French artist Bernar Venet was recently invited by Bugatti to adorn
the Grand Sport with his unique visual idiom.
The stunning result - the one-off Bugatti
Grand Sport Venet - draws upon the
engineering studies and equations that created Bugatti's mythical
performance - the text is seemingly being blown off by the car as it cuts through the wind.
A beautiful synthesis of Bugatti's sculptural beauty and
Venet's passion for mathematics and scientific treatises. This unique sculptural work will be
on view at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami during Art Basel Miami
Beach.
Designed by French artist Bernar Venet, the bespoke model features a
two-tone exterior with a dark brown rear end and orange mathematical
formulas at the front.
The unique styling carries over to the interior as it has two-tone
leather upholstery and special door pads with contrasting orange
mathematics. There's also an embroidered Bernar Venet signature and a
small metal sculpture between the seats.
Like the standard Grand Sport, the Venet is powered by a
quad-turbocharged W16 engine that produces 1001 HP (736 kW) and 1250 Nm
(922 lb-ft) of torque. It enables the model to accelerate from 0-100
km/h in 2.5 seconds and hit a top speed of 407 km/h (252 mph). Source: Bugatti
AD WATCH: Fiat 500
There's no question that the FIAT 500 is a cute car. But the advertising for this vehicle leaves me scratching my head.
The early 500 ads featuring Jennifer Lopez were perplexing enough - and they drew fire because she was actually filmed on a movie set while her "block" back in New York City was filmed separately (a common tactic, but it didn't translate well, and created a backlash and swamped the message of the ad when it premiered.) Still, the idea that this is a slick little women's car was drilled into the viewers of this nicely produced ad.
Then there's this recent one. Take a look.
Two guys are headed to the game. The driver of the 500 picks up his buddy, and his buddy's kid. "It was girls night out," he says, apologetically.
He and the baby are shown in the next shot being driven to the game, only to come up behind a (nice, sweet, classic, bitchin') late 1960s Chrysler Imperial driven by an old man. Slowly.
The baby stares down the old driver as they pull up beside it, and shouts in Italian "What are you lookin' at?" Problem #1: there is no translation , and I relied on others to give me that verbiage.
Problem #2: Is that really funny? Inasmuch as the well-known E*Trade baby is funny (and that joke has grown stale after, what, five Superbowls? The latest showed a baby "speed dating" other babies. Ew.)
The bigger problem for me is that the guy is emasculated by his wife, and the other guy drives a car aimed at a female demographic. In fact, the entire ad seems cleverly aimed at women, despite the two men. (The baby is the give-away.)
This ad follows on the heels of the FIAT 500 Abarth ad in which a rather stereotypical Italian woman (representing the car) sexually toys with a man and, in the end, slaps him. Note to FIAT: Men, like women, don't like to be slapped. Especially in public.
But this ad also suffers from other issues. There's so much going on in the ad, it's hard to focus on the car's features. The guy says (of the tickets to the sporting venue) "These are nice seats," but shouldn't he be focusing on the seats in the car? We do get glimpses of the vehicle, of course, and it's not an ugly car. The shifter gets a half-second close-up, and it's quite attractive, as is the speedometer, which is shown for the one second the car is slowing down behind the Chrysler. I'm sure the rest of the car is nice, too. We just don't get to see much of it in this confusing ad.
The 2012 Chrysler 300 is a major step up for Chrysler. It's a beautiful vehicle that has retro styling and modern features. They really hit a home run with this one.
The 2012 300 is changed somewhat from the original 2005 model year vehicle, which successfully, and to critical acclaim, revived the well-respected model nameplate from the 1950s through the 1970s.
This is a car that, from the first glance, makes the heart race and the blood pump. It's worthy of the Chrysler name. And that's saying a lot, considering some of the cookie-cutter vehicles they've given us in years past.
It's at once smoother and more luxurious-looking than the previous 300 and instantly recognizable as the same model. That's a feat in itself worthy of great admiration and praise to Chrysler's design team.
The first major change can be seen in the headlamps, which have shed the rounded appearance of the previous decade's models and have become more of a curved rectangle, with brilliant LED lights in a sideways "U" pattern facing inward towards the grille (reminding one of the Audi headlamps, but without that brand's rather garish "pout" look.) These are far more pleasing and more modern than the earlier model, and they are executed much better than on its sister car, the Chrysler 200, which is saddled with lamps that look plain and boring. Here, their excitement is palpable, as it their beauty, and they add to the design significantly.
