Car Design Fetish

Local Motors, that perky little automotive startup that we’ve been reporting on for the last year(ish), has just announced a vehicle interior design competition for their upcoming Rally Fighter vehicle.  The Rally Fighter will be the first vehicle the company produces.

The competition asks designers to create a purpose-built interior for the off-road vehicle, focusing on the basics of what the vehicle needs rather than a plethora of features.  The prizes? A nice $2000USD, $400USD, and $200USD for first to third winners.  The competition runs until Tuesday, 3rd March 2009 (two weeks from today) and voting will be open until Tuesday, 10th March 2009.

Full press release after the break.

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It has been a little while but that just makes it sooo much sweeter.  A new round of Sketch P*rn is here to satisfy your sketching needs.  So ease into your Monday and enjoy this dose of inspiration!

Here are some great examples of the quick and dirty marker sketch.  Simple gray tones with a shot of sky.  These are gerat descriptive sketches.  Click next for some more…. Read the rest of this entry »

Here we go again.  Another BMW that objects to being put into any class of vehicles.  Is it a sedan, crossover, station wagon, maybe a really long hatchback?  Maybe just a squashed X6.  Pretty soon BMW will be able to offer vehicles in 2 inch increments rather than the amount of doors or ground clearance.

Anyway, here it is, Chris Bangles last touch on BMW.  This lifestyle vehicle know as a PAS (Progressive Activity Sedan) is Bimmers newest attempt at creating a niche vehicle proportion.  The X6 was their first attempt at this and is a pretty impressive vehicle if you actually get a chance to see one on the road (not too many here is the D).  It is great to see energy put into tweaking the norm as we know it and try to create a proportion that although may look awkward at first could become the new standard.  Think of Mercedes CLS “4 door coupe, horrible headroom, ingress, egress for rear passengers, but it is the newest and greatest thing.  Every OEM is coming out with one.

Is this a success?  Read the rest of this entry »

Our friends at ID Sketching have posted a great interview with Rob Jensen, the Ford designer responsible for the 2009 Shelby GT500, among some other great vehics.

Jensen speaks a little about his background and some of his projects, but the real meat of the interview is based around the Design process at Ford.

Have a gander by clicking the header or following the link!

(Images courtesy IDSketching.com)

The hottest of last years trio is showing its production skin.  Voted by the public as the clear favorite the Chevy Spark will hit Europe next year while making us wait until 2011.  The Beat concept car had a great fun aspect to the design and could really help reach out to the youth market, much more so than the current Aveo.

We were excited to hear that the Beat, now Spark would make it to the U.S. and at first glance thought they did a great job bringing it from concept to production.  The Camaro concept did a great job growing from concept car to production.  I believe the Spark could have been a bit closer to the concept Beat.  Take a look at what has changed and see if you agree.

It may look like Madden went crazy with the red ink, but we still think this car has potential.  We were just surprised that when you looked beyond initial preception, how much has changed.  Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, Classic & Sports Car magazine paneled a group of legendary designers to discuss (and choose) the world’s most beautiful, sexy, all-encompassing sportscar of the ages.  The gaggle of designers included Giorgetto Giugiaro, Leonardo Fioravanti, Peter Stevens, Marcello Gandini, and Ian Callum in what must have been a truly raucus night of design debauchery and mayhem.  Oh, the Prismacolors that were burned that evening!

The vehicle they chose?  The classic Citroen DS, known for its “tub” assembly methods and frequent appearances in classic films of the 50s & 60s.

Runners-up included your general assortment of Ferraris, Lotuses (Loti?), and Lamborghinis, as well as a few surprises.  Classic Rallies has the full scoop.

(Courtesy Classic Rallies by way of Core77)

Local Motors is going on a Mid-West tour.    They will be visiting Lawrence Tech and College for Creative Studies in Detroit February 10th.  After that will be stops at The Cleveland Institute of Art on the 11th and Art Institute of Cincinnati on the 12th.  This will be a great chance to see what they have to offer the automotive world and for you to ask all those questions of how they are going to do it.

—Lawrence Tech from 11-1

—College for Creative Studies from 2-4

CDf will most likely be at CCS and then hanging out after with the LM crew.  Be sure to check it out and put some faces to all those screen names you see on the Local Motors website.

Ford is one automaker who seams to have things on track.  At least they are making us think that.  Knowing that the big oval is planning on bringing many of the Euro models over (Kuga please) is making us all very excited.  Well here is some more excitement for you in speculation form of course.

Could this be what the new Focus will look like?  Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so the site has been on hiatus for a few weeks.  Work has been tough dodging lay offs and dealing with the stress of the times.  We have been trying to nail down a new look (hence the random theme changes) and think we have it.  There are still some items to tweak but this is it.  We also have some new features we will be launching in the coming weeks.  So stay tuned.

This new look also signifies the start of our 3rd year bringing you design from the mouths of designers.  We hope you enjoy the new look.  Feel free to give us any feedback and let us know if there is anything you would like to see on CDf.

Thank you all for the support over the past couple years!

-Car Design fetish Staff

In a bit of breaking news Chris Bangle, head of Design at BMW, has quit.  Well, more like “handed over his role” to successor Adrian van Hooydonk as Director of Design at BMW Group.  Bangle, best known for bringing about the design & styling renaissance at Bimmer, was instrumental in coordinating several of BMW’s key automotive successes.

Born in Ohio and raised a Wisconsin lad, Chris Bangle graduated a Badger (UofW) as well as from Art Center College of Design.  Bangle is famous for his work in introducing “flame styling” to BMW, a radical approach that turned many a diehard Bimmer fanatic on his (or her) ear.  The most famous of which are the Z4 and the BMW 7-series.  However, his successes far outpace these few missteps, as he helped orchestrate a direction for BMW that many are envious of these days.

Bangle will be doing his own “thang” for a while, as he plans on leaving the auto industry all-together (at least for the time being).  And, with the state of the industry as it is, who can blame him?  He’s still rather young, energetic, and a visionary that any Designer would love to work with.

Chris, we’ll miss you in the 4-wheel world.  Keep in touch.

Full press release after the break.

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