Innehållsförteckning för No. 238 från AUTO & DESIGN

For over 50 years, Brembo’s braking systems have been pervaded by a mix of technology, innovation and aesthetics, the latter aspect continuing to grow in importance as feedback from both customers and end users remains positive. At the Frankfurt Motor Show, Brembo made it even more tangible with the official launch of Brembo Stile, a unit whose mission is to coordinate product design activities with a view to making products even more uniquely distinctive. Brembo Stile aims to be a benchmark within the company to promote the convergence of aesthetics, approaches and methods across divisions, and to propose creative, new activities, combining the brand’s technological innovation Dna with the design of new aesthetic languages. At the same time, it is a reference point for customers with whom the company has…

Reinterpreting a model that was created in another part of the world implies a not always easy blending of different cultures. With the Karma GT, created by Pininfarina on the basis of the Revero electric saloon, however, fusion was almost going to be instinctive. This is partly because Karma, the young Californian brand, and the Turin styling studio, which have been working together for some years, have similar points of view on themes such as brand value, and partly because the two cultures share a feeling of mutual admiration: “For Californians, the European “dolce vita” is identified with Italy, for Italians the American dream is California“, says Carlo Bonzanigo, Design Vice President of Pininfarina and supervisor of the project. “It was a question of Italianising the car by merging the…

The Master in Transportation and Automobile Design at Milan Polytechnic celebrates its tenth birthday with an exhibition that surveys the work done in recent years. The exhibition opens with an area dedicated to the people - lecturers and students - who have attended the master course over the decade and offers an excursus on the projects of past editions, from the first two put on in collaboration with FCA for the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands, to the most recent editions done in collaboration with the Volkswagen group. Here, projects explore the many aspects of the theme "the future of mobility", from electrification to autonomous driving, from the potential of car sharing to the growing customisation needs expressed by users. Taking centre stage are the projects developed for the tenth…

The competition world has always played the part of technical and technological laboratory for the automobile industry. The progress achieved with race cars gradually spread to road models. It still happens today and not just with technical elements but also in terms of materials, shapes, and aerodynamic appendages. This becomes more evident when we talk about high performance production cars, which adopt numerous stylistic solutions that come from motorsports. They may have a precise function, or a purely aesthetic role. Let’s start with materials, which are, historically, the first to be transposed to road cars. The most famous and widespread is, perhaps, carbon. Incredibly light but also very strong, carbon is used in the creation of key components such as the frame (as is the case with the Alfa Romeo…

From the first glance, the clean and artfully muscular lines wink at those who love the crossover transposition of that pleasant dynamism once reserved for the Coupé. “While we were drawing, the mood-boards on the walls were telling the story of a positive customer, full of energy, but also a perfectionist and refined. Because of this, we sketched out optimistic shapes, full of character, without, however, slipping into aggressivity”, Thomas Morel, head of external design, begins. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the name evokes the light sporty note of the end of the 1990s. At the time, it was an expression of accessible and captivating hedonism: “When it was proposed, everyone was enthusiastic because it perfectly reflected the spirit of the project!” As strange as it might seem, the…

In the flashy explosion of interpretations that marks the crossover universe, by now the dominant type of car, it is always nice to encounter proposals that germinated within a less orthodox creative process. On that note, Grégory Guillaume, head of design for Kia, has a story that stems from a while ago: “When we began to design the current Ceed hatchback, we thought that a sporty three-door version would be introduced to the range, as had happened for a previous model. Then we realised, quite suddenly, that cars without rear doors did not meet with the same appreciation that they used to, so the manufacturing plans changed quickly. At the same time, however, the image of the brand gained in dynamism: we definitely couldn’t imagine renouncing the idea of a…

For its product range that we will see some time in the future, the Chinese car brand Venucia is preparing a veritable technical and stylistic revolution along the lines of the concept car "The V", presented at the last Shanghai Motor Show. The underlying aim was to create a new design philosophy for the brand characterised by some hallmark elements, such as the vertical grid surmounted by the brand logo that the Venucia designers call V-Galaxy, which makes the front solid and majestic. "The other features are inspired by the concept of 'Solid with tension aesthetics', which stems from Chinese Taoist thought and consists of developing a formally compact, sleekly balanced body”, says Taiji Toyota, Venucia chief design officer. The V design combines simplicity and technology to create overstep quality…

“Who among you, having parked your car, turns and looks around for it? I still do with my first 1989 Miata”. Tom Matano, project head for the design of the first-generation MX-5 (Miata in the USA), has always loved Italian cars. “I have had a Lancia Beta Montecarlo, a Fiat X1/9, a De Tomaso Vallelunga, and many other ‘Made in Italy’ cars”, he tells us at the celebrations for the Japanese roadster’s thirtieth anniversary. Details that are a lot more than just details: “With the MX-5, I wanted to create an ‘open air’ car that had all the best features of Italian cars: compactness, practicality, and lightness. It had a pure form, minimalist, elegant lines, two seats, and a soft top. And there you have it”, he remembers, smiling. “The…

Some cars are before all else stories to be told. The BMW Garmisch is one of them. In its short and mysterious first life, this elegant coupé designed by Marcello Gandini for Bertone was presented at the Geneva Motor Show in 1970 only to disappear from the scene immediately thereafter. Since then, its traces have been completely lost and legend has it that it was even destroyed, leaving as the only evidence of its existence a few photographs faded by time. It was these photographs that intrigued Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President of BMW Group Design, who decided to revive the car, faithfully reconstructing it in every detail. A tribute to the history of the German brand, as well as to a great Italian master of car design. "Gandini’s…

The new Corsa signals a multiple break with Opel’s past. Not only is it the first all-new mass-volume model Opel has developed under PSA Group ownership. It also redefines the concept of the compact segment’s design philosophy. “We have tried to break the recent trend of uniformity of the compact B-segment design language which was characterised by wedge shapes and relatively high architectures”, Friedhelm Engler, chief designer at Opel, said. “Instead we have channelled the trend in the direction of a lower architecture, as opposed to a SUV, but also in an attempt to make the Corsa look more upscale”. Engler’s team was able to achieve these goals for the new Corsa by starting from scratch, not least because Opel is now free of General Motors interference. After two model…

During the last Design Week, at Milan’s Volvo Studio participants discussed themes such as the future, the city, and innovation linked to the car. These discussions took place in conjunction with the official presentation of the Milano Future City project, in which the car manufacturer announced its participation. This follows a series of meetings that occurred last year and were concentrated on themes relating to the interaction between the car and the urban environment. It was a debate in which, among others, the architects Italo Rota and Andrea Boschetti took part. Boschetti, along with his studio Metrogramma, is in charge of the ambitious project (along with Mobility in Chain which is taking care of consultancy services regarding mobility and transport). They conjectured about solutions for Milan mobility that do not…