Hi, my name is Adrian Clarke, and I am a professional car designer. I have a degree in automotive design from Coventry University, and a masters in vehicle design from the world famous Royal College of Art in London, where I was tutored by J Mays. I was hired straight from there into a major European OEM, where I worked for a number of years until the world went sideways. To give you a better understanding of what a designer does and doesn’t do we’re going to be doing some car design right here on The Autopian. If you’ve ever thought you could do better, or have great ideas for a vehicle type that no sober OEM would ever build, well then this is your chance to get involved! So if you want to be a designer, put a diecast model car on your desk, pull on a black turtleneck sweater and grab an espresso. We’ve got cars to create. To kick us off and give you an idea of what we’re going to be doing, I’ve come up with a design for an off road minivan. Torchinsky gave me plenty of ideas, all of which had me screaming into a cushion. This one came from the slightly saner mind of David Tracy who gave it to me to implement. This isn’t entirely unlike how it works in the real world, where a marketing department or the board might ask the design studio to create a proposal for either a new version of an existing car or a new type of car altogether. Of course, the design studio can and does come up with ideas on its own as well. The problem with minivans is, despite their suitability for doing family-hauling type stuff, they lack sex appeal. They have been usurped in family duties by the crossover, which give off a slightly rugged outdoorsy vibe that customers find appealing. Despite arguably not being as good as minivans for lots of families, crossovers are practical enough, and this matters – image does sell cars. So with all that in mind, let’s try to give the humble minivan some of that “active lifestyle” appeal. Here are some quick thumbnail sketches. These are done to get the ideas down on paper – designers do their thinking on the page. They won’t all be good ideas, and you won’t always be sure exactly what you’re going for – but getting them down helps the designer understand what might and what might not work.
At this point we’re not concerned with any boring production reality, safety legislation or anything like that. All that comes later after the design is frozen and the process moves into what is known as the realization, or production design, stage. The only thing to consider is that what you are drawing has to conceivably fit in with the brand. It’s worth noting that it’s mainly premium OEMs who have a strong brand identity – a set of visual cues and style that is common across all their models. Mass market manufacturers tend to go for distinction within a segment to stand out. Of course, we have no such limitations here, so we’re free to be a bit more creative. At the beginning of a project, a designer will turn out loads of these rough types of sketch – typically ball point pen on paper, with maybe one color of marker (usually gray) to indicate highlights or graphical elements. Mine were done directly in Photoshop, but the principle is the same – a simple outline and one gray tone, although here I’ve used it to indicate the graphical break-up of the body. Minivans are essentially “one box,” or to use a professional term, a “monovolume.” They don’t have a lot of shape to the sheet metal aside from the outline of the car, so the graphical break-up becomes much more important. Once the designer has found something they like, it’s time to turn it into a more detailed render. Color, details, highlights and shadows will be added. This will take that favorite ball point sketch and make it into something suitable to pin up on the board for review by a more senior designer.
When all the junior designers have put their work up, a review will take place. Suitable designs might be chosen to go forward to the modeling stage, or the senior designer might ask for another round of renders if they don’t see anything they like. So our chosen design has a large body volume, with a lot of glazing. Occupants in the back two rows, especially if they’re kids, like a good view out. The rise in the belt line in the middle, across the doors, provides visual interest. If this were just a straight line, it would look a bit dull and weak. The chamfer at the top of the tailgate where it meets the roof takes some of the visual weight out of the profile and prevents the car from looking too blocky, and potentially moves the hinge point back so less room is needed to swing the tailgate open. The body colored middle section means you can still fit roof accessories without worrying about damaging glazing trim pieces.
Hopefully this has given you some idea of the beginning of the car design process. Now it’s your turn. Submit your ideas to design@theautopian.com and we’ll pick the best, most interesting or downright weirdest, and together set about turning them into reality. Well, into some nice renders, at least. But, I find this extremely interesting, and will be reading intently. I had a serious lightbulb moment when I read the sentence about the location of the tailgate hinges. I HATE the slanted rear on wagons/hatches/crossovers, as it cuts so severely into the cargo area (ever try to put a dryer in one of those cars? blech). But it’s interesting hearing something other than aerodynamics and aesthetics. Keep it up!
- David Tracy is the sane one? Lol.
- Where’s the stripper pole in your van? I thought we didn’t have to worry about production value?
- Project ask – Jetsons briefcase car and/or a flying car. Someone else mentioned it – I’m in!
- Anything’s a stripper pole if you’re flexible enough.
- https://www.insidemazda.co.uk/2020/12/22/the-mazda-suitcase-car-portable-personal-mobility-with-a-twist/
Stop it.
Make renderings realistic again. I know the bean counters will change some things, but not everything needs to look like a baja truck on dubs.
It not really possible to create ‘realistic’ renders when starting out a new design – you don’t know always know what platform you’re going to be using, what the dimensions will be, etc. Drawing is an analog media (even if the tools are digital). It’s not like digital modelling where you have dimensional accuracy.
I’m aware of the design process, I have a full time job as senior ID guy in powersports industry.
