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Labels: Car Design, Honda CR-V, Hyundai Accent, Hyundai i10, Maruti, Mitsubishi Lancer
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Wednesday, 2 April 2008Wednesday, 19 March 2008If you are looking forward to buying the new Honda Accord for Ugadi or Gudi Padva in March, its time to change your plan. You don’t have to entirely give up on the car though. You are just going to have to postpone your plans of buying it.
Honda has put a stop to the production of the new eight generation Honda Accord. The car will be available only in May. The new date is also not fixed. Honda is re-designing the car and making it longer by 2.5 to 3 inches. A new car model could be stuck in the car design phase for a long time and nothing is certain until it’s over with. So, the launch date can’t be fixed with certainty yet. But one thing is for sure - The new Accord is going to be a real treat to the eyes and well worth the wait! Labels: Car Design, Honda, new car launch Wednesday, 27 February 2008The other day I chanced to see a Chevy Spark on road. I was taken aback by the car design. From what I had seen in papers and magazines, I had imagined it to be a beautifully designed car. But what I saw was completely different.
The whole car looked like it has been designed in a hurry with no attention to aesthetics. The front looks pathetic as the bonnet slides down on an already low platform. The sides of the car are uncomfortably shaped giving it a vague bulgy look. The most awfully designed round shaped taillights seem to be jutting out of the boot. After seeing the car, I have decided that I will never buy this car or recommend it to anybody. I wonder what Chevy was thinking! Article submitted by BC Labels: Car Design, Chevrolet, Spark Wednesday, 20 February 2008Hey people of the 80 and 90’s, remember the ‘Hot Wheels’ toy cars? Hot Wheels is celebrating its 40th anniversary. To make it special Hot Wheels assigned a jeweller from Beverly Hills to make a special car. The car now costs $140,000. It is encrusted with diamonds and weighs 23 karats. This car was cast in 18 carat white gold and it is set in brilliant blue diamonds mimicking the Hot Wheels Spectra Flame blue paint.
Under the hood, the engine is adorned with additional micro-pave set in white and black diamonds. The underbelly which carries the logo has been set in white and black diamonds as well. Red rubies are the taillights. To recreate the signature red line wheels, black diamonds with red enamel have been used. The car will be presented in a special case and is embedded with 40 white diamonds signifying each anniversary. It will be auctioned sometime in the last quarter of 2008. These are times when I wish I was born with a golden spoon that would get me this diamond car! Being Hot (Wheels) is still so Cool! Labels: Car Design, Car toys Thursday, 7 February 2008I am looking at the newspapers every day and going through all these websites and one thing that keeps popping up at unexpected moments is CARS! Cheap cars and foreign cars and small cars and just more cars! Now, I am a designer by profession, trying to make it big in the fashion world, but I may just steer a different course.
I came across this car survey by an audit company that said that the average annual wage of an Indian car designer is now merely close to Rs 3 Lakh per year, but this profession could be the next IT salary wave! US firms pay an average of Rs 28 Lakh per year for an entry-level car designer and UK firms shell out Rs 25 Lakh per year for the same. Calculating with these numbers, it is easy to see that these guys can easily employ 5 to 8 people in India for the salary of ONE person in US or UK. Needless to say these big guys would want to slowly move to India for designing and developing their future cars. The French company, Renault, has already set up base in India and Maruti Suzuki is using Indian engineers to develop their global cars, and GM has recently set up its research lab her as well. Many other companies are set to follow. How cool will a job designing cars be? Labels: Car Design, cheap cars, Renault, small cars Friday, 1 February 2008I never knew that you can convert a car part into a musical instrument. Don’t be amazed, I recently came across news that Ford is exploring with innovative ideas as a part of promotion and that is why they converted the part of the new Ford Focus into musical instruments. Two creative designers from the
They created musical instrument like Door Harp, Clutch Guitar, and Fender Bass using car accessories. The ad campaign will hit viewers by performing a stage show using this unique instrument. Isn’t it a fabulous way of promotion? Can we expect Indian car makers to come up with this kind of promotion? I doubt. Maybe not this much but Indian car makers can definitely come up with creative ideas. I hope they try. Article Submitted by Divya G Labels: Car Design, Car-Accessories, Ford, Promotional campaign Thursday, 31 January 2008Prahalad Kakkar, I don’t think this person needs an intro. The ad guru is the creative brain behind the several major ad campaigns like Pepsi, Britannia and many other successful ads.
