Innehållsförteckning för No. 175 från AUTO & DESIGN

Piccola, seducente e pulita Volkswagen’s design strategy turnaround went public in autumn 2007, when the small Up! concept was first shown in Frankfurt. It was a simple yet friendly and elegant creation, actually the first implementation of a design DNA which had been conceived by Walter de Silva, director of design for the VW Group, together with Flavio Manzoni, director of creative design for the group, and Klaus Bischoff who is director of design for the VW brand. Ever since that first Up!, new products like the Golf 6 and the Scirocco, as well as concepts including the Space Up! have emerged from Wolfsburg and VW’s design centre in Potsdam, near Berlin. Now the BlueSport is the latest, a promising mid-engine two-seater sportscar which VW refers to as the return…

The future A1, arriving next year, has already been previewed in Tokyo in 2007 in the guise of the MetroProject Quattro concept. This was a compact, dynamic car with a decidedly sporty character, in spite of its hybrid mechanicals (a 1.4 TFSI petrol plus electric motor). The same powertrain has now been applied to a second, five-door body style, which debuted at last year’s Paris motor show as the A1 Sportback concept. “This is not just the same car with two more doors”, says Audi brand design chief Stefan Sielaff. “The characters of the two models are different. The three-door is sporty and exuberant while the five-door is more grown up, with more structured surfaces. They are both typical Audis, but they only share the face and a few components…

The annual event dedicated by Michelin North America Inc. to futuristic projects of professional and aspiring designers – offering them generous exhibition space on its stand at NAIAS in Detroit – is now in its eighth edition. The topic for 2009 was “Brave + Bold: America’s Next Iconic Vehicle”, offering a glimpse of the future of the American automobile. The majority of the cars proposed embodied the typically strong, determined style that has always defined fast cars from the other side of the Atlantic: which are showy, powerful and even a little crude. And while aesthetic canons may evolve, there is always a distinctive and recognisable American feel shared by cars from the past, the present and even the future: and this was precisely what the challenge called for, to…

Even more powerful, sporty and exclusive than before – the new Quattroporte GT-S takes the already impressive performance of the Quattroporte S and its 4.7 litre V8 engine to new heights. The power hike – from 430 to 440 bhp – is not the only difference, however, as other changes include lower suspension, specific transmission management software and a new exhaust system producing a spine-tingling engine note. On the extensive test route from Modena – the birthplace of Maserati – to Ravenna, across the twisting roads of the Valli di Comacchio, the new car demonstrated how its dynamic road manners are its greatest strength. The revised suspension, with stiffer springs and ride heights lowered by 15 mm at the front and 11 mm at the back, rewards an expert driver…

From Getz to i20 – Hyundai renews its B segment offering with a model sharing only the five door hatchback configuration with its predecessor. Everything else has changed, from the dimensions – now slightly larger – to the style and the interior. Built in India in both three and five door variants, the i20 was designed in Germany by the Rüsselsheim research and design centre, which injected the car with a definite personality. Measuring 3.9 metres long, 1.7 wide and 1.4 tall, the front is given character by a large lower grille, a slender chrome strip containing the badge and the large headlights. The flanks are dominated by two swage lines, with the lower line ascending and the upper line descending toward the tail, creating an effect that lends dynamism…

Gabriele Pezzini is one of Italy’s most internationally prolific industrial designers. How did your relationship with Hermès begin? Totally by chance, after an initial ‘informal’ meeting (by which I mean that nobody was thinking about a future working relationship at the time) during the Milan show in 2003, where I was presenting my exhibition entitled Il futuro della produzione (the future of production). The natural way in which our relationship started fully reflects the way in which both Hermès and I approach work – with great humanity, placing particular emphasis on communication and quality, and understanding the longer time frames involved. Now, after a number of special projects (such as the Hélicoptère and Bugatti Veyron Fbg), our relationship is more structured: my role is to keep the different skill sets…

Il momento dello stile Many businesses will remember the year that has just come to an end as the beginning of harsh times, with dim prospects for the future. There are some, however, that buck this trend and see the past year as a turning point in the growth of their business. “2008 was an extremely good year, with financial results that far exceeded expectations, giving us the means to face the year 2009 with confidence, in spite of the recession.” It is unusual to hear such enthusiasm in these times, but Domenico Morali, CEO of Tesco TS since January 2008, has the numbers and remarkable results to substantiate his words. “This March, we’ll be ending the fiscal year with a turnover of around 20 million Euro and a handsome…

L’essenza del design scandinavo A flowing coastline, the silhouette of Viking longboats and the cool image of crystal clear waterfalls: Steve Mattin could not complain about inspiration when he initiated the new Volvo S60 concept design, in March 2008. The 45-year-old Brit who came to Volvo in May 2005 had already put his signature under some of the most recent Volvo designs, the XC60 in particular. But this S60 should be seen as his first all-out attempt to create a new Volvo design language. Mattin did not throw out traditional Volvo design values. The grille, the strong shoulders and the overall coolness are still present. But the overall expression in the S60 is a far cry from the original (and very successful in its day) sturdy and rational Ikea look…

The new logo should already be news in itself, with the classic double chevron acquiring softer forms than before. But the new direction announced by Citroën goes much further than that, even beyond the scope of the original new aesthetic course embarked upon by the marque some years ago, as clearly demonstrated by models such as the C5 and the C3 Picasso. The French brand is changing its very mission, returning to a path more in tune with its history, a history that has created the image of a carmaker capable of making products that are a little bit special, and always slightly left-field. It is doing so, however, without ceding to the temptation of retro – such as a revival of the 2CV hypothesised by some observers after the…

