Car Design

Click above for a high-res gallery of the Lexus LF-A roadster concept.

click above for more high-res pics of the 2009 Ford F-150

Even though Jaguar and Land Rover might only have a foot or so of visibility into the fog of their business futures, they continue to plan for long-term success. The latest step is a $4 million investment in a "virtual reality center" that will create three-dimensional projections for designers and engineers to study, saving the time and expense of having to build individual models.

From time to time we've all been tempted to purchase that fake diploma from the endlessly circulating email, right? The last time I checked, though, they weren't offering fake certificates from the Art Center College of Design, or the Academy of Art University. If you still held onto the dream of someday shaping cars, even after all your sketch pads had been confiscated, the normal path was that you'd go to an insti

At one of the Hot Rod Power Tour stops a few years ago, I met a GM designer at the automaker's booth. I can't recall his name, but I was so starstruck I think I remember our conversation consisting mostly of me saying, "Hey, you're cool."

GM's made some fairly significant changes to its domestic and international design teams, with former Chrysler designer Bryan Nesbitt coming out pretty good. Nesbitt moves from executive director of design for GM Europe to vice president of design for North America, reporting directly to Ed Welburn, vice president of GM global design. The VP of design NA is a new position according to GM's press release (on the jump). You probably remember Nesbitt's role in the PT Cruiser, HHR and Solstice desig

Geoff Upex worked with Land Rover for 23 years to help create and re-create the company's iconic boxy Range Rover line and in August, he relinquished the helm to Gerry McGovern. This week, Upex took his retirement on step further, saying that after his last day on Dec. 25, never again will he design another car. Not for Land Rover, not for Ford. Not for any automaker ever again.

Peugeot is launching the fourth edition of its worldwide design contest. The winning entrant will get to see his or her design turned into a full-sized model which will be displayed at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show. (Last year's winner - the Peugeot Moovie - is shown above.) In a new feature for the 2006-2007 contest, the winning vehicle will become a drivable, if virtual, concept car in the Xbox 360 game Project Gotham Racing 4.

The Royal College of Art's 2006 award for Best Overall Concept Car has been won by 24 year-old Jonathan Punter, for his Daedalus family car. The radical concept also captured the Best Design Interpretation Award.

General Motors recently gave Aaron Robinson, a junior at the Charter High School for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia, an unforgettable gift. The creative 17-year-old has a love for designing automobiles, so in conjunction with the Make-A-Wish foundation GM designers transformed his sketches of a Pontiac Trans Am design into a virtual 5-foot-by-10-foot computer projection model. Robinson's life has been marked by a battle with leukemia, and he is fortuna

Wheels24 has produced a sketch of what it believes the next Audi A4 will look like based on insider info and analysis of recent Audi design trends. The A4's face appears much more aggressive the the current model's, with headlights angled down towards the large grille and similar LED light bars to those currently found on the S6. As we mentioned in the first part of our In the John Neff

In March General Motors partnered with the College for Creative Studies and began visiting 15 Detroit area public high schools to seek out and encourage the next generation of car designers coming up the ranks. Seasoned car designers from GM's Design Center and students from CSS provided instruction to the students who were charged with designing a vehicle for the 17-25 year-old crowd. The 50 lucky students chosen for the program, which is called "You Make a Difference," were invited to also par

Here at Autoblog we are flat-out fascinated by concept cars, the wilder the better. The design shown above is one of the award winners in the Royal College of Art's recent "PLASTicon" project, sponsored by GE Plastics (the creators of lexan and other wonder materials).

Shiro Nakamura, a senior vice president for Nissan Motor Co. and design chief for the automaker, believes that General Motors has been suffering from a lack of awareness when it comes to consumers' needs:  "there was a lack of customer-orientation." And arguably, he should know: Nakamura previously worked for Isuzu Motors Ltd. during the Eighties before joining Nissan. GM and Isuzu had formed their alliance a decade earlier and Nakamura met