From the exotic to the mundane and downright bizarre, of the superabundance of car designs realized between the 1960s and now one pen stands out distinctly from the rest: Giorgetto Giugiaro. It’s an appropriately exotic name for a prolific man who radically rethought the external forms of a car, the way we enter and exit a vehicle and how we sit and drive.
Famous Giugiaro cars include the steel DeLorean DMC-12 mythologized in the Back to the Future movie and the Lotus Esprit S1 which morphed into a submarine in Bond’s Spy Who Loved Me. Long lean nose, slab sides, crisp edges, endless spans of top-hinged glass and always a hint of the space age, Giugiaro introduced an aesthetic often referred to as ‘polygonal folded paper’ design that has informed car design since the 1960s.
Equally important, though less obvious, were his interiors. Giugiaro introduced radical packaging concepts like top-opening windscreen doors, the idea of people movers and three-across front seating with the driver in the center. For a designer whose cars often provokes extreme responses, Giugiaro once said, “beauty comes down to mathematics. When designing a car you don’t start from emotions”. This is the story of the man named “Car Designer of the Century” by a panel of his peers in 1999.
Giugiaro was born in Piedmont, northern Italy, to a family of painters and artisans. His school artwork, which included car renderings, won him a job at the Fiat Concept centre, and then he was offered a position at the Bertone design studio. In a 2015 interview, the designer recounts how his career as a designer, rather than an artist, was fated.
“After four years (at Fiat)” he said, “I thought ‘I want to become an artist again’. I realized after years of being a mason within a crowd it would take years to become the architect”. But he also wanted money for a new set of skis, so when Nuccio Bertone met him at the 1959 Turin Motor Show and asked him to sketch a real car, Giugiaro obliged.
Drafted into National Service, Giugiaro drew at night for Bertone, working on what was to be the simple, beautifully balanced Alfa Romeo GT1300. At age 25 he designed the first Mazda, the familia van with similarly direct, well-proportioned lines to the Alfa but he also penned the sleek Iso Grifo with what became signature long, lean proportions. Giugiaro admired the way sharks and cheetahs “transform the concept of aggressiveness into harmony and speed”. First the Iso Grifo, then with his Maserati Ghibli and the DeTomaso Mangusta designs for design house Ghia, Giugiaro showed low slung, shark-nosed sports cars with gill-like detailing and lines that appeared cut with a palette knife. By the late 1960s Giugiaro had founded his own design house, Itadesign, and his shark shape had abstracted into a wedge that redefined the look of supercars in the 1970s and beyond.
Giugiaro’s “take no prisoners” hard-edged wedge aesthetic is known as his folded paper era. His detailing and packaging were no less futuristic than his forms: the 1968 Bizzarrini Manta concept sat the driver in the middle and a passenger either side, the 1970 Porsche Tapiro concept supports four gull wing doors off a central spine (similar to the upcoming Tesla ModelX SUV). The spectacular Maserati Boomerang concept pioneered a steering wheel integrated into an extruded console that sat in a formidable origami-like steel body with vast passenger “glasshouse”. Bonham’s European Auction House described it as “the first car of its time to create such a strong, angular style statement… considered by many to be one of the most remarkable designs of the 20th century”.
The Lotus, DeLorean, BMW M1 famously painted by Andy Warhol, and the hard lines of the Boomerang also translated to more utilitarian designs including a series of mid-70s train-blazing multi-purpose vehicles which showed the ability of “mini vans” way before other companies made them reality. This also influenced one of Giugiaro’s most poignant designs, the original VW Golf.
As an unparalleled risk taker interested in pushing technical limits, it was inevitable that some of Giugiaro’s creations would fizzle but then other concept proved functionally viable and stylistically futuristic. He designed skateboard chassis years before Ford, and cuboid city cars decades before the Kia Soul.
“I don’t look for decorative justifications,” Giugiaro said in an interview in 2012. “Form should be honest. I try to remove the superfluous and be harmonious; I strive for harmony in complexity. I know that I have to decorate the product, give it a characteristic and an emotion, so that it is not rejected by the market.” As for the professional marketers he said, “The consumer’s decision to buy is often instinctive, subliminal. I am not convinced that an aspiring wizard just out of school should dictate the dialogue”.
