FCA announces the winners of its Design Sketch Battle contest

Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) designers Ralph Gilles and Mark Trostle announced the winner of the first Design Sketch Battle on their respective Instagram accounts. The 24-hour contest invited designers and enthusiasts from all over the world to submit their "wickedest and most outrageous designs for a Ram truck." Participants flooded the company's various social media accounts with creative submissions that did not disappoint.

Ralph Gilles, FCA's head of design, selected submissions sent by Paul Piliste, Rezo Lomaia, Michael Stanfel, Morten Rabiee, and Joshua Reese. The sketches he selected all put a decidedly futuristic spin on Ram's design language, and one is a tribute to the original Power Wagon introduced in 1946. They embrace the company's rugged side with oversized wheels and ground clearance measured in feet, not inches. Don't look for street-oriented, low-to-the-ground performance -— like Gilles' own Tomahawk GTR sketch from 1995 — here.

We've embedded his winners below.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by @ralphgilles on Apr 10, 2020 at 9:13am PDT

Mark Trostle, the head of design for Ram and Mopar, published his top picks an hour after Gilles. He selected work by Bryan Johnson, Robin Mathew, Ricky Ryan Goimarac, Jon Sibal, and Sean Smith. His attention gravitated towards futuristic designs, too, but he channeled his inner hot-rodder by choosing what looks like a slammed quad-cab Ram with a front fascia and fender flares from a wide-body Challenger. His fifth pick is one we'd love to see in showrooms: it blends retro-inspired and modern styling cues in a street-oriented high-performance package.

His winners are embedded below.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Mark Trostle (@trostlemark) on Apr 10, 2020 at 10:03am PDT

In the world of Lego, designers can compete for the chance to add their one-off creation to the company's catalog of current and classic cars. We don't know if FCA will give the Design Sketch Battle winners the same distinction. In the meantime, Gilles and Trostle both said they'd post more stand-out designs on Instagram over the weekend. Spoiler alert: Someone Photoshopped a Ram 1500 Rebel grille onto a Tesla Cybertruck. You've been warned.

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