POACHED

Car enthusiasts, design aficionados and art lovers will get an up-close-and-personal look into SALAFF Automotive’s handmade supercar, Caden, with the debut of the vehicle’s handcrafted prototype chassis at the ArtCenter College of Design’s Car Classic 16: Built By Hand on Sunday, October 23.

SALAFF Automotive, founded by ArtCenter alumnus Carlos Salaff (Transportation Design ’02), is a new car brand that blends vintage values with modern design. Caden, the first model for SALAFF Automotive, embodies the belief that raw, visceral, man-machine experiences are good for the soul.

“I have always viewed great cars as living sculpture,” says Salaff, who was instrumental in the creation of several concept and production vehicles at Mazda Design Americas including the Mazda CX-7 and Nagare concept vehicles. “With Caden, I wish to express fresh design with roots in the past: the snap of a toggle switch, the directness of a manual shifter and the soul of a hand-formed aluminum body. Tactile elements create engaging man-machine connections that should be curated and celebrated.”

• SALAFF Automotive Debuts Caden’s Handmade Prototype Chassis at Car Classic 16: Built By Hand
• Sunday, October 23, 2016
• ArtCenter College of Design, 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena CA 91103
• Viewing begins at 11 a.m.
• www.SALAFF.com
• More info on design / development here

Clever use of one of the stand-out features of the Smart car (or fourtwo as it’s officially known) is its ability to park ‘end-on’, effectively squeezing 2+ cars into the space of a typical hatchback.

Not completely unique – you’d be able to do the same feat in a G-Whizz, but nevertheless the marketing folk in Smart are switched-on enough to make the most of this feat and commissioned Berlin consultancy BBDO to build a campaign around the Smart’s dimensions. Back in 2015 we had this:

And now there’s a Red-Dot award for the print-campaign:

“Communication Design 2016 – The “Car Parks” campaign, designed by BBDO Agency, started in 2015 and visualises that the entire city is a car park for a smart car. The posters show Berlin, London and Rome in the smallest of spaces – a car park. The cities are represented by their respective typical buildings. Only a smart car is able to find a parking space in this bustle.”

Love the simplicity of these..no text, muted colours, awesomely-detailed line drawing and barely a sniff of Photoshop.