The title says it all really. This masterpiece of automotive design and technorama was introduced exactly 40 years ago today at the Geneva auto show, and it's been making the world a slightly better place to be ever since... with brown SM detail pic to warm the cockles of Drew Smith, Ben Kraal, Davey Johnson, Mr Charmer, and all those other #browncar #LHMluv(er's) hearts.
Images - hyperspace and seat850 on flickr, under creative commons license
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th March 2010
By now, you'll no doubt have read all about the cars and concepts that you were interested in at last week's Geneva auto show. But if you've still apetite to digest and cogitate, Drew Smith - of the Downsideupdesign blog - and myself are producing a two part podcast with pics to cover all of the major production debuts and concepts, which you'll be able to see/hear in the next few days. For now though, you might be interested in some of the details, elements and irreverant bits and bats that I noticed in the Palexpo last week. So without further ado...
Citroen reimagined the ReVolt from Frankfurt as a racer for the road in the form of the SurVolt (above). Only Citroen could get away with painting it gloss blue, matte grey, pink and orange. But they did. Note these graphics - they were quite fun, a play on PCBs - used to signify the electric drivetrain.
Meanwhile over at Mercedes (above), they'd got wood... (sorry, couldn't resist). The use of wood laminates in this interior was fantastic - it vied with the Pegueot (see below) for concept interior of the show, and previews an altogether more 'light of touch' future Mercedes interior design language...
Peugeot marked its return to form with the SR1 (although special note to the glorious bike also on the stand) - which previews the brand's altogether more acceptable new face (thank god the rictus grin's gone). But it was the interior that really stood out in this car...great work Julien et al:
Speaking of gorgeous things, here's a shot of the superb little Pininfarina Alfa Duettotanta that makes me go a little bit weak at the knees...
Continue reading "Geneva auto show 2010 - some things you might have missed..." »
You may remember us raving over Citroen's C-Cactus concept from Frankfurt 2007, some time ago. It wasn't just the design we liked though. Parts reduction, light-weight tech and pared, basic simplicity-of-thought got us fired up too. But it was the fact that Citroen said they were actually going to production-ise the thing that really got us excited.
After the marketing-led disappointment that is the DS sub-line (at least in its initial, DS3 form), the production Cactus was what we holding out for from Citroen.
While we weren't expecting the Cactus to make it to market in unfettered form, we'd hoped the principals and ideas behind the concept would win through. However, a report in autocar this week suggests that some of the pared back simplicity of the concept vehicle will now be junked in favour of more kit, and greater complexity for the production version - because the stripped concept was "too radical" for customer tastes:
"The Citroen C-Cactus concept car will reach production in a different form, after customer clinics questioned the car’s back-to-basics interior.
Research has uncovered aspects of the car that potential buyers were not happy with. The lack of dashboard and the way its instruments are clustered around the steering column were said to be particularly off-putting.
Citroen is also considering fitting electric windows instead of the concept’s wind-up units, which reduce complexity."
I wonder when car makers are going to give up on these types of customer clinics, which only ever seem to produce 'negative' responses resulting in radical design and ideas rejected in favour of conservatism? At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, to quote Henry Ford: "If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse"...
Understanding the customer's needs, aspirations and desires is a critical part of launching a successful product, but if the car industry really wants to inovate; to move beyond the current mess it's still in, then can we politely suggest that they ditch clinicing like this? BMW, Ford and others claim to have. So why are the original innovators - Citroen - still at it?
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 4th February 2010
Can you help us to get to the bottom of a crucial question? Is it cleaner, greener, and more environmentally friendly to replace your old car (let’s call ‘old’ 10 years+ for the sake of argument), with a new one?
It’s pertinent, because a ‘scrapping’ scheme has just been launched in Germany, and is being considered in the UK. Consumers are offered €2500 off the sticker price of a new car, provided they scrap their old, ‘dirty’ banger. It’s had a big effect in Germany. New car sales, which had fallen ‘off a cliff’ before Christmas, show a massive upswing since the scheme’s introduction.
Unsurprisingly, the world’s ailing auto industry is lobbying for the rollout of the scheme across other countries. Yet writer and campaigner George Monbiot asks serious questions of it today, arguing that from an environmental perspective "we might as well burn ten-pound notes in power stations”.
Monbiot’s chief issues are:
At this point it would be customary to highlight the flaws in Monbiot’s logic, but that’s very hard to do, because we haven’t yet found anyone in the auto industry who can provide a decent set of facts to back up the environmental argument for scrapping an old car and getting a new one. In Geneva last week, in conversations we’ve had with people in the industry and on this blog, we’ve asked the question but haven't yet found an answer.
