Where design and function meet
How the style of a luxury car is developed,
It’s fine for styling to be strictly functional in some automotive segments, but luxury has needs of its own. It must make a statement but not be too wild, convey status without being ostentatious, and incorporate the brand’s signature cues while still staying unique.
There’s a romantic notion that designers scribble an idea on a napkin, and next fall that car is in the showroom. In reality, creating a car takes years and can involve hundreds of designers. Most models are a compilation of work from different designers, but even if only one person pens the design, as happens at a few studios, it still takes an army of people to put it all together.
Why so many? It’s just the sheer magnitude of what goes into a vehicle. While one person works on a bumper, another is creating door handles, or working with interior fabrics. And while most designers love penning fanciful designs, they’re restricted by such realities as assembly-line production and safety regulations.
Most designers are artists first, right from the doodles in their child- hood schoolbooks. From there, most went to art or design school to find their calling. Volvo’s Jonathan Disley initially designed helicopters, while BMW’s design chief Karim Habib worked on furniture, and Wayne Burgess of Jaguar wanted to be an architect. Still, such backgrounds are building blocks to auto design: a luxury car must be functional while presenting the automotive equivalent of a living room to its passengers.
Design is also a combination of traditional and modern techniques. Computer-aided design is an integral part of the process, but many, including Porsche’s Michael Mauer, still have to start with a pencil (he’s still obsessively looking for the perfect one). And while you’d think fullsize clay models are long gone — they originated with Cadillac designer Harley Earl back in the 1920s — they’re still essential to the process, since they provide a perspective that a computer screen can’t replicate.
So where are luxury cars going? Typically, they have led the way with new materials and cutting-edge technologies that are initially too pricey for mainstream models. Many of these work their way down into lower-priced cars as larger volumes and new techniques reduce the price, and the cycle begins again.
You will see designers integrating more lightweight components into cars, not just for the premium look and feel of such materials as carbon fibre, but to reduce the car’s weight to help improve its fuel economy. That’s especially important as luxury buyers demand more options, and these new materials are essential to offset what they weigh.
At the same time, luxury buyers demand the real thing in metal and wood trim, but even so, environmental concerns such as sustainable harvest of exotic woods will play a major role.
Ultimately, all designers have to keep the customer in mind, but for luxury, it’s as much about what the car says about the owner, as the design says about the car. It’s a tough balancing act that all starts with that very first sketch. wheels@thestar.ca