Though he is not a car freak, he still keeps his first car, an old Vauxhall converted into a Dune Buggy. He learnt driving in this car; he still owns it because of emotional reasons. He currently drives a Daewoo Matiz, re-desgined by another style guru DC (Dilip Chaabria), who converted it into an open-top ‘buggy’. Prahlad had his own idea of how his car should look; he wanted the car to be topless completely, except the windscreen, but he couldn’t turn his idea into reality coz it could weaken the Matiz’s body. So the car was revamped removing the roof planks and also fitted with few metals bars for safety purpose. The four-door Matiz was amputed to two-doors. This is what we call ‘Brains with Beauty’. I wish I had the money to revamp any car I owned! Labels: Car Design, Daewoo Thursday, 24 January 2008Dilip Chaabria, the style guru of Indian cars does not spare any car without adding his creativity to it. He has used his fabulous imagination to create quite a few small wonders. DC’s Ambierod at the Auto Expo changed the look of our oldie Ambassador giving it new life. Amby’s redesign proved that with little creativity and hard work, any car can look posh and trendy. Now DC has laid his hands on the yet to be launched Tata ‘Nano’. It is already a funky, small looking marvel and he will customize it to look more or less like a spaceship.
What has he done to the ‘Nano’? He groomed everything starting from gull wing doors to the xenon and LED light panel to wider wheels, and equipped it with the fastest bike power engine of 1400cc called Hayabusa – a power monster that will turn this cutie into a roller-coaster. The interiors were also loaded with next generation gadgets like a PC screen featuring internet, navigation, games, and, last but not least, a customized instrumental panel. This is a great design for the next generation Nano car, but definitely no where related to the price tag of the current Nano. Wonder if Tata will bring this version out sometime in the near future at a higher price tag. Labels: Auto-Expo, Car Design, Tata Thursday, 17 January 2008Why are Indian cars usually boring in terms of design? Recently, a premier TV channel asked this question to Dilip Chhabria, the best known and most successful automobile designer in
He in turn replied, “Indian cars are boring because when they are on the drawing board, companies try to cater to the masses only. Naturally, they want to play safe and go by the general demand. Another thing is who’ll do it. Indian companies do not have global competency in design. Most importantly, it’s dictated by Indian needs. Indian cars are mostly driven by drivers, so there has to be more space at the back. While in the When the entire world is eyeing Indian car market, does the designer’s response post a new challenge to Indian car owners and car manufacturers? Labels: Auto market competition, Car Design, Indian car market Wednesday, 9 January 2008“Mahindra Global Designing Company” sounds weird but it’s true. Mahindra & Mahindra Motors, a company which started off making tractors heralding the Indian green revolution is now diverging into automotive design. It seems M&M has set its eyes on becoming a global auto design centre.
It is set to acquire GR-Grafica Ricerca Design Srl, an Italian auto designing, body engineering and feasibility company. GR’s 60-strong design team is highly experienced in the area of automotive design. After acquisition, the new subsidiary will be called “Mahindra Graphic Research and Design”. Through this acquisition, M&M will get a strong foothold in the European car manufacturing business. The deal is expected to be wrapped by the end of January. Considering the latest progress of Indian Companies in the auto world, the next best selling world car might come from India. Labels: Car Design, Mahindra and Mahindra A lot of mystery surrounds the launch of Tata Motors’ one lakh car. Its design has created a huge interest in top auto designers across the world. Recently, Formula One designer Peter Stevens brooded over the design of an Ultra Low Cost Car (ULCC). He likes to call it his biggest challenge so far.
Stevens has been associated with the Formula One team and has designed powerful cars including the McLaren F1, Lotus Espirit and the MGSV Sports car. But what’s makes the design of the cheap car difficult is that it has to be built with simple instruments and the simplest of mechanisms. Maintaining low production costs would be priority. After thinking about it for some time, he was able to outline a few key points to focus on with the design. He suggests that good fuel economy would be an important factor for the car. An aluminum body would turn out to be expensive hence cheaper materials would have to be included into the design. The car would also have to miss out on many comfort features and power accessories. However, Stevens has not yet come up with a conclusive answer. It seems Ratan Tata has made people look at car ownership as an inverted pyramid with millions of people at the top. Soon the dynamics of car manufacture will change forever and car design will focus on common people instead of the wealthy. Once considered luxury goods like television, mobile phones, housing, have now become common. Cars, we think, will be no different soon. Labels: Car Design, One Lakh Car, Tata |
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