How many wheels will the KTM of tomorrow have, how many different user types will it appeal to and, most importantly, where will it be able to go? Will it still have its wheels firmly planted to the ground, or will it ply the seas and take flight? To answer these questions, the Austrian motorcycle maker proposed a project to the students of industrial design at FH-Joanneum in Graz with the curious title: “2, 3, 4 or no Wheels”, a precept beginning with two wheels (familiar territory for KTM), takes a look at solutions with four wheels – a genre already explored in recent projects such as the X-Bow – and then even considers possibilities with no wheels at all. The objective of this exciting creative and conceptual challenge is…

A few years ago the conviction was widespread that car styling would undergo far-reaching changes with the advent of new environmentally friendly power units. Now that these have actually arrived in production models, which also vaunt features such as roominess, flexibility of use and aerodynamics, the shape doesn’t look much different to that of tried and tested architectures. A recent example is the Honda Insight, a “hybrid” vehicle heir to the 1999 model of the same name that is expected to appear on European markets between March and April. This is a 4.39 m long “segment C” designed and produced in Japan, which offers a 2 box/5 door layout with teardrop profile and cut-off tail. It is inspired by the hydrogen-powered Honda FCX Clarity (on sale this year in Japan…

“Beauty will save us” “Beauty will save us”. The challenge for Leonardo Fioravanti began on January 16, when he took over from Lorenza Pininfarina as president of the coachbuilders’ group of ANFIA, the Italian motor vehicle manufacturers’ association. His lengthy experience with Pininfarina and then in the Fiat group (including Ferrari), before he founded Fioravanti Srl in 1988, made him an obvious candidate for the job. For Italian coachbuilders which, Zagato and Touring aside, are all linked to the city of Turin, these are indeed hard times, and we have already seen the first casualties of the recession. So what happens next? “The recession will make the industry go back to the true values of the car – something that Italian coachbuilders are well versed in. I refuse to believe…

Prove di controffensiva Will the Geneva show manage to bring a minimum of optimism back to the shattered motor car scenario after a really uphill start to the year? As ever there is no lack of new models, even though debuts are increasingly focused on production models, while the number of research prototypes has fallen. Exceptions are a number of proposals from the coachbuilders, including a hybrid coupé prototype penned by Italdesign Giugiaro and the study by Fioravanti, determined to keep the lid on things right to the end, while Magna Steyr have developed a new electric car concept. In segment B, the spotlight is turned on the new Polo, the first Volkswagen production car to be entirely designed according to the brand’s new styling language. Meantime Citroën are giving…

“We are the first constructor to break the virtual barrier” claims Citroën with pride. The truth is more complicated, however: the GTbyCitroën show car presented at Paris is in fact a successful fusion between the real and the digital. It was created in a joint project between the French marque and Polyphony, the software developer behind the Gran Turismo 5 driving simulator for the Playstation3. Before the GTbyCitroën appeared on the stand at Paris flaunting forms unashamedly inspired by the virtual world, it had already been seen in the 50 million copies of the game sold worldwide. The fact that the car on the Play-station is propelled by electric motors powered by a fuel cell producing no harmful emissions at all has very little to do with the reality of…

For the layperson, the creative process involved in the designer’s job can be quite difficult to grasp. How can a car’s inception begin from the idea of a fish (such as the extraordinary Mazda Senku concept from 2005 by Atsushiro Yamada), of a snow-covered dune on the shores of the North Sea (the dash of the current Volvo S80 conceived by Jonathan Disley), of a Swedish island on a sunny summer day (Stefan Jansson for the exterior of S80) or of a lion with gaping jaws (all Peugeot designs from the past few years under the stewardship of Gérard Welter)? But that’s how it is: if you are ever given the rare privilege of being allowed into the inner sanctum of a design studio, you will find a mind-boggling collection…

“Every moving object accentuates its own dynamism, but in this case the magic is more evident and created by precise styling choices.” Carlo Bonzanigo, design director for the C3 Picasso project (design story in A&D no. 172), was rewarded by a general sense of approval for his team’s latest creation during the test drive in Spain of the new Citroën Space Box, which is built in Trnava and goes on sale in April. This is a compact monospace that interprets the brand’s well established tradition with fresh new concepts, deliberately breaking away from the typical ovoid form of its large sibling, the C4 Picasso, in favour of a ‘dynamically cubic’ image, softened by rounded corners. This effect even extends to the imposing, highly sculpted front with just the right hint…

While the name Colt remains, the latest generation of Mitsubishi’s B segment model introduces substantial – not to stay radical – changes over its forebear. The new generation Colt picks up from where the previous version, launched in 2004, left off, and draws significantly from the Lancer. So in the most recent chapter in a story that began with the first Colt in 1962, the compact, cheeky MPV image makes way for a more dynamic look, emphasised by different dimensions that make the car longer, wider and lower: specifically 3.88 – 1.69 – 1.52 metres for the three door and 3.94 – 1.69 – 1.55 metres for the five door. The style was developed in Europe at the Trebur design centre in Germany, headed by Masaki Matsuhara. The result is…

Created between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the city became a place for a pleasant stroll and a landscape open to the citizen, the park bench offered a vantage point from which to admire Nature that was no longer viewed as hostile. The design of the bench is therefore very different from that of a chair, as it is intrinsically linked to urban settings or public parks. In modern times, the concept of sitting down in the city is something to be rediscovered and reinvented not simply in terms of function but also from a cultural perspective, to explore, for example, how people would make use of and feel comfortable with a contemporary bench in a historical city centre. Starting from this precept, the architect and designer Riccardo Blumer…