Table of contents for No. 243 in AUTO & DESIGN

There are design objects that symbolise an era. Iconic shapes that become an aesthetic reference point for the future, as long as they avoid nostalgic evocations. This is an endeavour in which the Fiat designers have succeeded with the New 500. “This model was born in 1957, but we’re only at the third generation, each one representative of an era”, explains Klaus Busse, head of design FCA EMEA. “Such a wide arc of time means that the social context in which a vehicle fits is also considered. In 1957, the 500 represented the democratisation of mobility. The second generation, in 2007, expressed pop culture, the colour, the customisable car. With today’s 500, a new era begins - that of the electric vehicle”. It’s a complete change in pace in which…

Karim Habib still has a lot to discover about living in South Korea. Named Senior Vice President of Design for Kia last 1 October, he had just moved to Seoul with his family when the outbreak of the pandemic confined everyone to lockdown. We reached him virtually by connecting to the almost deserted R&D centre of Namyang, in order to glean his take on a new present and a future strategically outlined until now. “I’ve only been here a few months, spent at home for the most part, but I’ve been truly impressed by what this relatively small country has been able to create in the last few decades. There’s a strong spirit of innovation, a lot of ambition, and, above all, a very global vision. Tradition is always present…

Moray Callum, Vice President Ford Design, Todd Willing, Ford Global Design Director and Joel Piaskowski, Ford Design Director Cars and Crossovers, examine the same model at the same time and discuss the changes to be made before freezing a design that will shortly hit our streets. A routine operation that could be taken for granted except that the three Ford design directors are many kilometres apart, each confined to his own home by the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. “A piece of magic made possible by new technologies, in particular virtual and augmented reality”, says Moray Callum. "To continue working smoothly, we decided to recreate authentic virtual reality workstations in our homes. You just need to put on the headset, grab the joystick and there you go". Using this equipment, designers can…

In the early 90’s the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Aprilia from Noale in the province of Venice was surfing the wave of success, churning out innovative scooters for a booming market. It was then that "il patron" Ivano Beggio, whose dream was to create an eternal design icon of his own like the Vespa or the Fiat 500, commissioned the French star architect Philippe Starck, to create a new motorcycle. For the biker Starck it was his first project in the world of two wheels. "Compromises were considered blasphemies", Beggio wrote in his autobiography, and the engineers went mad before the almost impossible task of developing an extremely compact motorcycle with organic, round shapes. The rideability of the Aprilia Motò 6.5 was a victim of this because of the unfavourable position…

The missed Geneva Motor Show 2020 will remain the symbol of an epochal stop. Nothing will return to precisely what is was before this planetary “reset”, which has sparked a complete revision of priorities. “In this long pause spent at home, we realised how much there is that’s superfluous in our lives”, Giorgetto Giugiaro observes. Giugiaro does not hesitate to define the period we are living through as a “tragic time for humanity”. We have focused on new primary needs, following less frantic rhythms, getting closer to nature. We will always need the car, Giugiaro continues, but even this needs to be reimagined. “The car ended up mentally imprisoning us. We loaded it with meanings, with how we wanted to seem, and with increasingly precious and costly features. We haven’t,…

The new Jaguar F-Type is, essentially, the child of technology. To make it even sportier, they’ve given it a bigger grille (“A beautiful mouth”, says Julian Thomson), but this touch, with a definite visual impact, was made possible by reducing the space occupied by the light units. These are “of a type”, Thomson specifies, “that the technology of 2013, when this series was created, didn’t permit”. Narrower and more streak-like, the headlights give the vehicle - both the coupé and the convertible - a more modern look and make it appear wider and lower, just as the tail lights - which are also the product of new technology - lighten the tail and help accentuate “the Jaguar’s rich sporty tradition”. This second series of the F-Type is the first Jaguar…

When Renault wanted to showcase the versatility of a new dedicated electric vehicle platform, it decided that one car was not quite enough. Instead, Renault’s design team created the Morphoz, an “expandable” concept that combines an agile urban mobility device with a comfortable long-distance tourer. “We were basically designing two cars at one time,” said Marco Brunori, who was responsible for the exterior of the Morphoz. The Morphoz can grow from a 4.4-meter-long compact car, with a short-range and lightweight 40 kilowatt-hour battery pack, to a 4.8-meter-long grand tourer, capable of traveling up to 700 kilometers on a single charge with a supplemental 50 kilowatt-hour battery and expanded leg room and cargo space. Small motors extend the front end just behind the front wheel wells, creating space for the larger…

