Opel Insignia and Ford Mustang Facelift project

In this year, everyone in the class will have to do a big project on 2 vehicles facelift. What i have chosen are Opel Insignia and Ford Mustang. In the following, I am going to show how was my project conduct.

Sketch work

Facelift 1 rendering

original

facelift

original

facelift

original

facelift

original

facelift

original

facelift

  Facelift 2 rendering 

original

facelift

original

facelift

shooting break version

Can China overtake Japan to be the new hub of car industry?

Situation in China

The automotive industry in the People's Republic of China has been the largest in the world measured by automobile unit production since 2008. Since 2009 annual production of automobiles in China exceeds that of the European Union or that of the United States and Japan combined.

Of the automobiles produced, 44.3% were local brands (including BYD, Lifan, Chang'an (Chana), Geely, Chery, Hafei, Jianghuai (JAC), Great Wall and Roewe), and the rest were produced by joint ventures with foreign car makers such as Volkswagen, General Motors,Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi etc. While most of the cars manufactured in China are sold within China, exports reached 814,300 units in 2011. China's home market provides its automakers a solid base and Chinese economic planners hope to build globally competitive auto companies.

For more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

China Decade From Having Global Carmaker, Bernstein Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/china-is-10-years-from-having-
global-automaker-bernstein-says.html

Compare to the automaker from US, Europe, Japan and Korea, the Chinese is still a decade away from being competitive. But still, at the same time, it has a lot of room for improvement and it may have more impact to the car industry in the future far more than we thought. One of the reason instantly came from my mind was that china's home market will provide a lot of profit to the national car maker and that is going to contributed to bring a lot of research and development money to the car maker. Soon, the Chinese may be chasing after with a impressive speed.

Situation in Japan

The companies went about this by either designing their own trucks (the market for passenger vehicles in Japan at the time was small), or partnering with a European brand to produce and sell their cars in Japan under license. The demand for domestic trucks was greatly increased by the Japanese military buildup before World War II, causing many Japanese manufacturers to break out of their shells and design their own vehicles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Japan

Things were pretty similar with China right now, big company comes in and invest, some of the people gain the experience and the way the big companies work and eventually found their own company, started developing their own model, times flies, good enough to fight against the giant. China is experiencing the "times flies" stage. But with the help of the foreign car maker investment, the times flies stage is going to be much shorter. However, the copyright is also another important problem for the Chinese to tackle, since the Chinese were found to steal technology from foreign company and sell it to China, at the same time being found that some of their car look quite simular to other manufacturer's car. It is the top priority to tackle otherwise it will slow down Chinese carmaker future development.

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/05/04/couple-found-guilty-of-trying-to-sell-gm-hybrid-tech-to-china-se/

Good old days of Japanese sports car part 2: Is the war ready to begin once again ??

Previously, i have mention about how 90's japanese car industry glory gain their reputation and gain respect from other european giant. Also, as mention before, there are GTR, LFA, NSX concept, WRX concept on the stage, does it hint the war is ready with in a short time ??

Noted that, this time the japanese sports car war may be even more excited than we thought, since the 280HP law has gone since 2004 and now the market demand a even better outlooking and interior with bargain price and at the same time they have to be competitive enough again european giant which will lead to the manufacturer into a uphill battle. Apart from this, some of the thing we should appreciate of japanese manufacturer is that they had an obvious brand value increase since people no longer thinking spend >100000 pounds on a japanese car is such an idiotic thing. It started to be reasonable to buy a japanese car with tons of technology and somehow it still able to run as fast as other european car with a cheaper price.  Also, i was wondering what horsepower will be sat for the coming war, 300, 400, 500 or >500? And also how is the price range? Can't wait to see these car debut to the car enthusiast and have a battle against each other, it's gonna be interesting!

Extra car sketch

I was doing a model shell for my friend who want to have a design on his remote car project.

 This was inspired by the futuristic scene i saw on youtube where an artist drew his predicted scene in the future.

Concept car vs Production car = Imagination vs Reality

A concept vehicle or show vehicle is a car made to showcase new styling and/or new technology. They are often shown at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or may not be mass produced.There are thousands of concept car built over years. But for myself, i divided it into 2 categories, "Productionable" and "Non-Productionable". It's because in the past years, there were pretty much concept car produced and made their debut in the auto show. However, very few of them made their way to survive due to complexity, cost, acceptance of people and the economic environment ................... But somehow, it's a very brilliant form of expression a brand and show off their strength, apart from this, it also has a function of helping the car industry to make more progress by learning from each other.




Also noted that some of the concept model of production car can be quite dramatically different with the production model.















Normally, such a change in the interior is because of the cost, the concept car is a high budget work that can be done with just imagination, however, in the production model, designers will have to think about the passenger feeling, cost, complexity to manufacture.........


although some of the concept car may not be produce, but i would like to share one i really appreciate, which issssssssssssss Lexus LF-LC concept












I love every part of this car, it is so elegance, so dynamic and also the reflection from the paint surface had really shown the surface change of the car, can't wait to see this car go to the production.