Henrik Fisker has accomplished enough in his automotive career to fill a few lifetimes. A graduate of the now-defunct Art Center College of Design in the Swiss town of Vevey, he started his professional life at a special BMW design unit, where he helped create the Z07 concept car that would eventually morph into the production Z8 sports car.
Fisker then joined Ford and eventually became the chief designer of Aston Martin, where he turned Ian Callum's design template into the DB9 and the V8 Vantage. But the Dane aspired to create his very own cars. In 2005, he created Fisker Coachbuild and sought to build 150 units each of the Mercedes SL–based Tramonto and the BMW 6-series–derived Latigo. But just 15 of the former and 2 of the latter were made before Fisker had founded a much bigger project: Fisker Automotive. We all know how that ended up: The beautiful but impractically packaged Karma plug-in hybridseldom worked properly—and never came close to projected sales numbers.
The company was bought by the Chinese, and the final Karma bodies are being converted into 200-mph Destinos powered by Corvette engines. Fisker doesn't object; the Karma was about style above anything else. Once the partnership was formed, Fisker—in “the OEM way,” he says—got to work executing a full design process, including a life-size clay model. The resulting car is intended to re-create the spirit of the 1968 Shelby GT500 on the bones of the all-new Mustang. The glass is shared with the cars that roll off Ford assembly lines, but the vast majority of the body is unique and formed—with the exceptions of the doors and the roof—from carbon fiber.
There’s an elongated hood with two massive intakes, a carbon-fiber hexagonal grille, re-sculpted fenders, a new decklid with integrated rear spoiler, and a beefy rear diffuser. Everything, Galpin and Fisker say, is intended to channel airflow for cooling or downforce needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment