WSOP final table not foreign to Belgium’s Kenny Hallaert A November tour to Las Vegas for the final table of the World Series of Poker`s $Ten,000 buy-in No-limit Texas Hold `em World Championship is kicking off to become routine for Kenny Hallaert. A November excursion to Las Vegas for the final table of the World […]
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Our Legends are leaving us one by one – AUTO DESIGN WEEK IN REVIEW – Five/14/12
This week our hearts are saddened with the passing of a duo of legends. We also have news from the other end of the industry we discuss a duo of car design contests. After that we will have a stopover in Croatia, India, and China to discuss concepts, weight reduction, and flying and hovering cars.
Opel Rekord Schwarze Witwe (Black Widow)
One of the things we attempt to do with these posts is bring certain stories to you that you won’t find through normal fresh channels. Car Design News, Green Car Design and others do a pretty good job communicating the mainstream so we figured it would be better to map out the unusual and hidden gems of design. Yet, every now and then a story strikes that is so significant that we feel we should bring it as well. And this week that story is the passing of a legend, Carroll Shelby. I met Carroll once, at a SEMA demonstrate. He was walking around with an entourage, but still made the time to listen to me talk about what his cars meant to me growing up. Here are a duo of excellent articles about his legacy;
We lost not one but two legends in the past duo of weeks. Unlike Carroll Shelby, I never had a chance to meet Anatole Lapine, which is a shame because he had a fatter influence on me as a child than Shelby. It is funny that tho’ his obituary in Motor Trend I discovered he was responsible for a car that structured my childhood, the Schwarze Witwe (Black Widow). This Opel Rekord was the forerunner of one of my dearest street cars of all time, the Opel Commodore GS/E. Growing up partly in Germany and partly in North Carolina, I had an interesting mix of sports cars and NASCAR in my blood from an early age. Watching the races at Hockenheim I was astonished to see a Opel Sedan providing the Porsches a hard time – it is what turned me into a tin-top fan for life. If this particular Opel Rekord C is a bit obscure for you, perhaps you will identify better with a few of Lapine’s other creations, the 924, nine hundred forty four and 928.
From people who made their mark we stir on to people who will make their mark in the future. Pittsburgh Technical Institute recently sponsored a two thousand twelve Concept Car Challenge and North Hills Senior High School swept the top four positions. You can see pictures of all the entries here (better be quick to snap up this talent). Interestingly the theme was to design a vision of Plymouth, Pontiac, Saturn or Mercury for the two thousand fifteen Fresh York Auto Display. Do they know something we don’t? In case you are a student and missed the applications for that contest, here is one where they are looking for the next MR2 on the Toyota Nation forum. Just be sure to make your car look different from the entries already submitted and include pop-up headlamps (because the judge likes them).
Hot on the high-heeled slippers of the concepts from these contests come a concept from Croatia. Yes, you heard that right. Croatia now has an auto industry and they are not commencing at the bottom but aiming directly at Bugatti. The Rimac Concept_One is a supercar concept that features four electrified motors with a whopping 1,088 horsepower (journalistic note: any horsepower number over 1,000 must be proceeded by the word “whopping”). But even more awesome that the Trio.Two 2nd 0-100km sprint time is the age of the designer. Designed by Mate Rimac, who is just 24, the Concept_One is not some concept car mock-up or rendering, it is real, as this picture demonstrates. Kind of makes me feel a little inferior considering at the age of twenty four I was having a hard time just landing a job.
If your petite team of designers is fighting to finish your concept in time for the next autoshow, perhaps crowdsourcing is a suitable solution to getting the ideas and work done. Volkswagen managed thirty three million visitors to it’s website to suggest over 100,000 ideas in the past eleven months. The result is this hovering car, unluckily the movie is not in English. But you can check out these other reports here and here to learn more.
Since last month’s Fresh York Auto Showcase was the formal introduction of Terrafugia’s flying car and Volkswagen’s Hover car concept from Beijing’s Auto Display, perhaps it is time for a excursion down memory lane and looking at a few of the flying car concepts that didn’t fairly get of to the ground (thanks to The Boston Herald).
Articles about hovering and flying cars naturally bring up the issue of weight saving as does this article from The Detroit Free Press. Albeit on the interior side it seems that space is just as critical as weight, at least according to Michael Arbaugh of Ford. Bob Boniface from GM indicates that Carbon fiber is loved within the design community for its light weight (I am sure the fact it will permit shapes not presently possible is also a big benefit).
A recurring theme the past few months has been the influence of Chinese preferences on auto design. Larger rear seats and blue interior lighting are just a few of the Chinese market-specific wants that have switched the face of design. You can find out more in this Detroit Free Press article.
The Maruta Suzuki XA Alpha Concept is a Kia Soul-like SUV developed after months of market research in India. You car read the entire story on its genesis and introduction at the Delhi Auto Expo here.