Part of a Giugiaro car’s appeal is its attendance to interior function. Many cars are a result of an external design team barely interacting with a separate team designing the interior fixtures and fittings. Giugiaro considers the car in its entirety so that the exterior reflects the comfort, functionality, visibility and space of the interior. His criticism of cars with rounded lines is the loss of space those curves represent. “Square lines and flat surfaces allow designers to use the inner room the best, both for passengers, mechanics and luggage”.
This year Giugiaro handed Italdesign over to Lamborghini Holding S.p.A, part of the Volkswagen Group. The designer is now officially retired but also works exclusively with the twelve brands in the Volkswagen Audi Group. At his estimation, Honda is the only major car manufacturer he has not worked with in his conjuring and crafting of more than 200 vehicles. In a nod to the future and recognition of his incredible design legacy the designer even has his own app on iTunes: the Giugiaro Timeline.
TO date, McLaren Australia has not been encumbered with a range of great depth. First there was the MP4/12C, which morphed into the McLaren 650S, available in coupe and Spider forms. And that was it.
The P1 hypercar was never imported, because the steering wheel was on the wrong side – despite plenty of expressions of interest.
David McIntyre, McLaren’s Regional Director for Asia Pacific, outlined the company’s plans for expansion during the Australian unveiling of the 675LT.
“The new Sports Series cars [540C and 570S] will double our current volumes.
“Whereas the Super Series models [650S and 675LT] appeal to the traditional Italian supercar buyers, the Sports Series are attracting buyers who’ve graduated out of German sports cars.”
Although current (P11) Super Series cars are slated to be replaced by an all-new P14 car, due to surface in 2017, expect the 675LT to be McLaren’s flagship production car immediately prior to that release.
“We’ll maybe bring these out once a decade. Customers buy these cars as investments and don’t actually want to see a new one.”
As for shorter term plans, “We may well expand the ranges [to include a three-tier line-up of C, S and LT models],” he said.
The Marketing and PR Manager for Asia Pacific, Geoff Tink, cast more light on McLaren’s progress.
“We’ve now got 90 dealers worldwide, with two in Australia [Sydney and Melbourne], with another opening in Queensland [slated to be Gold Coast],” he said.
When asked whether the more affordable Sport Series would cannibalise sales of the Super Series given limited production capacity, he admitted that there could be an element of this.
“This could occur to begin with, but we expect the market to level at 50 percent Sports Series and 50 percent Super Series,” Tink noted.
“There are anomalies in some markets. In Indonesia, for instance, we sold 14 cars in total. Seven of them were P1s.”
Then there was the thorny question whether McLaren’s Formula One travails dent the image of the company as a paragon of engineering excellence.
“It’s a short term issue that will have little effect on buyers,” said McIntyre. “People are seeing improvements on track, and as long as that happens, it’s not a problem.”
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AUDI could become the second manufacturer to test self-driving cars on Australian roads.
The German brand has revealed it is open to testing its highly advanced autonomous driving technology Down Under, in a trial similar to the one Volvo and the South Australian government will conduct in November this year.
Unmanned Volvo XC90s will be let loose on closed sections of the Southern Expressway in Adelaide.
Similar trials have been held by Volvo in the United States, Britain and Sweden.
Speaking to Wheels at the Australian launch of the new Audi Q7 SUV, which arrives in September and can steer, brake and accelerate on its own in city traffic, Audi’s local boss Andrew Doyle said he was open to testing fully autonomous vehicles here.
“Local trials make total sense,” he said. “I think the trials in South Australia are good and Audi as a company has already done many autonomous trials across the world in Europe and North America.
“So I’m open to having this discussion locally. There’s an opportunity for us to that in the future for sure.”
“The beauty of autonomous technology is that it’s already here and cars like the new Q7 are making the transition into a driverless world so much easier,” said Doyle.
“Things like cruise control, active cruise control and lane assist are already progressively bringing the public into the world of autonomous driving. But while autonomous technology is proven, it’s going to take time for the legislation to catch up.”
The murky legal and ethical issues surrounding autonomous technology were thrown into sharper focus recently when three Google employees were injured when their self-driving Google car was rear ended.
