Designing Hollywood’s hottest new movie car

When the Los Angeles Auto Show convenes in mid-November, The Design Challenge will pit top automotive designers from the U.S., Germany, Japan and Korea competing to design the next hot Hollywood film vehicle, pushing the envelope of automotive conceptualization to the next level.

We all remember Steve McQueen’s Mustang GT in Bullitt, Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean in Back To The Future, the inimitable Mini-Coopers in The Italian Job, and James Bond’s various Aston Martins. Today the best know automotive star of Hollywood just might be the black and yellow Bumble Bee Camaro autobot in the Transformers series, where the car is a character as well.

“There is no more perfect theme for this year's competition held in Los Angeles, home to Hollywood and the film capital of the world," said Chuck Pelly, director of Design Los Angeles and partner in The Design Academy, Inc. "We have some amazing talents participating and can expect blockbuster design concepts that fuse design and technology in innovative ways."

The winner of the design competition will be announced Nov. 17 during the Design Los Angeles conference at the LA Auto Show. Judging criteria will be based on factors including: How the vehicle reflects its brand attributes relative to the plot; how the vehicle relates to the targeted audience or brand; level of imagination; character development of the vehicle; and uniqueness of the combination of story, car and character.

The designs will be judged by Tom Matano, director of Industrial Design at San Francisco's Academy of Art University; Imre Molnar, dean of Detroit's College for Creative Studies; and Stewart Reed, chairman, Transportation Design at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design. A special guest judge with expertise in movie cars will also be on hand from Pixar Animation Studios, famous for such animated films as Cars,Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and many others.

The primary sponsor for The Design Challenge is Faurecia, the world's sixth-largest automotive supplier. They specialize in automotive seating, emissions control technologies, interior systems and auto exteriors. Co-sponsor Yokohama Tires works closely with auto manufacturers in the U.S., Europe and Japan in the development of tires for the latest concept vehicles. Other sponsors include Dassault Systemes and the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry (INDA).

The Design Challenge is an integral part of the Design Los Angeles conference held annually during the LA Auto Show Press Days, falling on November 16 and 17 this year. For each of the past eight years, a new Design Challenge theme has been chosen allowing the major automotive design studios to refine their talents and exercise their creativity via competition, thus providing impetus to new ideas in automotive design.