The grille, even from a distance, is gorgeous, with a slight indentation on either side, making the center prominent and shimmery. The deck of the hood is creased nicely down the center, and one hopes for an even deeper crease in future models, as was seen in the Crossfire.
The side doors are large and tall - one of the defining features of the older model which continues on this one. Thankfully so, since this gives it a character and presence that isn't found on other cars on the road, and while some think this is a "gangsta" feature, it also hearkens back to cars in the '50s and '60s which were larger and heftier than today's models - and looked it.
The overall shape of the car is a symphony of curves that are gentle and pleasing. A crease that leads from just under the rear window into the trunk section carries the eye to the rear with great ease and is quite stunning in its execution
The tail lamps are as beautiful and intricate as the headlamps, with a peaked crease down the center, punctuated with a white section that also features beautiful styling. It's obvious when care has been taken to get the details right. Without these tail lamps, the overall design of the rear section might be compared to the Nissan Altimas of the last decade, which it does still resemble. But the lamps are far more integrated with the lower bumpers than that Altima's was, and the gently curved "wing" on the trunk puts those kinds of comparisons to rest rather quickly.
The interior is lush and gorgeous, as one might expect. The blue-lighted gauges are substantial-looking and quite retro in their styling, and the steering column features a beautiful rendition of the winged Chrysler name badge that can also be found on the hood and tailgate.
With a base price of just over $28,000, Chrysler has positioned the 300 as a true American luxury car (far more plausibly than the 200, which clearly does not belong in that category, despite Chrysler's insistence.) The 300, I believe, will easily hold its own and compete with Buicks and Cadillacs in the same price range, as well as lower-end Lexus's and Acuras. I sincerely hope the build quality lives up to the amazing styling, because if it does, Chrysler has another winner on their hands.
Jaguar design chief Ian Callum describes the concepts going into the 2012 Jaguar fleet. The initial impressions I had of the newer designs - that they seemed to have raided Chrysler's parts bin for the circa-1996 headlamps and the 2003 Lexus for its overall shape - have vanished in these newer iterations. (Well, mostly vanished.)
These are quite beautiful cars, but some would say they lack distinctiveness and could be more "Jaguar-like" and evocative of earlier cars.
Car enthusiast Jay Leno test drives the new 3-Wheeler from UK car maker Morgan in the video below.
The car is admittedly beautiful, evoking earlier iterations of the Morgan "kit-car" style. It is a pre-production model, but it's unexplained why it goes veering off the road during Leno's test drive in the UK. The one-seater will reportedly run around $30,000.
Still, it looks comfortable, with classic leather seats and the long nose for which Morgans are well known. The chrome details, especially on the front, are stunning. From the side, one can't help but think the car is from the late 1920s or early 1930s, and the hindquarters look a bit odd to modern eyes, though in a classic way.
The three-wheel design, though unique, is both economical and head-turning, as Leno notes in a rather glowing review in this video. The company is already taking orders for the car, according to a company spokesman in the video.
Be sure to visit the Morgan 3-Wheeler website, where you can design your own Bespoke model with numerous color options for paint and leather seating and trim, as well as some neat decal work that's available. Mine is below, featuring 1940s-evoking decals and classic green and camel leather seating and trim. To save, hit "print screen" on your keyboard. There doesn't seem to be a way to save the design otherwise.
2011 Chrysler 200 Commercial - Why do the headlights have eyebrows?
by Stephen Abbott
“Why do the headlights have eyebrows? Why is the shape of the grille like the shape of the clock? Why do the gauges appear to be floating? Why does it seem like the grille is always smiling? Because the details are everything.”
Seriously? Seriously, Chrysler? This is actually what you’re presenting to the American public as a car commercial in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century?
Very, very sad. And insulting, frankly.
The new Chrysler 200 – for which this nonsense was written and was actually FILMED for a national TV ad – is far from a luxury car. Though, to be fair, it’s far from the worst car Detroit has ever made. Chrysler wins a few awards for those, too, especially the crap they put out in the 1990s. But let’s not go there. This time.
Let’s get back to this ad. Eyebrows? Really?
Okay, when I think of eyebrows on a car’s headlamps, I’m thinking about an Audi. And they do it beautifully. Even though it’s more like eyeliner when they do it. But that doesn’t matter. The LED lights on the A8 gently curve under the large, well-defined and well-designed headlamps, giving the front end at once a sinister and aggressive stance. Combined with a wide, aggressive grille, the Audi A8 looks like, and is, a force to be reckoned with. That’s even before the engine springs to life.
