A car design odyssey: Part one

In a previous Ti article I explained why launching new cars is a mug’s game, economically speaking. But just in case you have implausibly deep pockets, don’t care too much about boring things like a half-decent return on investment, and are still hell-bent on setting up your very own car company, let’s hope that you are also the patient type.

Because the process of creating new cars is a slow one – whatever claims might be made otherwise.

Once again, I’m going to stick my neck out here by trying to attach some numbers to that woolly adjective ‘slow’. Most car makers will take about four years to ‘create’ a new car. Now, straight away we must get into some tedious definitions. ‘Create’ means to go from the idea of the car, with no physical artefacts existing, to passing the milestone commonly known in the industry as Start of Production (SOP) or Job One.