The health emergency has inspired us to rethink our lifestyles, from the way we work to the way we live. Three professionals help us with our reflections. One of the hot topics of the moment is the digital role in new design scenarios. The future will be more and more “phygital” as Gianmario Volpi, founder and CEO of Studio Volpi (Varese, Chicago, Shanghai) confirms. Volpi lived through the emergency working with Chinese clients right from the start. “Digital technology is now proving its worth and we can learn to take even more advantage of it when we develop new opportunities with the Internet of Things and virtual reality in sales and commerce”, he says. “With 60 employees, several business units and international customers, we have had to reorganise ourselves by…

Surprising spaces often emerge in the universe of agricultural machinery, as though inviting cutting edge technological innovation: the specificity of the field of application, together with the training and professionalism of those who use the vehicles, leads to a willingness on the part of designers to imagine advanced solutions, equal to the challenge of user requirements. This prospect reaches its zenith of excellence in the latest creation of the CNH Industrial group, the STEYR Konzept, expressly devoted to the study of as yet unexplored scenarios and awarded, not surprisingly, the 2020 MUSE Design Awards for the Concept Design category. “It was a very exciting development experience”, says David Wilkie, Head of Design of CNH Industrial, with satisfaction. “We had already worked on futuristic prototypes in the past, but this time…

Walter de Silva, whose life has been dedicated to car design, has actively lived through the lockdown period imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic. He’s had one thought in his head: finding new ideas and solutions for simplifying public and private mobility. “This pandemic has, in reality, accelerated a necessary process of change. Whoever lives in the urban environment, is well aware that moving around is extremely frenetic and complicated. Cars are always bigger, public transport always more crowded, and finding parking spaces, even with car sharing, is, at this point, an endeavour”, as de Silva describes it. It’s a revolution that begins with the study of certain values like that of “slow motion”: the concept of a more relaxed mobility in which slowness is not seen as the denial of…

From ancient Egypt to the car of the future, from fabric for the clothes of the Pharaohs to sustainable material that can even replace carbon fibre for certain car parts. We are talking about linen, which makes its debut in its new role on the Precept, the concept car with which Polestar - Volvo's electric business unit - expresses its intentions. The issue of sustainability is one of the main elements for this car that was to be presented in Geneva, but not the only one. There are, for example, seats covered with a fabric derived from plastic bottles, but also details in cork and others taken from fishermen's old nylon nets. "We don't need chrome, wood and leather as premium symbols," says Maximilian Missoni, head of Polestar design (as…

Close to five metres long, strictly classic in its three-box architecture, forms at once restrained and sumptuous: all the attributes of executive mobility are to be found without ifs or buts in the DS 9, the great French saloon. “This is not only our brand’s flagship, it is also the product earmarked to represent the prestige and quality expertise of the entire Peugeot Group. That's why our design effort has been truly extraordinary”, explains Thierry Metroz, head of design at DS. “The reference market is China, where European-flavoured long wheelbase cars are particularly popular, but the aim is to appeal to an elite clientele all over the world”. With premises like these, the challenge was to blend an impact of unquestioned lineage with the brand canons already expressed in other…

The eagerly-awaited, annual appointment with the Salone del Mobile has been put off till 2021. It is too soon to draw any conclusions - how furniture design will react to ongoing problems will only really be clear next spring - but what is certain is that our relationship with the idea of home is changing. The home is becoming a place for comfort-driven innovation, especially now that more and more activities are being concentrated within people’s own spaces, as is the case with remote working. Desks and suspended worktops, chests of drawers and containers, even partitions transformed into furniture, are therefore all useful for the purpose. We make a virtue out of necessity: our homes have been transformed into offices, new scenarios have been created. The dining room becomes a…

“Our design choices are underpinned by functionality and efficiency. That’s the big difference in the creative approach between our world and that of the car”, says David Wilkie, Head of Design at CNH Industrial. “In the automotive sector, how styling evolves is often dictated by the need for aesthetic renewal, experiments with new architecture or a market driven by eagerness for novelty. In our sector, this ongoing pursuit of a new look is not a necessity, but rather the cutting edge of technology and research in the field of sustainable propulsion that we exploit as an opportunity to design increasingly modern, attractive products". “A concept gives us free rein as far as the usual technical and engineering constraints are concerned and we are able to propose strong and even somewhat…