Car Design

The world of automotive design has lost another great. Sergio Pininfarina – the honorary chairman of the Pininfarina Group that bears his family name – passed away last night at age 85.

It's no secret that automotive designers build large clay models of their cars while working out a final design. But let us axe you something: What happens when a design is approved and the car is put into production? Deconstruction. And boy, it sure looks like fun.

Chris Bangle's latest novel idea is, in fact, an actual novel. The designer has penned fiction tome called Peter Teufel, A Tale of Car Design in 3 Parts.

The devil is always in the details when it comes to industrial design. Sure, there are some ugly and disjointed consumer products that should never have been wrought upon the buying public, but the differences between most of the things we build and buy are subtle. Paying attention to the little stuff is important, especially in the auto industry, as it's the collection of these details that add up to produce truly memorable vehicles.

As we revealed last month, the theme for this year's LA Design Challenge is Hollywood – more specifically, what the silver screen's next iconic automobile might be. For some reason, this year's challenge features a lot fewer entrants than year's past. In fact, half of the field comes from Daimler, with concepts submitted by

Love cars? Surely, then, you spent many a classroom hour doodling them all over their book covers and binders. Sometimes they looked kinda cool, while other times you wish you had used pencil instead of pen. A new book is in the works that will help budding automotive designers hone their skill, and the octavo will serve as both a sketchbook and a reference guide. It's called I DRAW CARS, and you can help bring it to life.

Max Wolff, formerly of General Motors, has been hired by Ford Motor Company to head up Lincoln's design team effective January 3, 2011.

If automotive designers can agree on one thing, it's that the future will be more diverse. Three current designers and one teacher came together to discuss the way forward at the monthly Automotive Press Association luncheon in Detroit. Cadillac's Clay Dean, Hyundai's Phil Zak and Ford's Scott Strong joined Larry Erickson from the Sam Abuelsamid

Click above for a high-res gallery of the Chanel Fiole concept car

Another casualty in the collateral damage of auto industry woes: Graduating car designers are no longer finding jobs. The LA Times reports that in years past, manufacturer representatives would attend the Pasadena's Art Center College of Design's senior showcase and welcome a few visionaries into the hallowed world of car design. Now, manufacturer representation is down to one or two (if any), and those who show don't always end up hiring. For students who weren't chosen by manufacturer

Click on the image for more shots of RCA's Eco-Cars of the future

It seems Volkswagen has breathed a collective "Oops!", and is now working to turn its design ship around. VW was known for neat, differentiated designs with great interior details. While this stayed true in some parts of the world, in the U.S., Volkswagen design turned into chrome shield grilles fronting identical bodies in various sizes.

The Buick Reatta a design flop? That's what a University of Michigan professor told The Wall Street Journal recently. Really? The Reatta is the one car that he could find to pick on as an automotive design flop? Sure, the high-tech coupe was overweight and underpowered, overpriced and under-appreciated. But a design flop? I think most of us would agree there are uglier, slower, more poorly-made cars i

Some see the success of the Toyota Prius, compared to such competitors as the Civic Hybrid, as proof that green cars need to look different from their normal siblings. While it may be a bit early on in the game to make this assessment, Ford's North American director of car design, Pat Schiavone, suggests that there could be a trend towards "green" styling cues. For instance, cars like the Honda Insight and GM EV1 are easily recognizable for their teardrop shape and covered wheels, both of which

Click the image above for more hi-res shots of the 370Z and Infiniti design teasers.

Click above to view high-res gallery of renderings