The auto-show circuit is a movable feast where automakers not only introduce new models but also concept vehicles, which are designed to solve problems, showcase new technology or work up excitement over future products.
For the last several years, DaimlerChrysler Corp.’s Chrysler division has introduced the most–and most talked about–concept vehicles. This year, General Motors Corp. showed five concept vehicles that created a buzz. And there was plenty of action from other automakers, including Nissan and Mercedes-Benz.
“What also delighted me is the fact that General Motors, after some years of abstinence, has finally come back in full force,” said Carl Olsen, chairman of the transportation design program in the Industrial Design Department at the College of Art and Design in Detroit. “Also it was showing probably the most adventurous of all the concept cars. It had the most visual invention.”
Last year Volkswagen’s Beetle captured the kudos of designers. This year it was Cadillac’s Evoq, the vehicle most often mentioned when top automotive designers were asked what they consider the most significant vehicles shown at last month’s Detroit Auto Show. Their own company’s cars were off-limits, of course.
In addition to Olsen, whose former students were involved in designing many of the vehicles, the design experts included:
David Hackett, executive director of Toyota’s Calty Design Research, Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif.
Peter Horbury, chief of design, and Jose Diaz de la Vega, chief designer for interiors, color and trim at Volvo Car Corp.
John Herlitz, vice president of product design for DaimlerChrysler Corp.
Tom Peters, chief designer for portfolio development for General Motors Corp.
J Mays, vice president of corporate design for Ford Motor Co.
Here’s what they had to say:
Cadillac Evoq
A luxury roadster concept
Hackett: “It was very sleek and beautiful. It’s actually somewhat mechanical, but it has a little more finesse by design. It’s a very severe surface, but the type of product it is–a two-door coupe–it has more grace and more tapering lines. It’s moving design forward.”
Horbury: “I’ve always liked the two-door Eldorado. It’s just a very pure design; they’ve taken the Cadillac style to a very successful extreme. Clean surfaces, simple lines, very high quality. It’s like a watch. You have a sport-utility style watch or you have the wonderfully thin elegant, slim sharp-lined elegance of a Piaget.”
Diaz de la Vega: “If you look at the image Cadillac communicates for the post-family group and the lifestyle of the post-family group, that’s one picture. But the picture the Evoq gives is a very modern car that could appeal to the younger generation.”
Herlitz: “The Evoq was the best from the standpoint of the organization of design elements, the gesture of the car, and the character for the Cadillac brand. If you look at the body side character line that dives toward the front wheel, it gestures the car very well, very aggressively; and it terminates very nicely in the wheel arch shape for the front wheel. All that organizes very nicely with the front end graphics, the grille shape and the headlamp shape.”
Mays: “I had a look at it three times. It was very modern. There was just enough Cadillac in the vehicle that they haven’t stretched beyond belief in the minds of the customer that it could be a new Cadillac. That type of design direction may work well for them in the future. It was very simple in its execution, very clear in its proportion and overall theme and very graphic. For that reason it had a clarity and modernism about it, which is probably one of the reasons I was attracted to it.”
Olsen: “The car I liked best personally–and this is true of many, if not most of my students–is the Evoq. One of the things that pleased me is that it is forward looking rather than retro. Although it had certain cues that identified it surely as a Cadillac, with the vertical tail lamps and the egg-crate grille, nevertheless its whole form vocabulary was very modern and very refined.”
Oldsmobile Recon
A compact sport-utility concept
Hackett: “It’s very severe; there’s no subtlety. That’s a plus, not a negative. It’s not trying to be so beautiful. It’s very mechanical; it hasn’t been carefully finessed. It’s reaching out and trying to do something different.”
Olsen: He liked “its overall freshness” and its “functional package.” “Having lived in Europe for so long it’s the type of car that appeals to me most. The interior was the most exciting interior in the show, far and away the most modern. The detailing of the seats was first-class aesthetically.”
Nissan Sport-Utility Truck
An extended-cab truck with four swing-out doors and a mini cargo bed
Hackett: “I like the functionality of the fifth door that pulls up from the cab so that it allows access from the cab to the bed so you can put in longer items. That makes it a very interesting vehicle.”
