Here's a post for my mates with cars running through their veins - Peugeot in conjunction with Microsoft recently held a competition for entrants to
design a futuristic car that fitted the criteria P.L.E.A.S.E.:
- Pleasurable to drive
- Lively
- Efficient
- Accessible
- Simple
- Ecological
Here's the
massively cool thing - the winner gets their car:
- immortalised in the up-and-coming Project Gotham Racing 4 for Xbox 360, and
- a full-size concept car produced for presentation at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show!
How bloody mad is that! If only I had the graphic skills...
The winner was announced a few days ago -
a car called the Flux won [via
Xbox 360 Fanboy]. From the car description:
"It's dynamic shape and open air cockpit make it lively and fun to drive
as the occupants are always in contact with their surroundings."
"A relatively small car (3500cm long by 1650cm wide), it runs on a slim
hydrogen power plant hidden in the back along with the tank mounted
under the front bonnet. The hood and side body panels are made from plastic, polyurethane for the seats and aluminium for the mechanical parts."
Its trump card (I reckon anyway) is the neatly integrated 360 though (right side of interior).
Not my cup of tea though - here's some better ones I reckon (other finalists):
- The 3rd-placed Allscape, with its exo-skeleton design. It may be a bit visually busy though.
- The MiawoO, with the nice heads-up display and distinctive body design. Odd name, but maybe its part of the plan.
- The SpeedLite - nice, simple but effective styling. Boring name.
Do check out not only the pictures, but also the descriptive files that each entry comes with too - some of the performance, exterior & interior features & ideas in there are mad, as is how they developed the concept and the visual language behind it.
Which one's your favourite of all the finalists? Post it in the comments.
Peugeot has a knack for producing pretty futuristic looking vehicles (cars aside,
I love the Quark quadbike) but maybe these vehicles are a bit too futuristic. It'd be nice just to see some of the design cues from this though, but maybe consumers don't like massive design changes.
Realistically (i.e. actually exists in production and reasonably affordable within the next 10 years for me), my current most desired car at the moment is the
Land Rover Freelander 2, to be released mid-2007. But not just any Freelander 2, it has to be in the trademark Land Rover orange colour, like this one:
Pic from
www.alpra.com.
Dunno what it is, but a combination of its distinctive styling, ruggedness, size (not too big, not too small) and practicality appeals to me. Watch out for it
