When GM product czar Bob Lutz speaks, we tend to listen.  When he gives his take on the negative comments about the Volt’s styling, we sit up in bed, panting and sweating.  Well, not really.  We do find it rather interesting that he felt he had to reply, though.

In a recent article on his FastLane blog, Lutz speaks about the recent wave of “that ain’t the Volt we saw at teh auto showz” and “boy, that sure do look like a Prius” comments floating around.  Specifically, Lutz mentions:

The vehicle’s design has come under some criticism, most of it, to me, unwarranted. The challenge to the designers wasn’t to design the most beautiful car imaginable and accept the compromises you have to make to do so. It was, make no compromise to fuel efficiency and electric range, and then do the most beautiful design possible, around those aerodynamic dictates.

In other words, “form follows function”, something that we Designers know all too well.  The Volt we saw almost two years was the vision vehicle.  It was the aesthetic direction that GM wanted to take in the production version.  It, like all concept vehicles out there, is not gospel.  Very rarely do we see a production vehicle look identical the concept it was birthed from.  In fact, GM’s OTHER milestone vehicle (the Camaro) captures the concept fairly well.  The reason?  Well, it’s because the concepts are based on production specs and are almost ready to hit the road, minus a few things here and there.  The Volt, on the other hand, was an idealized concept.  A vision for a technology that was still four years away.

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This week’s Web of the Week is NetCarShow.com, a website devoted to automotive images, wallpapers, and high-res galleries.

From their own words:

NetCarShow.com offers thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers. All makes. All models.
Classic cars, muscle cars, exotic cars, supercars, everyday cars…

Much like SeriousWheels.com, NetCarShow offers thousands of images, broken down by make, year, and more.  Apart from professional benchmarking sites (such as A2Mac1) this is the best you’ll probably get in terms of high-quality auto images.

We don’t know if you may of heard about it, but General Motors just introduced some car that runs on eeee-lectricity. Yeah, crazy… we know.

The Chevy Volt was birthed too much hoopla recently, and with it came love and hate for its styling, design, technology, and price. We attempt to take a look at this milestone vehicle from a Design perspective with writers Dalibor, dshed, and Ramkey.

Feel free to bring out the red pencils and play along.

EXTERIOR

dshed: At first glance this is not a bad looking car. The only big distraction is the massive A pillar. The side mirror arm and plug-in detail look thin and fragile, especially next to the thick pillar. The visible door cut on the pillar makes the door opening look almost square and visually no rake to the windshield. Since this is an aerodynamic masterpiece, that means the form of the body is pretty lame. Hence the attention to details.

Ramkey: It’s a good looking car for sure…but it’s not the concept.  Is it original? No.  It looks too much like a Prius especially the rear portion of the green house.  In fact it is a little reminiscent of the old Subaru SVX from the rear.  You remember? The one with the double windows?  The headlight styling is also very Acura like.  Though the car looks good, it’s still a mutt as far design originality goes.

Dalibor: I tend to think that this vehicle could be cleaned up SLIGHTLY, and it would look even better than it does now.  At first I agreed with Ramkey: The vehicle was a departure from the Volt concept of yore.  However, I think that as a Prius-fighting sedan this holds its own Design weight.  It retains styling CUES from the original, but is now almost a different vehicle.  Perhaps they (GM) can market this with a sub-heading, such as “Volt EX”, so that the original Volt concept’s image remains pure.  The side swoop detail was lost from the concept, though.  Perhaps they should eliminate it, or rethink it for the ACTUAL production version.

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Here it is, Team First Blood going down with glory as the People’s Curse does it’s thing.  This years curse was supposed to allow all of the different teams access to the oil fill hole which they could put whatever they wanted to in it while it was running.  Nuts, bolts, bananas, anything until it blew.  But the engine died moments before the team was notified of the looming curse.  How else could Rambo go down with all the glory?

So Team First Blood requested they get their own time to destroy their creation.  A few minutes were granted and aided with sledge hammers.  Damage was adequate but not enough to have reason to leave the truck at the track.  The intent was that the curse would finish off the truck.  So the big can openers came out and finished the job.   The truck would become a convertible in a matter of minutes.   What a bitter sweet ending.

