As someone who aspired to write about cars for a living because of the cool concept cars of my youth, I’m sad to report that today’s moonlighting design projects no longer keep me going. At least, very few of them do. Have I grown tired over the years? Or are concept cars not what they used to be? What if both are true? Or not?
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. This is a conversation we engage in often driveIs dull. And when a topic gets that much discussion in our group chat, we invoke Slack Law and write about it. (The idea here is that if we find it interesting enough to talk about it again and again, other people may find it interesting too.)
Well, our editor-in-chief Kyle Cheromcha took it a step further and created 30 minute movie On concept cars, featuring five of automotive’s most influential designers.
latest video on driveYouTube channel of This includes Alex Shen from Toyota’s Calty Design Research Lab, who wrote the FT-1 concept that became the new Supra; John Ikeda, former head of Acura design who styled the front-engine NSX concept; Tom Peters, former head of performance car design at GM who designed the Indy Corvette, the 2007 Camaro concept and more; Ralph Giles, global head of design at Stellantis; and Hyundai and Genesis design chief Sangyup Lee.
A large number of Internet commentators lament that concept cars are “uninspired,” but spend time with the people who design, carve, and build them, and your opinion may change. Kyle guesses that something else is causing this vibe shift, it’s the emphasis of the video, and after watching the clip in its entirety, I agree. (And no, I’m not brown-nosed. Promise!)
I encourage you to hear directly from these design professionals, not so you can get some corporate apologists that blame less-exciting concepts on low budgets, but so you can get a glimpse of the process from people who dedicate their life’s work to creative expression. As you can probably guess, it’s not easy for said creativity to exist in a world similar to engineering constraints and safety regulations. But designers—at least, the ones we talked to—make it work because they love cars, just like you and me.
And after listening to Kyle’s entire conversation with Jon Ikeda drivecastI believe he likes cars even more than me.
Have a suggestion or question for the author? Contact him directly: caleb@thedrive.com
