Inaugural seminar series at Audrain’s Newport Concours and Motor Week welcomed automotive A-list guest speakers and a full house of guests
NEWPORT, Rhode Island (October 11, 2019) – Carving its own place among the world’s most spectacular classic car shows, Audrain’s inaugural Newport Concours & Motor Week debuted a number of extraordinary events last week, each one a destination in itself worthy of headlines and applause. Among them, Audrain’s new seminar series, which featured fascinating conversations engaged by some of the foremost influencers and personalities in the automotive community, including famed enthusiasts Jay Leno and Donald Osborne, whom participated overall as event chair and concours chair, respectively. One particular highlight was titled Auto Design and Its Impact on the Public, a broad and fascinating conversation that related to general consumers, design professionals, artists and auto enthusiasts. Set on a charming and intimate stage inside the historic Stanford White-designed Casino Theater at Newport’s International Tennis Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 5th, Jay Leno and Donald Osborne moderated a lively discussion and subsequent Q&A with General Motors Vice President of Global Design Michael Simcoe, Chair of the Transportation Design Department at the ArtCenter College of Design Stewart Reed and Pixar’s Jay Ward, creative director for the ‘Cars’ franchise. Topics covered by these leaders in the field ranged from masculine versus feminine design and marketing, design ideation in animation and the classroom or studio versus real-world legal and safety concerns as well as the future of production car design versus the wide-ranging expressions of creativity seen amongst cars of the past, otherwise known today as ‘classic cars,’ when regulations were less governing.
“Wow! What a remarkable experience overall this has been, being involved in Audrain’s Newport Concours & Motor Week, and what made the week’s events even more special for me was when I moderated, alongside my friend Jay Leno, a seminar on Auto Design and its Impact on the Public,” says Donald Osborne. “This entire event is about how we interact with cars- so sharing ideas and having these important conversations with some of today’s foremost creative leaders is really important in understanding where we’ve come from and where we will all be going.”
For those who weren’t able join, a few written excerpts from the seminar are provided below:
On design ideation in the classroom…
“How do you then say, ‘this is great, you are expressing your imagination, you are actually solving problems but you are going to get a job when you graduate from here where you are actually going to have to build a car that meets regulations and that will fit passengers and has an actual understandable powertrain, etc’…how do you make that leap for your students?” asked Donald Osborne, posing the question to Stewart Reed.
“We like to see [our students] just do these things that you might say are a little bit naïve, but the big studios would actually like someone who has some naïveté…I mean, they all dream of getting out of Art Center and being this guy…” responded Stewart Reed while pointing to Michael Simcoe.
On design ideation in animation…
“We were talking earlier that there are some cars based on actual production cars and other cars that are completely original creations of your studio but we were talking last night about something, which was an original creation, that had great influence and that was Flo…” said Donald Osborne when initiating conversation with Jay Ward.
“Oh yeah, we were talking about Flo, the Motorama showgirl that is Ramone’s girlfriend in town, and Bob Pauley, who is one of our best character designers – he designed Buzz Lightyear and Lightening McQueen, so that tells you how good of a designer this guy is…Flo is this Fifties dream car and we really took inspiration from GM Motorama show cars [with her], and what is great about [that] is there was no safety, no engineering, no legal… there was just ‘make it cool’…and so, Flo has the most gigantic fins that would cut your head off, by accident! She’s got Dagmar bumpers and she’s got wings on the side; she’s got a continental spare that’s sort of flushed in and that’s the kind of stuff we can do in our animated films that car designers wish they could do…” said Jay Ward.
On the future of production design…
“I have to go here because this is just one of my concerns. The evolution of the market from cars to trucks and crossovers and SUVS…Do you think we’ll be able to see, going forward, the kind of variety of design that we have seen historically from the time the Benz Patent Motorwagen came in 1886 even though the compass of model types is getting seemingly ever smaller?” Donald Osborne asked to Michael Simcoe.
“Yes, watch the market right now. There is the extreme here in North America [with] full-size trucks and SUVs and if you think about what you’ve seen with a reaction ratio is that designers don’t like doing square boxes anymore and the public actually is looking for what we’re giving them, more sculptural performance in traditional SUVs. All people are really buying SUVs for is the passenger position because they are easy to get in and out and for carrying their stuff…and so we’ve trained the public to want something that does everything. But there’s still a market for low vehicles…CUV is coming back or coming into the marketplace and that’s a game we are playing with, low rise floors, normal seating positions, lower cowls, but big wheel and tires and slightly different ride heights. So again, they’re easy to use, they’re easy to get in and out of but they may be with a more sensible seating position. The market is going to change, it’s just going through a bit of a funny period.” responded Michael Simcoe.