Check out the footage of how Rambo and his race truck were put to the grave.

I have watched a lot of automotive interviews and this has to be one of the funni=iest.  Grand Master (GM) Lutz is always owning the show when he speaks to the press but he is finaaly outdone by Mr. Colbert.  It is great seeing Lutz humbled and speachless.

Some info on the upcoming Volt, this was not said verbatim by Lutz but he made it pretty clear.  The Volt will not lay a sweet patch, or get you laid, but it may win you a lady with a big patch.  And if you can’t afford to drive your Hummer, then you can use it to charge your Volt.

Check out this video, it is worth it.  Thanks to Autoblog for posting it.

(Source: Colbert Nation)

With autoshow season just around the corner, and vehicles debuting all the time, it can be difficult to write about each one as a definitive opinion.  Our little website oftentimes spews very differing opinions from the minds of each of our writers.  As Designers, we can’t help but have our own opinions about Design.

We at CDF decided that we owe it to our readers to present a true critique of some of these vehicles, with comments from 3 of our writers, much in the style of a traditional Design school (or productive Studio) crit.

Think of it as a written podcast: each of us will have our say about a vehicle, hopefully coming to a relatively sane conclusion that you may (or may not) agree with.

We hope you enjoy the new feature.  The first vehicle?  Oh yeah, that Volt thing.

Background rendering by Coroflot member David Fearnley.

If you are in the mood to enter a hot car sketch competiton and Local Motors takes up too much time here is the answer.  A 1 hour design challenge hosted by Core 77 and judged by VP of Chrysler design Ralph Gilles.  Sounds as if Chrysler may be looking for some help.  So do a video capture of your 1 hour sketch and compress it into a couple minutes proving that you really only took an hour.  It is hard to say you don’t have time for this one.  You have until the 28th to submit.

The article is below and here is the link to Core 77.

Cars are a huge part of our lives. They not only drive us from point A to point B, they drive memories. From that first road trip with the crew to losing our virg…er…keys, we have a long standing love affair with our automobiles.

In honor of this cultural icon, we’re stepping it up a notch: We want to see you put to paper the sickest ride you can dream of. Seriously, we want to SEE you do it. This 1HDC is more than just a 1 Hour Design Session. To be eligible you must video tape yourself spilling your ink and your soul into this one. We will then ask you to compress that one hour down into a 2 Minute Video and post it, along with an image of the final rendering, for the world to see.

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We’ve got to hand it to Renault:  those crazy French owners of Nissan (okay okay… “strategic partnership”) have some of the most eclectic new designs and concepts in the industry.  Always pushing the bill, they often bring out great creations (like the Megane concept).

And so, at the Paris show this year, they are set to debut the Ondelios concept.  The vehicle, while not extremely attractive, is also not extremely unattractive.  Therein lies the Design merit: the vehicle as a concept contains several interesting features and resolutions, while wrapped in an awkward egg-shaped body.

Quick hit review after the break. (In other words, read on for more pretty pictures.)

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The gallery is up of Team First Blood.  Check out the pics of the truck and the carnage that it endured.  I will post the video from the People’s Curse award tomorrow.

First Blood Gallery

Another great 24 hours from this years Lemons race.  Team First Blood definitely blew away the competition with our Rambo Chariot.  The theme was well appreciated and received a lot of props from the other teams.  Sadly though no other teams really created a theme for their vehicle.  This really made First Blood stand out, that and the 3 foot long gun pointing out the rear of the truck.

With the arrival of Hurricane Ike in the mid west, rain was predicted 100% for the weekend.  When we got to Toledo Speedway the entire pit area was under water.  Almost everything was flooded.  This was going to be a long weekend.  Within seconds we were soaked to the bone.  Luckily around 3pm at the start of the race the rain stopped.  We had assumed this would just be a temporary thing, but the rain held off for 24 hours.  How perfect is that.  Not until the awards were be given did the rain start again.  I actually got a little sun burned on Sunday.  Every where around us had non stop rain with high winds and even tornadoes.

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