Auto Design

Those of you who read Car Styling magazine might have been puzzled by my report on the Geneva motor show published in the latest (and last?) issue of the magazine.
For some mysterious accident that are more common in the printed press than you can image my text was cut and mixed up. For a more accurate reading and for the records I am publishing here the original text. Just as a sign of respect for my readers.

Official statistics show that the latest and 80th Geneva Motor Show set a new record for “premieres”, with as many as eighty “new cars”, or so, unveiled for the first time there. Now, considering the space in the magazine is not growing with the number of new cars at motor shows, let’s go straight to the point and answer the usual questions: how was the show this year. What was relevant and worth recording for the years to come?

First I would say that I saw more irrelevant, disappointing or irritating cars (read designs) than interesting and attractive ones: be for their design or their lack of innovative ideas/concepts. A short list includes the Aston Martin Cygnet,  Renault Megane CC, Renault Wind and Toyota Auris.

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PEUGEOT RCZ

Back from holidays, I am facing great difficulties sitting back to my desk and go through the news to report, possibly in a sensible order. The sun is hot, the wind is fresh,  the sky is blue, the air is clean. Outside. What am I doing in my hole with a keypad and a monitor challenging me?

In addition, there is too much to report but nothing new to make “the news”. It is business as usual. Read the rest of this entry »

In a brilliant move, designed to anticipate all speculative scoops, Ferrari has unveiled today its plan for the introduction of their new Ferrari 458 Italia. The new high performance two-seater supercar will be first unveiled at the Frankfurt’s IAA motor show in mid-September. The company will be taking “advanced booking” but the car will go on sale late this year. Read the rest of this entry »

According to some reports, Stile Bertone has stated that it plans to accept up to ten orders for their Corvette ZR1 Mantide “one off”, each carrying a price tage of 2 million dollars. That is some 1.6 million euros, just 0.1m euros higher than the price Jason Castriota mentioned when I talked to him at the Villa d’Este Concorso a couple of weeks ago. The add-on is probably the price of the full-optional ZR1 serving as the starting point for their job. Read the rest of this entry »

The Concorso d’Eleganza di Villa d’Este this years has been as good as the weather. That is to say that half of it was very good, with peaks of excellence, and the remaining half was bad, raining and boring, with touches of ugliness.

 By the end of the elegant week-end on the Lake of Como, one would say it was not one the best edition ever but still offered enough interesting cars to look at, people to greet and talk to, and subjects to discuss.

As such it was one not to be missed. Those who did not attend it missed the extremely rare chance of hearing the sibilo and smelling the pollution of its turbine engine, not to mention seeing this extraordinary visualisation of the dreams about the cars of the future they were dreaming in the fifties and sixties.

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The all-new website http://www.insideprojectm.com/ is proposing today to “be a part of the top secret world of car design with Jason Castriota” by joining what it is called “Project M” (for Marie Jeanne Bertone?). However, at least at this time, there is not much about the project itself but a short video summing up the history of Nuccio Bertone and the independent design company he founded under the name of Stile Bertone.

The first comment from a “navigator” identified by a yellow Miura and by the name “dogeared” was: “The video was pretty good a bit fancy pants for my taste but I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the episodes.” Read the rest of this entry »

The new Ferrari California attracted enthusiastic attention wherever it has been presented so far. How could it be otherwise? The California is two supercars in one but its development required more than twice the commitment that every new Ferrari commands. Yet, its design has been the most challenging task in years. Read the rest of this entry »

I.de.a. Institute Era for the Geneva Motor Show.

 All mouths are kept shout in Turin about what the Italian coachbuilder will be showing at the Geneva Motor Show, early next month, but it is already clear that Fioravanti, Italdesign and Zagato will be showing a world-première whereas Idea and Pininfarina will be displaying something “deja vu” but further developed. Pininfarina will take its ultimate development of the Bolloré Zero electric four door, four seater, all-round-city- sedan in new colour scheme and with a more sophisticated interior design. Read the rest of this entry »

The news is not official yet, but within the designer’s circle of Southern California everybody seems to believe that Jason Castriota – a past student of the Art Center College of Design – will be the new director of design of Stilebertone.This would be confirmed by the fact that Castriota visited the Los Angeles Auto Show and attended the Automotive Designers Night there with Mr. Roland Martin, Sales and Marketing manager of Stilebertone. They travelled together from the Ghangzhou Auto Show to Long Angeles and if two plus two equal four, one has to come to the conclusion that Castriota has not resisted the temptation to take the position that Giorgetto Giugiaro, Marcello Gandini and Marc Deschamp had before establishing their own consulting businessIn a recent interview to our publication, Teresio Gaudio, CEO of Stilebertone has anticipated that the company is expanding its design potential with addition of three new designers and a new director of design. Jason Castriota, the most talented designers of Ferraris and Supercars in recent years. Castriota is credited for the design of the Pininfarina Maserati Birdcage, the Maserati Granturismo, the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano and P4/5. Most recently the Pininfarina Rolls-Royce Hyperion “fuoriserie”.Born in New York from Italian parents, Jason went to Pininfarina for a working-stage from Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California, but after the planned “semester” he did not return to the U.S.A. He wanted to stay at Pininfarina and learn by actually designing cars. At Art Center, Castriota was a student of Ken Okuyama who later became his boss at Pininfarina.The Pininfarina design studios in Cambiano are regarded by hundreds of designers as the “Best design school in the world”.

It has been a long way.

It has been a long and twisting road to reach the actual design of the California, as we have seen it at the Paris Motor Show. If it were so easy to create a stunning Ferrari by Pininfarina, the world would be fully of look-alikes.

It has never been easy to design a Ferrari, despite the fantastic simplicity of its shapes. Indeed the simpler and dynamic the shape, the more difficult it is. Not to mention the fundamental issue of the overall proportions of any Ferrari. As we now see the California, we can understand why the designers’ job this time has been more difficult than ever: they had to design two Ferraris in one and they had to fight with the heavy restrains of it overall dimensions and – even more demanding – the proportions established by its main design feature: the retractable hard top. Read the rest of this entry »