Innehållsförteckning för No. 213 från AUTO & DESIGN

«For the future historians, will the twentieth century be the age of the automobile? In this world where the evolution of transport and communication is becoming synonymous with survival, it may well be that the DS, born in the spirit of the Citroën research centre in the very heart of our century, will become the undisputed symbol ». This is what Robert Opron (French designer well known for his long career at the Citroën style centre, student of Flaminio Bertoni and author of cars like the SM, GS and CX) wrote twenty years ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the DS. Two decades on, his analysis remains accurate and surprisingly topical. Forty years after its presentation to the Paris public, some think that everything has been said and written…

For Volvo, safety is not just a synonym for equipment, research, technology and respect for the law. It is a value inherent in the brand, a priority that determines the final product right from the early stages of its design. The importance of safety in the story of Volvo has distant roots – more than 50 years ago – and standards have been very high at all times. It was 1959 when the Volvo PV 544 proposed three-point seat belts as standard, a world first, and it was in 1964 when the first experimental seat for child protection made its appearance on the same car. As a pioneer of safety, the brand has continued to focus on the issue to the point of achieving higher and higher quality standards in…

No carmaker can neglect current European crossover SUV trends. But for designers today the challenge is to define a unique brand identity for this upcoming type of multi-functional car concept. As did Alejandro Mesonero-Romaros, design director at Volkswagen’s Spanish subsidiary Seat, which we already knew was about to enter the SUV segment in the compact B segment. That 20V20 concept debuting at the last Geneva auto show, was however more than a pre-production study for a second Seat SUV, but rather a surprisingly advanced message for the future. To be more precise, the 20V20 refers to a possible production version of the model around 2020, as the model’s name implies. “The 20V20 is different,” Mesonero-Romanos says. “It shows Volkswagen’s precision mindset, but with our design principles applied to it. Simply…

For many of its participants, the Autostyle-Design Competition organised by Berman from San Benedetto Po (Mantua) together with Auto & Design, has been a dream come true. While still an informal gathering of experts in 2004, Autostyle soon became a unique car design event, with students from international schools submitting their proposals, created around a specific theme for each edition, to key figures in the industry: making it easier to discover new talents and offer them a fast track into the professional world. Many participants of Autostyle now work in design centres: from the 2006 edition, the Bulgarian Miroslav Dimitrov is now an exterior designer at Jaguar/Land Rover, while the Hungarian Tibor Juhasz works as an exterior designer for Volkswagen. The Turkish Emre Husman, a participant in 2008, is now…

Training is a fundamental and indispensable step in the path taking a new graduate into the professional world, and an increasingly more critical experience in the life of a young creative talent. For the past five years, the SPD Design Polytechnic has been smoothing this transition for students with its Master’s Course in Transportation and Car design, organised in collaboration with the Volkswagen Group, in which students create projects for mobility applications with a multidisciplinary approach, and are immediately given the opportunity to come into contact with the style centres of real world automotive brands. This year’s edition saw the involvement of Ducati, Audi and Lamborghini – the latter a traditional participant in the initiative. The project with Ducati, conducted in collaboration with the design centre in Borgo Panigale, called…

There’s an air of perfection about Ingolstadt’s most way-out, highest performing creature. Starting from the new, pointed hexagonal front that seems to be cut into the metal in a structural approach where grille and air intakes become guidelines for shaping the volumes. “Communicating constructional precision was one of the project’s formal objectives, on the leading edge of brand language”, confirms Andreas Mindt, head of Audi exterior design. “We know exactly how to introduce this language right down to the last single detail. On the last TT, the aluminium bonnet was innervated by two grooves which, at their shallowest point, were just 2.5 mm thick: exceptionally low for a metal that is so difficult to machine. The R8 has taken a further step in this direction”. Compared to the original 2007…

For Giorgetto Giugiaro it is “the only true example of a car outside the box, impossible to imitate”; for Walter de Silva it is “a masterpiece that goes beyond the car”. Few vehicles have been mentioned as much as the DS when designers are asked what is the most extraordinary model in the history of the motor car, and which car they would have liked to have designed. In the Design section of the Turin Car Museum, the DS is indicated by most of the Italian creatives represented there: Marcello Gandini, Leonardo Fioravanti and Aldo Brovarone in addition to De Silva and Giugiaro’s. “I was a young designer when the DS came out in 1955”, remembers Brovarone, “and I was struck by how innovative it was. But then the French…