But the 200? It’s grille is admittedly meant to be “always smiling,” so right off the bat, one knows aggression isn’t supposed to be a trait of this vehicle. And the fact that these are happy eyebrows dancing above these plain-Jane headlights further signals that the target market isn’t men, it’s women.
And while it’s just peachy that the ever-grinning grille is shaped EXACTLY like the arguably pretty pearl-backed clock on the dash, I’m sorry, Chrysler, but those gauges do NOT appear to be floating. The ones I have seen, and as we can plainly see in the ad, are plain-Jane gauges. But their ad writers got paid to come up with some dazzling crap to write about this loser of a vehicle, and that’s what they came up with. Thanks, guys, for the 30 seconds of hype.
I could see these poor guys now, huddled midway through an all-nighter, scratching their heads about this bland, boring Blahmobile: “People, people, come on! It’s GOT to have a feature we can blow into something interesting.”
One finally must have said: “Wait, show me those pictures again. Yeah! The grille is kinda shaped like the clock. Let’s mention that!”
“That’s great!” says the head writer in relief. “And let’s throw in Bob’s idea about the grille smiling and Doug’s thing about beautiful eyebrows.”
One wonders: do they want ANY men to buy this car?
Chrysler may want to imply that their car looks like an expensive Bentley with its standard equally expensive Breitling clock inside that also sort of “matches the shape of the grille” but… no.
The ad fails to mention the only pleasant feature of the 200 - its rear. It instantly reminds me of the superbly handsome 2012 Ford Taurus, with its long chrome band that incorporates oval corporate logo. The tail lamps of the new Taurus were borrowed from the Ford Interceptor show car and instantly give it class. But let’s wake from that wet dream back to the nightmare of 200.
I do sympathize with the ad writers’ dilemma of having to “sell” this rather lame “luxury” vehicle, which is the replacement for arguably more beefy and attractive Sebring. That car had, by the late 2000s, begun to sport aggressive headlamps and large, IN YOUR FACE tail lamps, along with punchy, Crossfire-like creases flowing from the windscreen to the attractive front-end grille.
The problem was never with the looks, IMO, though they could have been toned down if that was a problem. The issue was always with the spindly, wimpy engines that were grossly unreliable, sending them by the hundreds of thousands straight into the fleets of Enterprise and National Car Rental lots in sleepy airports across the nation.
A new grille and fancy clock on the 200 is a bland answer to a “does the curtain match the drapes” question that wasn’t being asked by anyone.
I must say, the new tail lamps of the 2012 BMW M3 are quite beautiful, and a vast improvement over previous models' designs. The "Bangle" era at BMW (named for chief designer Chris Bangle, who is now working in his own firm in Turin, Italy) was extremely controversial.
While the easy-to-spot swoopiness and curvaceous lines on BMWs alienated many traditionalists, one cannot argue that it was successful in raising the company's profile and standards of luxury during his 17-year tenure at BMW. Still, that polarization came at a price, and frankly, my view is that the brand suffered somewhat from it, in the same way other companies suffer when they go too far in the direction of experimentation and away from customer's tastes (the Ford Taurus of the mid-1990s comes to mind, as does the Pontiac Aztek and other follies.)
The new direction of the company, with less flare and more true, sophisticated style - as exhibited in the smart and handsome looking 3 Series - is the right direction for this company. Let's hope they can sustain it and expand upon it.
Above is the launch film for the stunning Range Rover Evoque Coupe, set to debut later this year as a 2012 model. It is the smallest, lightest and most fuel efficient Range Rover ever produced.
The completely new model comes in a two-door coupe as well as a five-door version, which made its debut at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show last Nov. 17.
Both aim to "transform the premium compact SUV segment," says the international Land Rover site, landrover.com.
The curves and creases of this Range Rover model are undeniably sexy, though one could less charitably say that it looks like someone simply squeezed a previous Range Rover model between one's thumb and index finger. Still, both exterior and interior views seem to uphold the brand's high quality of luxury craftsmanship.
The one quibble one might have with the otherwise well executed design is with rear visibility. The slight rear window surely will give headaches to wealthy soccer moms backing out of the supermarket parking space. The same is true for certain Jeeps. We'll see if this(hopefully minor) problem prevents sales of this otherwise well-executed vehicle.