“This is a topic that needs to be discussed more in a local context. And that’s not a criticism, because there are some very important issues to discuss about responsibility in the event of an accident,” he said.
“But there probably needs to be a gathering of the minds, that’s the main thing. We need to get all the experts in a room to identify all the key issues from an ethical and legal perspective.”
When asked which Audi models could be used for potential Australian testing, Doyle said any Audi variant could provide the test bed.
“When it comes to certain models it’s not about the cars we are testing, but the technology. I know it’s being discussed [autonomous trials] at our head office in the European context … and we’re becoming very much a global world so many things are easily transferable into this marketplace,” he said.
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BMW will front up to the 2015 Concours d’Elegance on Pebble Beach, California, this month with the newly revealed 3.0 CSL Hommage R Concept.
The car reintroduces the Hommage concept BMW served us earlier this year, however it now wears a new livery that copies the 3.0 Coupe Sports Lightweight racer BMW Motosport entered in to the American IMSA series in 1975.
It also welcomes a new mesh-style grille, as opposed to the earlier concept’s vertical slats, and its 21-inch wheels are now finished in matt gold.
BMW has also redesigned the interior with a pure driver-centric focus.
Meanwhile the driver’s race suit is said to contain illuminated piping in its sleeves to “show the progress of information”, for things like gearshifts, that will travel from the steering column to the helmet visor.
Up front remains the twin-turbo inline six that’s assisted by an electric unit.
The new Hommage R Concept will be rolled out at the Concours d’Elegance this Sunday.
BMW has unveiled the M4 GTS concept ahead of this weekend’s Pebble Beach car show.
While a concept in name, the GTS appears to continue BMW’s recent tradition of showing a production-ready car, then simply adding ‘Concept’ and denying any plans for production.
The most obvious modifications are to the exterior, with a carbon-fibre bonnet, driveway-scraping front splitter and massive rear wing.
The lightweight forged rims are a half-inch wider at both ends and an inch bigger at the rear, the wheels now measuring 19 x 9.5-inch at the front and 20 x 10.5-inch out back, wrapped in trick Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rubber 10mm wider front (265mm) and back (285mm).
Water is pumped from a five-litre tank in the boot and then sprayed as a fine mist into the intake plenum, which has the effect of reducing inlet temperatures, in turn allowing more boost and compression to be run, increasing power.
BMW is keeping mum on any figures, but word is that around 350kW/600Nm is well within the realms of possibility.
Of course, extreme care must be taken, as should the water not be evaporated sufficiently, it will enter the combustion chamber with potentially catastrophic results, however the system has been tested in the M4 BMW uses as a MotoGP safety car.
We’ll bring you more news if, or should we say when, the GTS Concept becomes a production reality.
Audi has announced today that its forthcoming RS3 hyper-hatch will cost from $78,900.
That’s $3100 more than its closest rival, the current Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG, though pricing has not been confirmed for the updated A45, due late-2015/early-2016.
Until AMG’s pocket rocket arrives, the RS3, which we drove at the international launch in April, will hold the title of Australia’s most powerful hatchback, its 2.5-litre turbocharged five-cylinder producing 270kW/465Nm.
This is sufficient to power it from 0-100km/h in just 4.3sec and on to a 250km/h top speed, though that can be optionally raised to 280km/h.
Also on the options list are race-style bucket seats and carbon-ceramic brakes, the first time such an option has been offered on a hatchback, though thankfully the sports exhaust system is standard, allowing owrers to play out all their Group B quattro fantasties.
The RS3 is due for a local launch in October.
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Aussie Matthew Simmons has been crowned international champion of Nissan’s PlayStation GT Academy to become Nissan’s newest factory GT driver.
Simmons, a 26-year-old Queenslander, took to Silverstone’s racing circuit this morning against five-other drivers in race-prepared 370Zs for the final hurdle of this year’s competition.
Brisbane-based Simmons qualified on pole and clocked the fastest lap of the race, however mechanical issues saw him finish in third place behind Turkish and Mexico finalists.
Despite this, the GT Academy judges awarded Simmons 2015’s overall title after considering the promise he showed during the race and throughout the contest.
“Matthew has been strong and consistent all week, he’s shown he’s a great team player and we welcome him to the GT Academy family,” said Rob Barff, head judge for GT Academy.
