DESIGN
DYNAMICS
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
“TO A LOT OF PEOPLE, CARS OF—JIM HALL
CURRENT TIMES ARE BORING.”
more quirky designs on the
road. Automakers are now using
carbon fiber, an expensive blend
of carbon and plastic which has
been most commonly used in
spacecraft, airplanes and race
cars. It is highly moldable and
light, which would make it more
popular in cars if it weren’t so
expensive.
Chrysler’s Dodge brand is using
carbon fiber in the new Viper,
which hits the market later this
year and will be priced around
$95,000. Carbon fiber is in the
hood and roof, and the automaker
used high-strength aluminum in
the doors to help make it lighter.
The result is a chiseled hood
with seven air vents, and doors
that look like something out of
Minority Report.
Traditionally, car doors and
other steel parts are made on
stamping machines. The piece of
steel that makes a door might be
stamped five or six times to get the
right shape. But there’s no amount
of stamping that would make the
Viper’s door. The company had
to “superform” the door piece,
by heating up the aluminum and
pressing it into shape.
“We’re trying to get back to
what I call a washable surface,”
says Mark Trostle, head of
motorsport design for Chrysler.
“That’s when a customer wants
to go out and touch and wash the
car, to touch those hard edges.”
Although the new shapes will
make cars more modern, Trostle
says he thinks they’ll also be more
timeless and classic. “A little more
beautiful,” he says.
Before 1980 or so, carmakers
rarely took aerodynamics into
account when looking at car
design. When new fuel efficiency
standards hit after the oil crisis in
the mid 1970s, the companies had
to start thinking of ways to cut fuel
consumption. About 25 percent
of a car’s fuel consumption comes
from pushing itself through the air.
Over the past decade, designers
have learned to spend more time
in the wind tunnel, a practice
that won’t go away anytime soon.
Designers bring clay models,
about one-quarter the size of a