Wednesday 10th November 2010

Italian Students Come Up With McLaren SUV

A gaggle of proposals for a hybrid, mid-engined McLaren SUV. Gotta love those design students

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The 'Holon'

Question: What do you get if you cross a McLaren with an IED?

Rather than a British supercar spread over a very large area, the answer is actually 33 curious concept design studies - if only because the IED in question is Turin's Istituto Europeo di Design, and not something that contains any explosives.

The IED has been working in collaboration to design a McLaren for 2020 - or at least a hybrid, mid-engined four-wheel-drive, two-seat SUV McLaren for 2020.

After a chat with the folks at McLaren's Woking HQ, the IED students came up with 33 proposals.That was whittled down to eleven cars for 'further developent'.

Of those 11, three were picked out as 'winners', to be turned into quarter-scale models, the Holon, the Torok and The Bio Renovatio, the second and third of which you can see in animated form below. It's all a bit science-fiction for us - we'll be happy with an MP4-12C for now...

The 'Torok'

The 'Bio Renovatio'

'White Stalker'	'Pangolin'
'Aorv'	'Tasman'
'M-Ray'	'Firefly'
'N-S'	'Atlas'

 

 

[hugh_]

Interesting that they've selected 3 open wheel designs...

[Curry Burns]

That Tasman looks nice....Rally special...

[mat205125]

Do the 'Bio Renovatio' and 'White Stalker' designers know that the reason that roads have 2 lanes is to allow cars to pass travelling in opposite directions, rather that providing a full width to fill.

These were the only ones with some "nicely drawn" humans for a sense of scale.

Appreciating that these are just concepts, but I do hope that the SUV market does start churning out sci-fi dune buggy style cars ..... Maybe the Nissane joke Juke is a half-arsed attempt at delivering this promise.

[rhinochopig]

Personally I think they're all pretty poor - all form and zero function. They're so far up their own design aholes that they'd need a proper SUV to pull themselves out.

[The Wookie]

In other news a small nuclear explosion occurred today in an industrial estate in Surrey. The epicentre was said to be located around the headquarters of Gordon Murray Design

[soad]

Curry Burns said:

That Tasman looks nice....Rally special...

First one to catch my eye- must be the funky livery, not just a pretty shape.

[mat205125]

rhinochopig said:

Personally I think they're all pretty poor - all form and zero function. They're so far up their own design aholes that they'd need a proper SUV to pull themselves out.

.... and just photoshopping out the Master Chef, and gun turret from the Halo stolen M-Ray is just lazy

[ljp14]

mat205125 said:

rhinochopig said:

Personally I think they're all pretty poor - all form and zero function. They're so far up their own design aholes that they'd need a proper SUV to pull themselves out.

.... and just photoshopping out the Master Chef, and gun turret from the Halo stolen M-Ray is just lazy

True say, should have left them in

[PhillipM]

Why do they always choose the designs that are never going to be even feasible/possible to build rather than the ones which actually look like they could work? It happens at every bloody design competition going, not just in the styling either - see Autocars last design award going to a prat putting piezos in tyres for 'free' electricity - well, where's that energy coming from again, ooh, the engine, via increase rolling resistance, brilliant.

There's no wonder everyone's churning out bland boxes with stupid grills at the minute, they're hiring designers who can't actually work on a useful vehicle...

Edited by PhillipM on Wednesday 10th November 15:07

[georgetuk]

No more SUVs, we have enough.

What happened to designing just a mid-size car like a Civic/3 series, it either has to be an SUV or tiny little car these days.

[PaulMoor]

Right, I'm off to Italy with a bag of door nobs, a Super 7 and a copy of Auto sport to gently point out the gap between McLarens design philosophy and an SUV.

I take it (hope) these were done by art students rather than engineers. They should all be shot.

[Dr Derek Doctors]

Why are things like this new exactly?

When I was a student of Motorsport Design we came up with all sorts of crazy things, that we designed and some that we actually made. Those didn't make it into the PH news section.

[...Mole...]

Tasman reminds me of the Stratos, i like it a lot.

[k-ink]

I'm sure what the world really needs is a car as small and cramped as an Elise with huge wheels bolted on. Morons

[TheEnd]

Apart from stupid designs that have big flaws, what else do these students do during the day?

[exocet ape]

^^^^
Smoke pot and listen to Zappa?

[TheEnd]

Highly likely...

[anonymous-user]

A few people are forgetting these are concepts and almost every car starts life like this. Maybe they are not all rendered to this standard in the real world, but they are students so the work they do probably has to be presented in this format.

Give them a break, most of us couldn't produce this.

[PhillipM]

No, because we'd attempt to make it faintly useful.

[anonymous-user]

PhillipM said:

No, because we'd attempt to make it faintly useful.

That may not be what they're being assessed for. It's obviously a styling exercise. I agree, they aren't practical but that's obviously not their trade; that's for the design engineers.