Sadly I have not visited a motor show myself for many years, and Paris 2016 is no exception. I have of course been closely following coverage. The French are truly stealing the show, with the Renault Trezor concept an outstanding example of showmanship and the Citroen C3 proving to be the production car highlight of the show. The Germans seem a bit lost, especially Audi. Reveling in their tiny advances in production techniques (see an earlier post) is not something the public can appreciate easily (Apple have similar issues) and the visual language seems to be moving backwards. Skoda now appear to make and design better Audis than Audi. So this post is titled because of the small cars that are making big news at this show, one of which was underwhelming! The Volkswagen I.D. Concept is a little bland and ordinary, but such is the way at the conservative manufacturer of the Golf. Compared to sticking with their 1974 template, the I.D. concept was clean and smooth and tidy, but uninspiring. Three newly launched production cars impressed. The Opel Ampera-e is a very tidy little electric car design, with outstanding technical features. The Nissan Micra has suddenly been dragged into fashion with Infiniti brand-esque curves and swooping surfaces, a real shock! Finally the Citroen C3 takes cues from the outstanding Cactus C4, with its air bumps and urban utitily chic. So Parisien! I include these rear end comparisons though….. just look at that lower bumper area. The Opel seems to have parts stuck to it from a 1994 Corsa. Why? What are these multiple extra (cheap) lights for? Is this US regulations? It’s also sold as a Chevrolet. The rear ends of Micra and C3 are minimalist and quite wonderful in comparison.
Please note! Photos are not mine…. thanks to Autoblog, and AutoExpress
Filled my diesel car up. This is the range remaining. An electric car can’t do this, but…. then I drove 2km round trip to local shops and back home. Any electric car CAN do that no problem at all! In fact- I should’ve walked (an extra km was used to drive to the cheapest petrol station).
A good electric car like a Tesla is an iPhone compared to a Nokia (in 2007) It’s faster, more powerful, better in every way- but doesn’t last all week. Look what happened to Nokia. Same fate awaits fossil fuel powered cars.
Here is the new Gumpert Apollo Arrow…. which is one of the most perfect examples of why you should always hire a good car stylist to design your new car! Compared to the original Apollo, it has the same function, but improved styling. That is car design.
As an automotve design teacher, this is possibly one of the best and most important articles I’ve read recently. I have urged all my students to read it, this is the future we are entering, and it sounds very interesting and exciting. Vehicles will still need designing, and even private vehicles will continue to exist for recreational and non-urban use.
By the time you read this maybe this car has actually been launched, or maybe not. I suspect not. It’s vapor in my opinion, which will never be put into production (mostly because it can’t be engineered as it is). The design is a mess, poorly photoshopped together based on other mid-engined designs (Bugatti) and the packaging has been ignored in terms of driver/passengers visibility. This design could work perhaps, with some tweaks and development carried out by a trained designer (please speculators, hire professional car designers!). I couldn’t resist very quickly showing a few form tweaks that improve the design instantly. See my hastily hacked together GIFs below. The proximity to April 1st launch date is the biggest clue on this however…. so let’s see in a few days if it was all a hoax. Oh and this is how to design a proper hypercar.
edit: So the New York show has been and gone, and this car did not of course appear. Meanwhile, here’s a scruffy mechanic in a shed- who has bashed together a supercar. Styling was “a little bit ‘o this, and a little bit ‘o that” in the mans own words!
2015 is the year that our first Vehicle Design students will graduate. To showcase their skills they collaborated on a project led by a professional car designer. The project gained recognition in the automotive design world, being featured on Auto&Design Facebook page and kickstarting a lot of local press attention too.
Time for some design trend analysis. This started as a small observation of a certain car, but as usual the observation seems to apply to so many new cars this post has expanded hugely. Trends spread fast in the automotive design world, and when one large corporation owns many brands it can infiltrate across the range very rapidly. In 2014 VW showed some design concept cars that exaggerated a styling theme developed by more than just their own brand. Then in 2015 we have seen ever more extreme versions, but Audi seem to have slowly grown into this particular theme, only to abandon it perhaps with their latest styling statement. Brands such as Infinity and VW are using it to maximum effect, but who did it first? The usual answer applies here and that is BMW of course. Let us start to analyse the technique I am writing about.
the “pinch” surface
The VW Cross Coupe GTE concept displays a large number of pinched feature lines among it’s surfacing design. Around a similar time, a chance encounter with a new model VW Passat spurred my interest in this design detail. I noticed that the Passat had a very pronounced pinch shaped feature line, but the Cross Coupe has 4 of them along the front wing!
The pinch I noticed in real life…4 defined ridges, or pinched surfaces.
So this got me thinking about the history of this feature, about it’s function. The technology involved is fairly new (in car design terms) and involves a deeper draw for the steel stamping tools that make car panels. The stylistic function is to create a shadow, and of course a strong highlight, to clearly define the shoulder of the car. The reason this feature has become popular I believe, is because cars are getting larger and customers demands are for more interior space. Cars must be packaged to be squarer (with less 3D form) but aesthetic demands are high and customers want drama, speed or just that difficult to pin down “sportiness”. A blocky shape gives limited scope to “sculpt” the surfaces inwards, to design broad shoulders. Any angled surfaces reduce interior space, or make a car wider (too wide). Good car styling has come to rely on great light/dark contrast. A flat sided car panel does not offer this. Early days of using an undercut gave a subtle clue as to why this feature has made a comeback. A VW Passat is a great example as it has class leading interior space, simply huge, but has fairly ordinary external dimensions. To maintain a pleasing design, the designers must deploy some tricks.
