man did they ever drop the ball…
I think they were “leaked”
Good marketing move I think…
You need to give links Zippy. Some of us are lazy.
I’m waiting for more pics. The blurry ones from above on the set of Transformers 2 look much better than that one clear pic.
It reminds me of one of my first critiques in #d Class freshman year. Our teacher was a British guy, old school (Garret Jones), we had to get sketches approved by him before we could start in 3d (which is how it works anyway)… during my first crit, he tore me a new butt hole because my original sketch was so good, but my final piece sucked. He said it was “as if I gave you $100 to invest, and you thought a good safe place for it was in the fire place. I want my $100 back.”
Looks like the $100 bill might have gone into the fireplace on this one.
Got to agree with YO here. I think the ball was dropped and they’re headed for Prius status soon.
haha. nice anecdote.
another one my (also old school) professor used to say with designs like this is that it looked “like a dog’s breakfast”. (ie. bits and pieces of everything all mashed up to somewhat resemble something edible/attractive)
R
its boring, what a let down
while I’ll agree the production version is a let down based on what they established with the concept, I was amazed when I first saw how “progressive” the concept was. The production is definitely watered down, but is vanilla a bad thing for a car like this?
Yes.
GM is a company that is struggling to survive. They need something that shows they can still lead. The car needs to be s3xy, whether that is aggressive or sleek. It doesn’t even look high-tech enough to say that it’s got the latest green technology in it.
On the Treehugger.com forum, some people have argued that the engineering needs to be a certain way for aerodynamic efficiency, but I beg to differ.
This Buick concept is more than 20 years old and while it looks a little dated, it would have been a good one to resurrect for exactly this purpose… a sleek aerodynamic and futuristic vehicle that contains the latest technologies.
It would have been better if the production was this far removed from the concept. At least the execution wouldn’t leave anybody wanting.
:)ensen.
I’m willing to cut the General a little slack if only because Honda’s new Insight looks like a Prius-copy too. It could be that in customer clinics, people think this is what a hybrid should look like.
Awesome, thats what we need, more design my focus group. Lets just fire each other and tell the public, hey, we give up just make your own shit.
Carton: It’s not new. Subaru facelifted the last Impreza twice. In fact, they announced an emergency facelift on the current model before it even hit US shores. The reason: focus groups picking out the bits they liked from different designs. The final design, as mentioned earlier, looks like a dogs breakfast.
Porsche recently dropped the ergonomic ball. They are rushing through a rethink of the controls for PDK, their flappy paddle shifter.
Give me a while and I’m sure I can think of more examples…the industry if full of 'em!
It looks like a focus which looks like dooky.
now that i would buy as a hybrid, not some namby pamby baby blue eco box.
How big is the market for a two seat, cig box low hybrid that is a pain to get in and out of and has a trunk too small for a pair of tightly folded underwear? I’m betting much smaller than the Prius market.
They don’t all look bad:
This is a hybrid
This is one, too:
Even this is a hybrid.
Granted these are not as efficient as the Prius or even the Volt, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be. If you do the mechanics of it right (i.e. Engine size, power generation, battery capacity, etc.) you’d end up with a rather normal looking vehicle. I think in 5 years, we’ll see much nicer (normal car) looking hybrids with just as much efficiency as your dork box hybrid.
Nurb: The Prius outsells all other hybrids combined. People want to drive a symbol of their virtue, not save the environment incognito.
all that BS about how the car has to look like it does for engineering/aero reasons is garbage.
just came across this post over at Jalopnik that shows the original Alfa BAT concept which apparently has a drag coefficient of 0.19, better than the prius (and EV1), and doesn’t look like an overinflated hot dog.
also, it makes me wonder how car companies work if they can put out a concept that is so far from reality, only to figure out later, “geez”, we can’t make this… crazy concept cars, excluded, but the Volt concept was being shown at the autoshows an in ads as “what would be coming next”…
R
Wow. What a cop out.
The Prius outsells all other hybrids combined. People want to drive a symbol of their virtue, not save the environment incognito.
Yes, I know that. I know the Prius is a status symbol. I mean if celebrities are spening $20K pimping out their Prius, it must be a status thing. My point was that for the rest of us who don’t need the symbol of driving a Prius, there are alternatives that look nice. And with enough technology in the near future, those incognito green machines could perform just as well as the Prius.