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The automobile industry has come a long way since Karl Benz designed the first gas powered automobile in 1885. Even more astonishing is how much the designs have changed. As the engineering has advanced and become more sophisticated, so have the exterior and interior designs.

Imagine

The process of designing a car begins first with an idea or concept. Designers and engineers try to answer questions about how the car will be used, who will drive it and why it should be built. Then they design cars based on the answers to those questions. Certain cars, called Concept Cars are built solely for the purpose of stretching the imagination.

Sketch, Render, Test

From a set of ideas comes a set of drawings or sketches. The best sketches are turned into 2-D and then 3-D computer renderings. At this point a lot of tests and calculations are done to make sure the design will actually work in reality. When physics or mathematics determines that a design will not work, the designers have to change the design. This trial and error process of design, test, redesign continues until the car is finally ready to be built out of clay.

Scuplt

The final designs are turned into clay models - some are smaller, scaled down versions of the real car and others are the actual size of the real car. Full-sized clay models have an aluminum core, wooden secondary structure, a foam layer and then a layer of clay. After the sculpting is finished, the clay layer is coated with a layer of plastic, which makes it difficult to tell the clay model from a real car!

Build

A real prototype is created from all the external and internal design specifications. If a car is approved for production, a lot of them are made and sold by dealers.

Enjoy

The next time you get in a vehicle, take a moment to remember that each and every shape and color of the interior and exterior was designed by someone. Everything from the shape of the headlights to the way the door lock works began as an idea. A large team of designers and craftspeople turned that idea into a reality.

Do you have a favorite car designer?