“We’ve been very honest; his car had a problem and in motor racing that happens. It’s something we could have easily shied away from but we haven’t and it’s the right and fair result.”
For Simmons it’s obviously a dream come true for the Australia Post courier. “The wait on the podium was killing me but when Rob said my name I had to do a double take, I can’t believe he said it and I’m now a racing driver!”
The race culminates a week-long race camp for 30 international finalists that initially entered, among hundreds of thousands, on a couch.
Challenges both on and off track throughout the week saw the number of finalists reduced to 10, five of which competed in the final race.
Simmons will undergo an intensive training program before he’s flown to Dubai to join the Nissan factory team to compete in the 2016 Dubai 24 hour.
In a world turning to turbochargers, Hyundai is pointing to the future by sticking with natural aspiration and big V8 sizzle for its first luxury coupe.
The Hyundai Vision G is the second two-door concept from the Korean brand in as many years, with the HND-9 coupe shown in 2013 being a more compact, V6-engined concept designed for European tastes.
This Vision G is aimed squarely at the American market – it will be rolled out for public display at this weekend’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, the same state in which it was designed.
The current US-only Genesis coupe is smaller and more overtly sporting, very different to the luxe-barge sedan.
The body surfacing of the concept appears taut and tough, almost like a Bentley Continental, while the B-pillar-less turret, sloping roofline and vertical slim-line tail-lights could be seen as like that of a Mercedes-Benz CL.
According to Hyundai’s president and chief design officer Peter Schreyer, the Vision G focuses on, “The idea that you don’t need to be over the top in terms of glitz and stereotypical luxury cues … no glaring examples of luxury, but rather elegant lines and finishes.”
If we had to put money on whether the HND-9 or Vision G concepts would more closely translate to the next Genesis, we’d bet on this big boy, as Stateside tastes rule the roost with Korean decision makers when it comes to large cars.
Sadly, that is also likely to fuel the decision to keep V8-engined Hyundais a left-hand-drive-only program, leaving Australia with the next-gen V6-engined Genesis sedan or possibly coupe at best.
As a regular front-runner at the daunting Isle of Man TT races, it takes a lot to impress legendary motorcycle racer Guy Martin.
However, it seems that the world’s only road-legal Ferrari FXX more than fits that bill, judging by Martin’s reaction in this video, filmed at a recent Supercar Driver event.
Despite being better known for his two-wheel exploits, Martin is a die-hard car nut, having owned a BMW E46 M3 CSL at age 21, following that up with a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, an E92 M3 and then his dream car, an Aston Martin V12 Vantage.
With no telemetry, it’s unclear what speeds Martin manages in the screaming V12 hypercar, however judging by the uncomfortable looks on the face of his passenger, as well as his own deep concentration, we’d say it’s plenty.
“I’ve been in fast things, right, I have never been in anything like that – I’m shaking” he says after his brief run.
What a car, what a legend.
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Oops. Car manufacturer PR works in funny ways these days, what with ‘official’ spy shots and the like, but we’re fairly certain this wasn’t meant to happen.
As first reported by Car News China, a Chinese toy manufacturer has revealed the new Bentley Bentayga SUV a month before its official reveal at the Frankfurt motor show.
Apparently, the models were being made to hand out to dealers and media and the manufacturer in question couldn’t quite manage to keep it a secret.
Initially shown as the EXP 9F concept at the 2012 Geneva motor show, heavy criticism of that car’s unusual looks has resulted in a much more conventional approach for the production car, with a Continental-inspired front and rear end similar to the Flying Spur.
Built on the same platform as Audi’s new Q7, the Bentayga will debut with Bentley’s new 447kW/900Nm 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12, which Bentley claims will make it the fastest SUV ever.
Later in its lifecycle, expect the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 found in the Continental to appear, as well as a turbodiesel – probably the 4.2-litre V8 unit found in the A8 – and Bentley’s first hybrid powertrain.
Bentley is also promising a massive lift in technology, including a head-up display, the latest connectivity features and a full suite of active safety gear, as shown in this teaser video released earlier this year.
We’ll bring you more Bentley news when the car is officially unveiled at next month’s Frankfurt motor show.
