. If you have a niche product, you will always have strong fan but if you want to continue growing from decade to decade you have to be more in the middle ground and cannot be quite so extreme.

Customer feedback also plays a bigger role, so that is becoming more challenging. I have heard some brands are having to design specifically for Chinese design tastes, for example, which is not something I remember hearing about in the past – but you need to respect those large customer bases if you want to grow. The next big upcoming trend for exterior designers – I’m hesitant to say – is artificial intelligence.

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The Mercedes-Benz F 015 at CES; AVs have moved exterior design into new territory

I did wonder when we would get to the topic of AI…

AI is something that is being viewed very intensely at the moment. I have people in my team that are working on this specifically, testing it out, seeing how we can use it, what works and what doesn’t. This will probably be the ‘big thing’ over the next two to five years, but at the moment we are only exploring.

If you look back on your time as an exterior designer, was there a similar trend or technology that captured peoples’ attention in a similar way to how AI has?

This theme has been going on for years: if you draw with a pencil, a marker pen, an airbrush, the tool you use changes the result. There was the introduction of computer-aided design (CAD), for example. Before this, people trained as designers which meant “you can draw nice pictures.” And if you had another skill – like engineering – you basically had an extra goody to bring. About 20 years ago at Audi we had a pilot programme with one team using only traditional methods like clay and then one using CAD only, just to see if there was a different outcome in design.

Almost all my designers can do a car in a week completely by themselves

Was the aim to see which method was faster without hampering the end result?

That was part of it, but it was less about the design schedule and more about the form language of the design.

I suppose that makes sense – people don’t buy cars based on how quickly they were designed…

Exactly, it was about finding ways to improve the appearance and solving design challenges. For example, big volumes can be done quite quickly, but delicate details like A-pillar transition and fenders are quite tricky. Before we had dedicated clay and CAD model makers, and designers gave sketches to both and they had to interpret it. About a decade ago, students started being asked to do all of this themselves as overall designers, and there was some real pushback against this. But today, I can say that almost all my designers can do a car in a week completely by themselves.

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Badstübner observes some student work

So designers of today need to be more well-rounded, more multiskilled?

Yes. Before it was very specific and linear. There is a children’s game in Germany called Stille Post – where one person whispers something at the start and you compare how it sounds at the end and it sounds completely different – and it used to be a similar thing with designers. They would sketch something and then take it to a CAD or clay modeller who inteprets it slightly differently; then it goes to the technical engineers who change it slightly again, then it goes to tooling and so on. It loses more and more of its original intention. But by combining all of these skills together, designers can pretty much get exactly what they want as they have more control over the development. We have to see how AI fits in with all this.

There has been a shift and we are asking whether designers need to be quite so committed to just cars

So if we think of the modern designer as being a jack of all trades, what is the next step? Will we still have the traditional split between dedicated interior, exterior, CMF and UX?

That’s a good question. We have been splitting the role of design up and going deeper and deeper. I have exterior designers focussed on headlamps or wheels, which have very specific requirements. You need these kind of experts. You can’t just have an all-round exterior designer doing these roles because you need deep knowledge of cooling, inertia, crash safety requirements and more. And vice versa. So although we need these experts and we continue to dig deeper, the methods are changing. I like to have generalists, but they cannot ask the really deep, pivotal questions that subject experts do.

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The Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven, an exteriors masterpiece

I’ve heard that there is a bit of a talent war going on. Is it a challenge to get hold of the top students these days?

To a degree, but top students don’t necessarily make top employees. Sometimes, a B-level student is the better candidate – it’s not just about top grades. Getting hold of them is probably fairly easy for us as we have a good brand image and are well known, the problem for OEMs is more about retaining them. There is a lot that goes on. When I was studying in the 90s, most car designers were completely obsessed with cars. Now there has been a shift and we are asking whether designers need to be quite so committed to just cars, or if they should have broader – or more niche – interests.

 

"Hey, let's bring back whitewalls!"