Instead we can pick holes in the merit of Monbiot arguing “So £2000 from the government could help you trade in your old Citroen C1 for a new Porsche Cayenne.” First, he must mean a Citroen Saxo, as the C1 is too young, as a model, to qualify for scrapping. But it’s somewhat churlish given the lack of any true counter evidence that his wider argument is wrong.
Working from the way we live now
I do believe he’s missing a trick however. Monbiot’s articles are characterised by an attempt to be factually water-tight and reference-based. But they rarely illustrate new, better visions and often ignore some inconvenient truths about the way people live their lives. He’s still banging on about the frankly bizarre idea of coach-only motorway lanes… and ignores the fact that – in reality – a reasonable portion of people are likely to use a private, rather than shared, vehicle.
Two points then. First, if the auto industry wants governments to implement scrapping-type schemes, it needs to show people why this is a good idea from an environmental perspective. Someone needs to take a lead and attempt to answer the question. Of course it’s hard to answer conclusively – it differs on a case-by-case basis. But so what? Monbiot extrapolates some of his figures, so shouldn’t the car industry where data is hard to come by? Why not take a model of 15 years ago, and compare its CO2, NOx, recycled material content, etc. and compare with the equivalent vehicle today. Explain about pollutants beyond CO2 – which are important. Explain how much energy goes into building new cars – and how that’s being produced. Turn it into an example case study, and create a counter argument to Monbiot. We’ll even come and shoot the video if you want, and shove it on to youtube so consumers can make their own mind up. Simply doing nothing makes the industry look like it has something to hide – when most of those connected to it do believe it is changing – fast.
This leads to my second point – and where I take issue with Monbiot suggesting:
“It is hard to think of a less deserving cause. The motor companies have repeatedly failed to anticipate trends in demand. They have carried on producing thunderous gas guzzlers long after the market collapsed.”
While few could argue with the point that the auto industry’s issues are largely of it’s own making, Monbiot’s argument is lazy and out of date. The gas guzzler argument is questionable – but alludes to a critical point, which the current crisis provides an opportunity to do something about. This is that the trends of car buying consumers, and the design and development of vehicles exist in a relationship that is massively out of step. Five years ago, many consumers – regardless of what Monbiot thinks – did want gas guzzlers. And if you’d have been running an auto company, you’d have made them too – because they’re high profit vehicles. Small eco-boxes aren’t.
Yet when consumer demand suddenly fell away, it wasn’t that the industry carried on churning out thunderous gas guzzlers – it’s that its processes meant it couldn’t react quickly enough. Tens of large, sports and SUV programmes have been abandoned presently. But many of the small, hybrid and electric cars people apparently want are still on the drawing board, because although car companies know demand is there now, it wasn’t four years ago when today’s cars were first being conceived.
Likewise, factory production demands many factories churn out 200,000 models to make sense (see the great Bob Casey talking about this and related auto industry history in the video above). But they don’t make sense when there are no buyers for those vehicles. So the ‘crisis’ needs to be an opportunity – to create shorter development processes, link designers and engineers with consumers (currently, they rarely meet), and attempt to massively reduce lead times. Ultimately, the mass production model may be a busted flush – now is the moment for ideas on how it can be at worst improved, and at best replaced. To radically change the industry will require pain and job losses in the short term. Yet doing nothing – and propping up the industry with schemes such as the car scrappage programme, risks losing this opportunity, and simply postponing dealing with these ongoing issue for another day. Allowing the industry to carry on conducting ‘business as usual’ ultimately risks allowing it to inflict upon itself a slow and painful death.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 10 March 2009.
Photograph: After 3 years on The Movement Design Bureau homepage, Mark retired the lead photo in this piece just this morning. And then we realised it would be perfect for this article. How about that for a retirement moment?
Over on Downsideupdesign, Drew Smith has been expanding on the curious case of the new Citroen DS Inside. Those of us attending the Geneva show this week were all puzzled by Citroen's decision to launch the car concept, quite literally, inside. A box.
Citroen chose to show a model with which - let's not forget - it plans to launch a whole new sub-brand, inside a confined, dark box, to which I, and many others, were denied access.