Yes, it is possible to create realistic renders. When we hire transportation designers, we can’t use their work for a bit, nothing is usable. When we hire ID guys, we get usable stuff but their form development tends to be weak. Gotta aim for the middle bro; good forms but think critically of your design as you go so it makes sense and is manufacturable. It appears to me a lot of these design trends are there to upsell the buyer on the car’s parts. Those large wheels and low-profile tires are more expensive and consume more resources than what they replaced. The extra unsprung weight necessitates heavier/more expensive suspension designs. The low-profile tires generally aren’t as reliable as those with thick sidewalls. There’s also the issue of crash test regulations changing the proportions of the vehicles, where the marketing perception is that the vehicle is “ugly” if its wheels are two small. There’s also the issue of planned obsolescence; the industry sells more cars by constantly changing things and cycling out old designs/components, even when it is not necessary to do so. There’s an old saying, “You’re selling the sizzle, not the steak.” But I’m “that guy” who wants the damned steak, and I know I’m not the only one. I’m sick of modern automobiles being style over substance, especially considering the societal consequences that the modern automobile has caused. What is interesting is that modern cars(especially SUVs/CUVs) look almost as cartoonish as the renderings of them. I think that might explain why so many enthusiast are so jaded on modern offerings and styling trends. From a non-marketing, non-profit-at-all-costs-driven, consumer-oriented perspective, little about the modern automobile makes any sense, when the goal is to get from Point A to Point B on the weekdays, maybe have some fun on the weekends, and spend as little money as possible while doing it. The modern industry is all about extracting as much money from people as possible and manipulating their tastes through advertising. What they found was they sold hardly any. Customers would enter the dealer and wonder where the nav screen was and why they couldn’t get an automatic. Now the Duster starts at just under £15000 and is slightly more upmarket with more equipment and metallic paint. And yes, an automatic (admittedly this is still somewhat of a bargain proposition). (and a die-cast Death/Hogfather on the other one…. ) Anyhow, I proposed something that does the following: -monocoque chassis with T-top and gullwing doors -ends planned obsolescence by going full-retard on aero, for a given set of practical constraints -is an enthusiast’s vehicle: Porsche 550 Spyder-like in dimensions, all electric, ready-to-drive weight of ~900 lbs, all wheel drive via overpowered ebike hub motors, offset two seater with only the bare minimum downforce needed for stability at its top speed in the interest of keeping drag low -efficient: assuming CdA of ~0.15 m^2, it will only need a 20 kWh battery for a 300+ mile real world range on the highway at legal or slightly above legal speeds and 80+ mile range on the race track or cruising the Autobahn at a 160-ish mph top speed -independently controlled motor, and suspension for each wheel with slip detection and torque vectoring, for maximum possible traction and lateral grip for whatever narrow low-rolling-resistance tires with meaty sidewalls are fitted -uses low cost parts and a small battery pack with the goal of Miata-like production costs -evokes styling cues from the Ferrari 250GTO, Jaguar D-Type, 2017 Ford GT, and Alfa Romeo BAT7 in the hope that it will be sexy, beautiful and timeless I emailed a more detailed description of what such a thing might look like or how it would perform. In a sports car, less is so much more, as Colin Chapman and many others learned in the last century. If you keep the mass low enough, you could get away with using inexpensive and extremely lightweight ebike motors and controllers for the desired acceleration, without exceeding their rated specs, further cutting mass/cost. The EV parts cost for such a machine at the retail price for building a one-off at the hobbyist level would be well under $10k(I’ve already come up with a parts list and have been planning such a build). With mass production and large volume orders, the EV parts cost could possibly be less than half that, leaving a large budget for the rest of the vehicle while keeping the cost reasonable. Something can be built with all three traits, but it would have to be able to sell enough units to justify the production volume needed to keep it cheap. And a lot of custom components would need to be designed, as one would have to go less with the “design-by-committee” mentality ubiquitous in today’s industry and more the Paul MacCready(GM Impact/EV1) or Gordon Murray(McClaren F1, T.50) mentality when conceptualizing the design. This all being said and my opinion of the auto industry methodology of designing cars being bassackwards aside, I love your work that you’ve showed us and look forward to seeing what you put out there for whatever concepts you choose to draw. This is really cool that you’re drawing your interpretation of peoples’ visions and putting them on this site. Seeing the talent that was brought on board to this site lured me here. I’ve been a Jalopnik lurker for years, but once Torch and Tracy worked their magic, I was sold on becoming a part of this site. The knowledge base here is something special, and who knows, maybe a really badassed enthusiasts vehicle will eventually surface as a result of its existence. The modern Miata is even feature-rich by the standards of cars 20 years ago, and it weighs in at ~2,300 lbs. One of the lightest cars available in the U.S. Significantly lighter/smaller should be able to pass crash test regs, if only barely so, possibly using conventional materials. Not everything needs to be built to fit 400 lb lardasses that are too lazy to walk and opt to ride the electric scooters at the local Walmart, but seemingly every car out there, even subcompacts, are built to fit this demographic, even when they opt to buy oversized trucks and SUVs/CUVs instead.
