Autocar's hot hatch of the future is made real by Ford

LONDON – January 18, 2010: Visitors to the Autocar stand at the Autosport International show this weekend will get a special treat: the chance to see a scale model of the winning design in Autocar’s Hot Hatch 2020 competition, made by the expert clay modellers at Ford’s technical centre in Dunton, Essex.

The Hot Hatch 2020 Design Competition was launched at Autosport International in January 2009 in association with Ford and Hot Wheels. The winning design, nominated by a panel of judges that included Ford’s own design luminary Stefan Lamm, was produced by Coventry Transport Design student Minwoo Hwang. Over the course of several weeks, it has been made into a physical model by Ford’s model makers at Dunton.

Minwoo’s design provided Ford’s model makers Brad Hood and Jamie Hope with an interesting challenge. The modellers usually get their hands on a model when it is already nearly complete, as milling machines carry out the majority of the initial sculpting. But Minwoo’s design was on paper, so Brad and Jamie had to revert back to the ‘good old days’ and sculpt the design by hand.

Minwoo spent a month refining his design and chose to enter the competition as a project for the automotive side of his transport design degree at Coventry University.

Paul Wraith, an experienced Ford designer who worked with Minwoo on the project, was impressed with the maturity of the student’s design. “Good cars look good right at the start of the design process,” he said. “And this is certainly the case with Minwoo’s design. Things that may look good on paper or a computer screen won’t necessarily look good when you turn them into a scale or full-size model.

“Minwoo has had to make compromises, but the design changes are intelligent ones and he’s offering an interesting take on how hot hatch design may evolve.”

Like all designers, however, Minwoo made last-minute changes to his creation whilst in the studio. The biggest debate was over its colour; Minwoo was leaning towards silver, but the Ford guys gently reminded him that the traditional RS colours are blue and white, and even the luminous lime green seen on the current Focus.

"We're delighted at Minwoo's success - the second Autocar competition winner from Coventry University in the last few weeks,” said David Browne, Course Director, Automotive Design, Coventry University. “His exciting but thoughtful proposal demonstrates that far from compromising design, alternative power sources etc can actually provide design opportunities - and it is exactly this challenge to 'excite responsibly' that is facing both the automotive design profession and our students right now."