Autoblog

According to the judges, the fourth year of competition in the LA Design Challenge was the toughest to judge so far, with a host of innovative entrants that attempted to integrate a new mode of transport into every aspect of daily living. The Volkswagen Slipstream team, headed by Derek Jenkins, walked away with the trophy: a cyborg hand that plays Beethoven, equipped with scrolling LEDs displaying the title of the contest. Okie dokie. Anyway, the SlipStream can operate vertically for around town cruising and then lay itself down for high-speed cruises up to 250 mph.

A while back we posted on each competitor in the 2007 Design Challenge, of which there were eight. You can view them all here if you can't recall that far back, but they were an unforgettable bunch of sci-fi machines. We held an unofficial poll to find out which entrant you thought would win, and surprisingly the Volkswagen only received 5.8% of the votes in our poll, the absolute lowest ranked one of the bunch. Regardless, the SlipStream won the official prize, so go figure.