Diaz de la Vega: “I like it as a piece of industrial design; it’s a good interpretation. It’s very clean, youthful in character and is modern in form language.”
Volkswagen Beetle Rsi
“Super Beetle” concept
Hackett: “It shows that kind of design has a lot of flexibility, that you can add a lot of design to the basic Beetle to enhance it–big tires, wheel flares, a spoiler. You can make it more sporty or less sporty.”
Dodge Charger R/T
Four-door muscle coupe
Horbury: “They are using design cues from the original 1970 Charger. It’s a bit of fun.”
Diaz de la Vega: “That’s a good way to use the heritage of a company, but applied in a modern way with modern technology.”
Peters: “Growing up in the ’60s I was just under license age so I was really dying to drive a car like that and couldn’t because I was too young. Those cars exuded that kind of passion, change and no-holds barred mentality. I think young people are intrigued by that, and there’s an interest in old muscle cars and capturing, not verbatim, but the passion of those. The Charger does that in a new way. And the fact that it uses an alternative fuel system brings it up to date and makes it more credible than a gas guzzler.”
Olsen: “It was a very difficult car to do. The surfaces were very complex from a sculptural point of view. There are a lot of things happening on the car, surfaces and planes merging and disappearing. You can have it all fall apart and be terrible. You need very skilled designers and modelers to pull it off in three dimensions. I just admire the technical finesse and expertise that went into achieving that car.”
Dodge Power Wagon
A full-size luxury truck
Peters: “It’s hardy form vocabulary and attitude mixed in with product design. There’s an honesty about product design. You immediately understand the purpose or how it’s to be used. Like the fenders on the Power Wagon how it has the exposed bolts, with product design you’re thinking of maintenance. Things happen to fenders, and you need to be able to get at them to repair them quick. The elements of functionality and attachment become part of the overall aesthetic statement.”
Mays: “It evokes the overall powerful message of a work truck done in a very upscale, refined way in terms of its meticulous detailing. It had lots of nice details. It had a brilliantly executed brake and gas pedal, where you could actually see the indentation of a work boot, almost like the work boot had made an indentation in the mud and left the rough sole of the work boot in the brake pedal. It was a little bit of sense of humor there.”
Olsen: “It was a brutal aesthetic done with great sensitivity. That sounds like a contradiction but it was extremely well-resolved.” He liked “the sheer audacity of it as a design statement” along with its refined detailing. “For example, the louvers on the side of the engine hood were done with enormous care.”
Ford Thunderbird
A retro roadster
Peters: “There is a quiet restraint, an elegance about it. It’s going to wear well; it’s going to look good in any situation. You can just imagine that pulling up in front of a restaurant with the top off on a warm summer night, you know. You get images. It just gave me a nice feeling. Like when you hear a nice piece of music that’s not wild and flamboyant; it just really hits you. I think a lot of it is due to the subtle surface details.”
Nissan Z
Concept sports car
Mays: “I quite liked the reiteration of the Z car (240Z). I liked the front, the details on the hood and side window graphics, as well as the interior.”
Mercury my
An aluminum multiactivity hatchback
Olsen: “I liked my Mercury very much, the overall freshness of the forms. It was forward looking. It owed very little to anything else. The interior was very fresh, very youth orientated, just beautifully resolved in all the details.”
2000 Lincoln LS
Entry-level luxury sedan
Hackett: “It’s a nice size, and it has a cleanness about the body panels and an elegance to it. It has a very distinctive front and rear end. It has a nice clean, quality look to it.”
2000 Dodge Neon
Compact sedan
Hackett: “I thought they did a good job of redesigning the Neon. It looks more refined but still it has somehow kept the sportiness and youthfulness.”
Olsen: “That is a bread-and-butter low-priced car, and in the redesign they’ve made it look very much more expensive. Just visually the car looks like they could sell it for another thousand or two thousand dollars over the last car. That, as a design achievement, is no small thing.”
