Advice for career in automotive design

[Gio G]

Hi all,

My son is in the early stages of picking his GCSE's. He is adamant that he wants to follow a career in car design. From an artistic perspective, he is pretty good and is keeping a portfolio of his work, which is mostly pencil sketches.

He is looking take Art and product design as part of his GCSE's.

Can anyone experienced in this field please provide him some advice, around specific routes they took, from an education perspective? Also any general advice. I would love him to make this dream a reality and would be very proud of him..

Thanks G

[Griff Boy]

I did my degree at Coventry university in industrial design - transportation. Which at the time was the only car design course in the uk. There is also a masters you can do in London. IIRC Loughborough also did a more engineering based course as well.

The fields most strongly needed are maths, physics and art/ design, with a smattering of CDT (or whatever they call it now!)
The artitistc side is important, but the maths and physics are vital. Lots of engineering, product techniques, fluid dynamics etc etc.

It's is bloody hard to get into, if I remember correctly, over 600 people applied for about 30 places that year! You have to pass a pratical exam as well as tests to get accepted. They used to ask you to complete a project in advance of the interview.

Hope this helps.

Ps. I did my course 20 years ago, so there may well be a lot of changes now!

[dantheman12]

Currently doing this at uni in my final year.