Function is important, but form leaves a greater impression.
An enormous amount of effort goes in to designing a car. Despite what a many may think, it’s not simply a job of throwing a sketchbook and some Play-doh at a man with thin-rimmed glasses and telling him to keep going until he’s created something that looks like it’ll sell with badge ‘X’ on it. Each manufacturer has its own design language, which means that even without seeing the badge on the nose a consumer should be able to recognise what dealership a car rolled out of. Some manufacturers have specific hallmarks that make it easy – Aston Martin’s side strakes for example – while others keep things uniform over the whole line up. That’s why some ranges look like different-sized versions of the same thing.
From an initial brief, a designer has to create a shape that works for the brand, moves the game on, and will shift units.
At every step of the way, someone who spends their time in a big office shouting at some people and shaking hands with other people needs to sign off what’s going on. A designer’s dream shape needs to look right to start with, and then it needs to tick LOADS of other boxes as well. And each of those boxes needs to have a shoutyman’s signature next to them.
While all this is going on, designers have to make sure that their creations meet regulations imposed by governments all over the world. This means lights have to be certain heights, there needs to be concessions made for varying safety regulations, and plenty of deeply unexciting fiddly things there to dictate what they can do.
Throw that in with the fact that no matter how wild and shiny an initial design is, it needs to be feasible to build. Think back to when you were a kid and all the weird and wacky creations you used to draw – huge rooms in small spaces, laser guns on every corner of things with nine wheels, an actual dragon’s head on a motorbike… All super cool, right? But Did you ever think about what it would take to actually build the thing? Short of using Timelord technology, you’d struggle to pack all of those childhood fantasies into such a small space. On top of the classy swoops, timeless lines, lights at the right height to suit a billion governing bodies, room for reflectors to suit other governing bodies, an interior that looks to have been lifted from whichever star of hotel chain you’re pricing the car look good outside, you have to make sure all the toys and angles will actually fit in the space available. After all, your car can’t be too big for the roads it’s going to be on, can it?
Once everyone’s figured out what it’ll look like, how it’ll fit with various markets, and whether what you want to put in it will actually fit, a design also needs to contend with everyone’s favourite people: accountants. The bean counters want to make sure a designer’s vision can make it out in to the world…to a budget. No matter which car you find yourself in, there’s always a bit of cost saving and efficiency in there somewhere. Jaguar’s been using the F-Type’s steering wheel in everything; you’ll find Renault’s weird lumpy plastic cruise control thing by the ‘wheel in an Alpine A110; Aston Martin used to use Ford keys; and Rolls, BMW, and MINI all have variations on the same iDrive infotainment theme. Why not use something that’s already been developed in other bits of the business and save spending more developing something fresh? Anything that can be made cheaper will be, because that means more money goes to the company directly, which means it can pay its staff, shareholders, and whoever else it needs to fund more.
Prices are set, processes agreed upon, tooling designed and bought, staff trained, and boom… a design turns in to a car. A few changes here and there thanks to people with oars that need shoving in, but a car is there, ready to fly out in to the world.
Of course, all of these things don’t happen in an easy to understand order, and is way more complicated than the above. There’s way more to it, but only a limited number of hours in a day to read things on the internet, so some gross simplification had to be made. However, the process of getting an initial concept from brief to road is a long, complex, and arduous affair. The hoops to jump through are many and vary in size, the different laws of different lands are complex and occasionally clash in the most inconvenient of ways, and the people you need to keep happy are plenty: board members, colleagues, shareholders, existing customers, new customers… Each wants a product that looks and feels as a car from that brand should, but they want it at the right price. It’s a long process, but one that ends with a new car on the road, representing a brand for anywhere up to a decade (with a facelift or two).
It’s a huge surprise, then, that the BMW iX exists.
Keyword: Car Design Is Hard