 

From Hagerty
Automotive History, Design
How the Audi TT went from doodle to design icon
Tim Stevens
13 September 2023
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Audi
To recognize 25 years of the Audi TT and commemorate its final year in production, we bring you this story focusing on the sports car’s greatest strength: design. To read about our recent drive and market analysis of the Mk1 TT, click here, and come back tomorrow for a road test of the final, 2023 model. -Ed.

This year marks the end of the road for a car that first landed as a monument of modern automotive design. The Audi TT hit the road in 1998 and experienced immediate success, elevating Audi’s street cred and helping evolve the brand from staid luxury sedan maker to, well, a luxury sedan maker with better taste. The TT’s fundamental appeal was its freshness. It leaned on neither retro cues nor nostalgia, instead adopting a simple, comprehensible aesthetic that was as exciting for the everyman as it was for design purists.

How did Audi arrive at such a formula? Not through endless focus groups and committee-led design sessions, but rather from a spur-of-the-moment idea. More specifically, Freeman Thomas’ idea.

Today, Thomas is CEO and Chief Creative Officer for Meyers Manx. Back in the ’90s, he was at Volkswagen and on the heels of a big success with the Concept One, a design project developed with J Mays that would ultimately become the New Beetle.

The original concept for the TT was born in March of 1994. “J had become the head of design for Audi,” Thomas tells Hagerty, “and he asked me to join him, and so I did an extended business trip.” A little while later, Thomas was doodling at his desk and created a thumbnail sketch, “which was basically a little identity of the TT.”

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TT concept sketch, front. Audi
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TT concept sketch, rear. Audi


Mays saw it and asked if he could borrow the “little doodle.” Thomas agreed and Mays walked it straight to to Franz-Josef Paefgen, Audi’s then-head of development, who fell in love with it. After that, it was just a matter of figuring out how to transform the doodle into a real-life driver’s car.

Mays, wanting to keep things quiet, arranged for a drawing table at Thomas’ apartment. It was up to the latter to refine the design in the evenings, while still doing his regular work in the studio during the day.

As the project progressed, Thomas eventually got a few more resources, including some modelers. He set himself to the task of creating a quarter-scale clay model, which Mays presented as a concept to Volkswagen Group execs, including the big boss Ferdinand Piëch, who Thomas says was “absolutely smitten.”

“And so that’s how it got cemented,” Thomas says.

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Audi TT concept, 1998. The slimness of that window and the thickness of the roof at the rear is one of the few design aspects that did not reach production. Audi
The TT was first shown as a concept the following year, at the 1995 Frankfurt motor show. From there came the process of taking those initial sketches and making them into a production car, based on the Golf’s front-wheel-drive platform. That process, Thomas says, went seamlessly, which is not the case for every concept that ends up in showrooms.

“The design and the platform were really greatly suited for each other, and in no way, no how, did I ever feel that there was a compromise,” he says. In fact, one of the TT’s more notable styling cues—the way the hood blends into the fenders—was actually a product of the platform. Thomas initially planned to have a narrow hood, which wouldn’t fit, so he instead moved the shutline to the side, mid-way down the fenders. “An even better solution,” he says.

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TT concept, 1998. The resemblance to the final road version is remarkable. Audi
The car’s shape, which has remained basically unchanged for a quarter-century, was also a product of the tools available at the time. According to Hagerty design contributor Matteo Licata, a former automobile designer and current instructor at IAAD (Istituto d’Arte Applicata e Design) in Turin, “What you can see, toward the mid-’90s, is the very dramatic effect of surface 3D modeling software becoming really big.

“The designers playing with this new technology influenced their output, whether they liked it or not,” Licata says. “These more basic shapes, more basic volumes, intersected with each other.”

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Mk1 Audi TT Coupe Audi
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Mk1 Audi TT Coupe Audi
In fact, when Licata was himself learning 3D modeling software Autodesk Alias for his degree in design, his first assignment was to digitally re-create the Audi TT.