2000 Audi TT coupe
$30,000-$35,000 roadster
Hackett: “The compactness, the roundness and the cuteness of that car is very nice. There’s something about that car when I look at it. It’s a nice simple design, very compact and a very distinctive product.”
Mays: “It is still setting the standard for production cars, in terms of its overall detail, particularly on the interior. Nice aluminum fittings over the air vents, aluminum grab handles, aluminum detailing on the door releases and steering wheel. Just the overall attention to the jewelry of the vehicle that belies its price point. It was very well executed.” (Mays did admit, when asked, that he might have played a role in the TT in the conceptual stage, during his two stints as a designer at Audi. He said, however, that the final execution of the design was done after he left.)
Herlitz: “It’s a stunning product, interior and exterior. There’s a purism that goes with the old school of Bauhaus design. It’s very true to that, very geometric but nicely done. It’s not harsh. It’s geometric with a human touch.”
Olsen: “It’s a car that shows a very European but very rational aesthetic. I like that car enormously.”
2000 Ford Focus
Compact replacement for Escort
Hackett: “It’s an attractive little car. It’s a distinctive design without being too strange. It maybe has enough character to be good in all markets as a worldwide car; time will tell.”
Diaz de la Vega: “The Focus is the most significant car to come to the U.S. It will have versatility, and it will give Americans an insight into the efficient use of a small car. The small cars that exist in America are just appliances, small versions of big cars in which you feel very frail.”
Horbury: “I think Ford has been trying to introduce this so-called `edge’ look for some years over a number of models. At last it’s paid off. It’s also perhaps the most pure sheer surface, sharp-lined car that they’ve done.”
Herlitz: “I like it from a package standpoint. They have executed that car extremely well; the quality throughout looked very, very good.”
Peters: “Styling is right on (for a “world car” that can work in many markets); it has a purposeful, functional personality to it. What makes a car successful is it has a lot of personality and it is functional as well. And I think that car does it. It has a strong personality that people are going to be attracted to and that’s really important.”
Olsen: “I was very taken with the three-door hatchback. Very fresh, very original, very bold. I’m trying to convince my wife that’s what she should drive. She wants a Beetle. The proportions of the overall configuration are very contemporary. I like the details. I thought the glass areas–what we call the daylight opening–were very fresh and very exciting.”
2000 BMW X5
Hackett: “It’s definitely a BMW; there’s no mistaking it when you see it. I like the way they integrated the wheel flares into the body. It’s BMW on top obviously, and then it becomes more SUV down to the bigger wheels and wheel flares.”
Diaz de la Vega: “The dashboard is the first time ever they have had a friendly dashboard for the occupants. It’s well displayed to everybody. The perceived quality of it is good as well; in a way they have raised the stakes from the customer’s point of view.”
Peters: “It’s just a really well-executed machine. It’s purposeful. The interior is very nice, straightforward BMW. Again here you get some of that European product design, where it is very functional looking, not a lot of extraneous detail, textures and forms that don’t serve a purpose. It’s typically German.”
Ford Super Crewzer
A concept version of Ford’s newest commercial truck, the 2000 Super Duty F-650 crew cab
Herlitz: It builds on the formula that we’ve been working on with the Dodge Ram, where you take the design elements of the big over-the-road haulers and bring them down to pickup truck scale. It came off quite well.”
2000 Jaguar S-Type
An entry-level sedan
Herlitz: “Ford has been intelligent enough not to foul the Jaguar image. The car looks much better in person than in photographs. I like the reaching back to the Jaguar heritage of the 1960s, the old 3.8-liter Jags, which were wonderful cars. They were the only thing that could beat my mother’s ’59 Plymouth in a straight out race.”
2000 Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Top-of-the-line luxury sedan
Olsen: “A first-class piece of work. A great improvement over the car it replaces and just a marvelous self-controlled statement that exudes quality.”
1999 Chevrolet Silverado
Pickup truck
Olsen: “I like it because they used very modern steel technology to improve the product. It has a look that will last a long time as well. It’s a bit understated, and it’s the kind of vehicle that in 10 or 15 years time may look better than its competitors from the same epoch.”
