(From IED Press Release)

Gloria, Italy that loves design. In Geneva the new IED sedan for Alfa Romeo

The Istituto Europeo di Design presents the concept created by the Master in Transportation Design in collaboration with the famous brand’s Style Centre at the Motor Show, together with automotive designs from IED Barcelona and IED São Paulo, Brazil

Gloria is a tribute to sportiness and sleek Italian style, created to celebrate the strength of a brand with international renown – Alfa Romeo – which, with its products, has brought the beauty of Made in Italy design to the world . It was 1966 when, in the United States, the legend of the Milan company was born with the Giulia Spider Duetto in the film The Graduate . Today, Gloria is aiming towards another international challenge, still looking overseas, to the American and Asian markets.

It could really sound like the seventh blockbuster of a long movie saga: indeed, we are not far from reality, but we are not talking about movies. After almost 30 millions models sold worldwide, the German automaker is now coming his last interpretation of the Golf thing, the seventh. And we have to recognize the exercise of discovering the differences between Golf’s generations is for us even more intriguing than the show off of a new super cool concept car. What I mean, the details game is with this car brought to such a climax, that every mistake or oddity VW designers would have committed, would be so evident and gross , and so maybe unforgivable for many model aficionados. But there’s nothing to forgive, with this Golf MK7, at least not much.

The volumes, surfaces and graphics have been overall masterly re-invented, reshaped over the new and long celebrated MQB (Modular Transverse Matrix). VW claims the new car “being up to 100 kg lighter than the car it replaces, helping to make it up to 23 per cent more efficient than before”.

(By Alberto Gaiani)

This project was born from the desire “to bring a city car to its original functional configuration”. Thus the layout consists on three seats aligned in a row, to optimize the overall dimensions in length and width, and therefore slightly increasing the height, which is less binding for a city car and can even become a benefit because of a higher driving position with better visibility.

The brand Mercedes was chosen as project subject over others (primarily controlled company Smart) for three main reasons: The will to precisely drive the project toward a prestige, premium and trendy car, thus avoiding the concept of toy-car (and dealing with small packages would be easy to enter that field of cars). Then, Mercedes-Benz has often made innovations about vehicle architecture, with sometime radical solutions. In addition to these reasons, there ‘s the emotional aspect. A few manufacturers can boast such an heritage an styling elements. These have also provided several styling cues to distinguish the model.

(by Alberto Gaiani)

Renault Aqua is a study about aesthetic solutions for a car with 4 seats and 4 meters long.

The mechanical layout of the car is meant to be full electric, coherent with the electric program of the french company, with engine and rear-wheel drive and battery pack located under the center section of the tunnel and in the front, to provide optimum weight distribution .

The primary purpose of the interior research is recreating an environment as friendly and relaxed as possible, while breaking away from more large sized or weighty concept cars. “Aqua” wants to be also a modern car and fun to drive.

The work is then started from an idea of internal layout, then extended outwards.