Mercedes-benz gets funky in Los Angeles
Mercedes-Benz tapped into the Los Angeles fashion and urban scenes with a pair of way-out concepts unveiled just prior to the L.A. Auto Show.
The freakier and more trend-focused of the two was a creation by fashion designer Jeremy Scott involving the new Smart fortwo electric drive, which made its debut at the Jim Henson Studios with music provided by rap artist M.I.A.
Displaying more than a touch of whimsy, the unique Smart forjeremy has wings — a recurrent theme of the American designer, who, in addition to his fashion collections, also creates costumes for pop stars such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Katy Perry and Rihanna.
Wings are one of the design elements used by Scott, whether it’s sweatshirts, sunglasses or sneakers. “For me, wings mean freedom, a sense of weightlessness,” he says. “Because of this, I definitely wanted to have them for the Smart electric drive in order to convey the way it frees the environment of noxious emissions and symbolizes the new lightness of mobility.”
This was quite a challenge, because it was not just a case of creating a show car, but rather of creating a near-series study with the potential for licensing it for road use in the future.
The Smart forjeremy is based on the production version of the Smart fortwo electric drive. The 17.6 kWh lithium-ion battery enables the urban two-seater to travel approximately 145 kilometres in the city traffic without producing any emissions.
The co-operation between Scott and Smart was by no means ordinary, with Smart for the first time permitting a fashion designer to make changes to the vehicle’s body. As Gorden Wagener, head of Mercedes-Benz and Smart design explained: “Co-operations with fashion designers are normally limited to selecting interior materials and interior and exterior colour schemes. With Jeremy Scott, however, we wanted to go one step further and integrated the typical wings as a central design element in the vehicle body. This was quite a challenge, because it was not just a case of creating a show car, but rather of creating a near-series study with the potential for licensing it for road use in the future.”
At the other end of the spectrum was the debut of the over-the-top Mercedes Ener-G-Force concept, the civilian version of a design study the automaker presented for the Los Angeles Design Challenge 2012. That study touted the enhanced green-car characteristics and off-road capabilities of a police car in the year 2025. Mercedes presented its design study — called “pure, rendered science fiction” — as being able to meet these requirements, stating the humongous but potentially environmentally friendly GClass-derived concept would be fully capable of “supporting police and emergency services in every corner of the world.”
Designing the cop offroader fascinated the designers at the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Studio in Carlsbad, Calif. — so much so that they evolved it into a civilian version and built the full-scale model. Like the Highway Patrol Vehicle 2025, the shape of the civilian Ener-G-Force is modelled after the G-Class.