The Draw Of Car Design

Many people aspire to be car designers, but few make it. We visit the Royal College of Arts - responsible for some of the best - to find out what it takes.

- Joe Finnerty

THE swooping lines of an Aston Martin DB11, the brutal beauty of the Jaguar F-Type and the rugged brilliance of the Range Rover Sport; all are desirable cars and all are British-built. But there’s something else that links these machines: the men who penned them. Marek Reichman, Ian Callum and Gerry McGovern are the experts who crafted these vehicles, and all three cut their teeth on the vehicle design course at the famous Royal College of Arts (RCA) in London.

Clearly these three superstars are at the very top of the design world, and for any budding stylist it can seem a distant dream to be responsible for such a model – especially in an industry as competitive as automotive design. But you have to start somewhere, and Auto Express went along to the 2016 RCA degree show in Kensington, west London, to see what the current generation of students is producing, and also find out some of the challenges would-be designers face when they graduate.

Walking past the rest of the degree show on our way to the transport design section highlights that the talent pool at the RCA is extremely high; there’s everything from an antique pinball table to a gesture-controlled robotic arm. This is only the tip of the iceberg, too, with designers at universities across the land all battling to be the very best.

Once we’re in the zone for vehicle design, it’s clear that the autonomous future and technology are taking centre stage. The 60-Minute car by Tom Ellis (main picture), which looks at taking away automobile ownership and saving space by assembling and reassembling parts between journeys, is merely one unique take on transport.