The advanced design centres play a strategic, structured role in the complex world of the Volkswagen Group. Two of these are based in Germany and are headed by Alessandro Dambrosio, Walter de Silva’s assistant for Group exterior design and head of Interbrand Projects. A fortyone-year-old from Milan, Dambrosio is head of the Konzern Design Studio at Braunschweig, not far from Wolfsburg, and since last year he has also been running Konzept Design Studio München. This is dedicated to Audi brands (Audi, Lamborghini and Ducati) whereas the former works for the remaining brands of the Volkswagen group. A challenging task, then, that of Dambrosio who, however, insists on telling us what goes on in the two style centres, above all “to highlight the quality of my teams, guys who work with…

“Seventies Style - The Jet Set is back” was the theme chosen as inspiration for this year's edition of the Villa d’Este Concours d’Elegance, which was interpreted by BMW Group with two all-new concepts, one with four wheels, the other with two. With decisive, dynamic forms and equally bold vivid yellow paintwork, the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage (photo above) celebrates one of the brand’s icons – the BMW 3.0 CSL from the 1970s. “With our Hommage Cars, we express pride in our origins while simultaneously illustrating the importance of the past for our future” said BMW Group Design chief Adrian von Hooydonk as he unveiled the car together with BMW brand design director Karim Habib. The German brand’s other world premiere revealed at the Concours was conceived by Edgar Heinrich's…

Car design was one of the key themes of the Barcelona International Motor Show, with a large space dedicated to the topic within the historic expo pavilions of the Parc de Montjuïc. Within this space, a replica (in reduced scale, naturally) of the Seat Design Centre, and a reproduction of the process behind the creation of the Seat Leon, let visitors witness how an automobile takes shape from the idea born in the designer’s mind, to become a prototype sculpted in clay and, eventually, the finished car. The exhibition also offered visitors the chance of a close encounter with past and present luminaries of automotive design, and with some of their creations. In all, the exhibition presented 25 figures – with an informative panel dedicated to each – whose pencil…

A car with plenty of space, but without sacrificing the sportiness that station wagons often have to do without. This was what Kia wanted in the Sportspace, the concept presented at Geneva which, on one hand, prefigures the architecture and style of the Optima launched a few weeks afterwards, while on the other, hints at the design and formal language of the imminent utilitarian variant of the Optima. The key to the project is in the name itself: Sportspace, which expresses how the two elements ‘sport’ and ‘space’ coexist in the car designed by the Frankfurt studio under the guidance of Gregory Guillaume. “We wanted to define the character of this D segment station wagon”, explains Guillaume. “By analysing the market, we saw that there are two main trends. On…

At first sight, it’s easy to dismiss the Mercedes GLE Coupé as simply Sindelfingen’s answer to the BMW X6, but you’d just be starting an elliptical argument, as you could just as easily ask if the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer is an answer to the Mercedes B-Class, and how many of the world’s big brands have proffered their own interpretations of the 4-door coupé genre invented by Mercedes itself ten years ago with the CLS. Exterior design director Robert Lesnik has a completely different explanation - saying that the GLE Coupé launched at Geneva is nothing other than a new iteration of the CLS theme, which has already spawned a shooting brake variant. “The greenhouse is practically the same as on the shooting brake. The only difference – he…

“Taking our inspiration from the tradition of the former Vignale coachworks, we wanted to create a superior product, targeting customers who want to combine the latest technology with artisan attention to detail, all in a premium car with a strong personality.” This is how Claudio Messale, Exterior Chief Designer at Ford, talks about the new Mondeo designed by Vignale, which will have the unique characteristic of being entirely hand-finished by a dedicated team at the Vignale Centre in Valencia, Spain, where each car undergoes 100 further inspections in addition to the customary strict quality checks given to all Ford models. The most striking feature of this exclusive model is the use of luxury skins – such as smooth, soft Windsor leather – for the upholstery, hand-finished and overstitched in contrasting…

At Kawasaki they like to impress. It was the end of the Sixties when the Akashi manufacturer presented its 500 H1 Mach III, energetically encouraged by the American importer. A personal line, three-cylinder 2-stroke 60 HP 500 cc engine with a distinctive hissing sound, 190 kph, 0-100 kph in 4 seconds and a strong liking for doing wheelies. Performance unthinkable for the time and highlighted by the Mach III signature, namely three times the speed of sound. In 1971, this model was joined by the even more powerful H2 750 SS Mach IV (again three cylinders) which was widely acclaimed. And when anti-pollution laws sanctioned the end of two-stroke engines, these bikes became a legend. A legend that lives on today in the new Ninja H2R, a true concentration of…