Sometimes limited tools and constraints create great things, and the resulting TT design was clearly a winner. “It is a perfect example of the zeitgeist of the era, of that precise moment in time in car design,” Licata says.

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Mk 1 rear end, before the mandated rear spoiler. Audi
The TT resonated with the press from first blush. “My recollection is the media all loved it,” veteran automotive journalist Angus MacKenzie—the former editor-in-chief of MotorTrend, U.K.’s CAR, and Australia’s Wheels—told me. “It was seen as an instant design classic; a more original car than the BMW Z3 or the Mercedes-Benz SLK.”

Still, some automotive purists at the time panned the TT for its Golf-platform roots. That never bothered MacKenzie. “I remember the car feeling tight and fun. You could feel it was essentially a front-drive platform, as opposed to the Z3 and SLK, which had a traditional rear-drive sports car feel, but that didn’t diminish the enjoyment. Plus, it looked so cool on the road; there was nothing out there like it. You felt like you were driving a concept car.”

That otherworldly look helped drive its popularity elsewhere, too. “For a couple of years, the TT was the car to have,” Licata says. “Other coupes in the similar category, no one wanted them anymore. People had to have the TT, purely on the strength of the design that resonated with people … It became the car used on TV shows, in advertising, even for unrelated products.”

As good as it looked, though, it had one design flaw: imperfect aerodynamics. After a handful of high-speed accidents in Europe, early examples of the TT were recalled in 1999 to implement suspension and traction control improvements, as well as a new spoiler on the rear decklid.

While many decried the little lip as ruining the car’s ideal form, Freeman Thomas is more pragmatic about it: “It wasn’t that unfortunate. I mean, it was so small.”

***

Audi left the TT largely unchanged through the 2006 model year, after which came the challenge of introducing a successor. “Once they captured lightning in the bottle,” Licata says, “the trouble is doing it again.”

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The Mk2 Audi TT Audi
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Mk2 models ran from the 2007-2015 model years. Audi
“The second TT, in typical [head of VW Group Design Walter] de Silva fashion, was a very expertly made redesign. I love the sheer smoothness of it, the surfacing,” says Licata. “But it has nowhere near the staying power of the original, because it was a derivative design that also lost some pretty key elements.”

Some of those changes, Licata believes, were driven by cost: “They cheapened out the body stamping process of the rear end because it’s much smoother. The original TT had a very expensive rear quarter,” he says. But, ultimately, he’s a fan: “It looks great. Absolutely, well done. If I was tasked at the time to re-do a TT, I certainly couldn’t have done a better job than that.”

The third-generation TT, the final chapter for the 2015–2023 model years, lacks the self-assuredness and clarity of the preceding versions. The form is there, but there are a lot of tacked-on distractions. Audi designers were more true to the TT’s ethos on the Mk3 car’s interior, which forgoes a central display and makes a handsome motif out of the HVAC vents.

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The final, Mk3 TT arrived for 2016. Audi
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The punchier TTS model, with 288 hp in final form. Audi
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I asked Freeman Thomas about the legacy of the TT and its significance to the automotive community. For him, the genesis and path of the project itself was as significant as its product: allowing a designer and their team “to create something simple, pure … something that really communicates the brand values in an absolute sense. [The TT’s] legacy is its purity.”

Purity, Thomas argues, was a key ingredient in other design icons like the original Beetle, the Mustang, and the Miata. “Those are designer cars. Those are vehicles that are so easy to understand. They’re capable and functional, full of common sense, and the sad thing is that the companies only hold on to them for a certain period of time, and then they let it go. And what’s left are just normal vehicles.”

After 2023, Audi is letting the TT go, ostensibly for good. The car leaves behind a remarkable heritage for something with such simple underpinnings, which Thomas makes no bones about: “Basically, it was a Golf underneath. But then, a Porsche 356, in many ways, was basically a Beetle underneath.”

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The TT RS was the ultimate performance version, packing a turbo inline-five with a startling 394 hp. It is one of the best-sounding engines of the modern age. Audi


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