Auto Design

SPD STUDENTS’ LOOK INTO ALFA ROMEO FLAGSHIP.

What will be the look of the next Alfa Romeo flagship? The car that will lead the return of the Italian brand to the U.S. market sometime around 2011.

The students graduating this year from the “Scuola Politecnica di Design” (SPD) of Milan, worked on the question with the support of the Alfa Romeo designers and following the direction of Mario Favilla. Recently they have presented their work to a selected audience, among which was Lorenzo Ramaciotti, vice-president design for the entire Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) and Maserati.

Fifteen students, from all over the world, have presented nine scale models, showing a fair degree of competence and passion but a conservative approach and few innovative ideas.

Whether the outcome has more to do with the briefing and the orientation of the project or the concern of each student to please their tutors or the industry is difficult to tell.

The point remains that students seems to hesitate to really focus on innovation and the expression of their own vision. If they have a vision. They seems not capable to break the mould, starting from questioning the definition of flagship, of Alfa Romeo, of an exotic, Italian, Sport Sedan, up to thinking of a new architecture and new proportions before actually working at the body shape and sculpture.

Alfa Romeo is going back to rear wheel drive with their next generation. Cars need to get much lighter. Alfa Romeo is returning to the U.S.A. and has got to become more global, aiming at China, India, Russia as well. Well, I do not see any visual reference to this “vision for the future” in the scale models presented. Did Alfa Romeo keep for themselves those benchmarks? Did the students fail to understand their importance? Did Lorenzo Ramaciotti scooped new talents he would not let go to the competition, beyond any of these graduation works?

If Ramaciotti was enthusiastic about what he saw at the Master Degree presentation in Milano, he did not let it be seen. His comment on the program was cool: “rather than the works of the students I think it is interesting to maintain a relationship with the design schools. The works of the students reflect the input from the school, their teachers and their own understanding of what is expected from them”, said Ramaciotti in a short telephone interview.

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