Not that we appear to have missed much. Drew speaks for many I spoke to on the day, when he asks:
...continue reading the rest of his thoughts, and see more photos, here.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 6 March 2009. Photo credit: Drew Smith
The new Citroen DS Inside - a concept preview of the first in a series of three new Citroen 'DS line' models
A few months back, I penned a piece for Car Design News reviewing the Paris Motorshow (subscription required), and concluded by saying of Citroen:
This rather bold statement wasn’t unfounded. In Paris’s auto salon, Citroen unveiled two show-stopping stars – the Hypnos and ConceptGT – along with the production car of the show – the C3 Picasso. This after concepts such as the C-Matisse, C-Cactus, and production C4, C5 and C6 had taken the car design world by storm. Ask most, and they’ll tell you Jean Pierre Ploue’s team are close to the top of the automotive design pile.
Above - ConceptGT and Hypnos were stars of the Paris Auto Salon
Yet Citroen’s unveiling of the DS Inside Concept makes my praise look high-handed, and Citroen like they’ve fallen off the innovation wagon. Let’s be blunt. There’s nothing wrong with this car, it looks okay – nice even. Ultimately though, is it unfair to have expected more from a model which pillages the name of Citroen’s most beautiful, advanced vehicle ever? Not that I’d hoped for retro design cues - no, count me very glad they haven’t gone down the obvious retro route favoured by BMW (Mini), Fiat (500) and VW (Beetle)…
Instead, it looks on reflection that this vehicle has come straight from the minds of Citroen’s marketing department. And that is the antithesis of its 1950s namesake. As LJK Setright points out in his book Drive On!: A social history of the motorcar:
'50's DS (above) thought one of the most beautiful automobile designs of all time
In the early fifties, the car whose name is a shortening of the French “Déessee” – literal translation “goddess” – shocked the world with Flaminio Bertoni’s stunning styling, and a raft of technical advances including: high pressure hydraulics, self-levelling suspension, power brakes, automatic clutch, headlights that turned with the wheel, disc brakes and radial-ply tyres. Quite simply, it fulfilled Boulanger’s brief of being “The world’s most beautiful, most comfortable and most advanced car…”
It is arguably, as Stephen Bailey suggests, “the single greatest automobile design of all time”, but I believe it was the spirit of innovation and technical tour-de-force specification that Citroen should have paid homage to in any new model. In reinterpreting the DS, Citroen had the opportunity to do something truly innovative. The new DS didn’t have to be beautiful, it didn’t have to be retro – but it did have to be smart. And while it’s always dangerous to criticse a car before seeing it in the flesh, or driving it, I see little true automotive innovation going on in the DS Inside.
Are my expectations unfair? After all, Citroen stress ‘DS’ now stands for ‘Distinct Series', and will apply to a new range of (initially three) cars, that stand out as more up market, distinct Citroens. No one is in any doubt Citroen is chasing some of the Mini’s market here (frankly, who isn’t these days?) – they’ve even given it a white roof. Perhaps in part, that’s driven by a frustration that Citroen seems to have acquired a reputation as a cheap, value brand – one that shifts cars through constant cash-back deals or ‘pay no VAT’ offers in the UK.
So could the upmarket DS-line approach work? With ever cheaper, small car offerings not only from BMW’s Mini, but now Alfa, and very soon VW and Audi – it’d be a brave person to predict that the demographic of person who’s typical attracted to the premium, expensive, less-is-more car, will go for something from a maker of cheap, small French cars.
I’ll hold out hope the next two ‘DS’ cars will do the name more justice. But I can’t help think Citroen is both mis-judging this, and missing a massive opportunity. Of all the European brands, Citroen is best placed to ‘get away with’ experimental, innovative and even wild-looking cars. We know they are capable of creating truly intelligent, eye-catching and, yes, innovative designs – see the C3 Picasso – and redemption may be at hand in the form of a productionised version of the C-Cactus. Brands only get one attempt at raiding their historic nameplate bin. Screw it up with a modern model, and people will hate you for ruining an iconic name - bound up with romantic memories and historic baggage (VW Beetle).
C3 Picasson and C-Cactus show great innovation, befitting of the DS name
To me, that’s what Citroen have done here. If the original DS was “the essence of petit-bourgeois advancement” (Barthes), then the new DS line simply says something depressing about the lack of sophistication of today’s car buyer (or rather, does if Citroen succeed with it). Ultimately, it says something ugly about the cynical nature of automotive marketing departments – and hints at so much that is currently wrong with the wider automotive industry at large. To have turned over the name DS, and allowed the marketing department – rather than engineers and designers – to oversee its reinvention, must have Bertoni, Boulanger and co. turning in their graves. As Mark put it to me: “if LJK Setright had still been alive, his beard would have fallen off”
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 19th February 2009
Images: DS Inside - Citroen; Black and White DS - Elchtest on Flickr under creative commons; all others Joseph Simpson