BMW established a long tradition of very handsome saloon cars, the E28 5-series is a great example. On this car we can see a small, but very effective undercut. This is the early days of the pinched bodyside feature. It gives a nicely angled (to the sky) upper shoulder, with a shadow emphasising the lower bodyside, and of course a strong horizontal feature that lengthens the whole car, adding elegance.
BMW M5 E28 undercut
Fast forward 20 years or more, and BMW under Chris Bangle really set the formula for current car design, so of course the revival and exaggeration of that undercut began with his BMW 1-series of 2004.
BMW 1-series pinch surface
This has been much copied… but let us move along to where we are now, with the help of Audi and their slow evolutionary approach to design. This helps us see progression, in one vehicle.
Audi A6 Avant pinch evolution
As is the way with Audi design, the technique here is subtle. You may need to zoom or enlarge the image above to see the profile shapes that the green lines describe. I have used the Avant version of the A6 to show more clearly a horizontal shoulder, without a c-pillar to blend into the rear wing. We can see from the very first A6 that the high and solid shoulder feature is part of Audi DNA. The surfacing is very simple, and quite soft in radii at changes of direction. See how the upper facing shoulder blends into the main door profile, then it very steadily curves towards the sill. The only negative curvature comes where the flared wheel arches extend from the main body surface. Next (silver car) we can see a small but significant tightening of the radii and surface definition. The 2nd generation A6 shows a sharper shoulder edge, and slightly more flare to the entire body (flare, like flared trousers). The sill position is further out, and the wheel arches have grown wider too. This car shows exceptional definition of the previously developed form language. A minimalistic and sharply defined design. Onto the 3rd generation and Audi are at this point trying to inject a little more dynamism and sportiness into their cars (oh dear..). They do this by going wide and low. The 3rd gen car is very wide and surfaces flare a lot towards the lower body. The door protecting body side strip is now out of fashion (and we all end up with dented doors?) and the sill is emphasised by being body colour (glossy, not matt) and the door surfaces actually waist inwards. The really significant, but very subtle update here is the “pinch” or crease, or more accurately an undercut appearing on that core shoulder transition line. Can you see the very small undercut there? A negative curvature surface, under that main shoulder surface change. The wheel arches are getting very flared now, like a sportscar. So this is the fashion, across the entire VW group in fact, for emphasising surfaces and their transition points (light/dark highlights concentrated) with a “pinch”. The latest Audi A6 is again evolutionary from the previous version, but the key part that has grown, is the pinch! That undercut has grown from being not just under the shoulder line, the radius has been drawn out from the bodyside because the shoulder surface above it is now negatively curved. The surface flows negatively (concave) into the base of the windows. This 4th gen (and 3rd) also has a subtle trick on the wheel arches, where the edge is again pinched to emphasise that edge as “sharp”.
Insanely sharp surface edges!
The Cross Coupe at the top of the post has so many of these as I mentioned. Other car companies are doing this and using it to very dramatic effect. Meanwhile, Audi chose Geneva to continue previewing its future design direction with a Prologue concept car. This features razor-sharp surface radii, which seem to have backtracked slightly by using the “pinch” technique very very subtly in order to express sharpness. Concave or negative surfaces flowing into those edges are very subtle too. We don’t yet know if Audi will be able to mass-produce (metal stamp) these insanely sharp creases. Let’s hope so, as it’s a very nice feature.
So to talk about other companies following the form trend of BMW, Audi and VW we can take a look at a few concepts recently displayed by Infiniti and Chevrolet. Infinity and Lexus/Toyota are using sharp creased surfaces as important parts of their design language. The Infiniti QX30 concept crossover coupe is the latest (and almost production spec) design that shows their designers love affair with the very sharp body crease or pinch as we are calling it here. Just look at that edge that runs through the door handle. Amazing! Here is Detroit’s latest design that uses the same surface treatment. The Chevrolet Bolt electric plug-in hybrid vehicle. The pinch line forms a strong part of the cars shoulder line, as it does on the VW Passat but this time the form continues on into the rear lamp shapes.
Finally we can return to a VW group design product, which was announced in 2015. The new Skoda Superb. It demonstrates a dramatic example of the concave, negative shoulder surface (looks nice above the front wheel arch) that pinches into a sharp crease, with very strong and deep undercut for the side surfacing. The aim here from Skoda seems to be about giving the impression of flat surfaces that intersect sharply. They are aiming for a “creased” look to their cars and non-design savvy public are picking up on this prominent design “message”. This use of concave surfaces reminds very heavily of Bangle’s E61 BMW 5-series, from 10 years ago!
(EDIT) Some industry insider info has been passed to me recently- and it is a fact- that this very sharp crease (or draw in the panel stamping) is patented VAG technology. No other manufacturer currently has this extreme level of sharpness available to them. Very interesting, and no surprise that all VAG brands are making use of this design advantage.
Well there we have it, watch out for the “pinch” effect on other cars. It really is very common, across cars from all brands and all market segments. To end I will add a gallery of images that formed the basis for this article.
I created this image board quickly to explain the design process to my students (vehicle design students, who are currently aiming for stage 3). Using excellent press released images of the CX-17 concept design, from the Jaguar design studio, we can see the stages of sketch and design development quite clearly. These are genuine drawings from before the car was created in 3 dimensions. Often released design renderings are created in post, from photography of the clay or even final production 3D models. Many thanks to Jaguar Design for making these available.
Yes.. I know that the CX-17 was a “concept” car, but the F-Pace production version is unlikely to differ much from this image.
