Hasta La Ideas

A few of us in creative leadership at frog design got talking about the future of the automobile. As an industry going though massive change, a category we work in and an object designers love to obsess over, there is a lot to talk about. What began as a conversation turned into a POV we shared out on designmind this week. Words by Chief Creative Officer, Mark Rolston, sketch by me, based on Mark’s insanely modded 240z… click to see the full POV.

The car is 125 years old. Today, automakers are busy imagining what the next generation of cars will be. What’s different this time is the sheer number of technical, ecological, and social changes at play. It’s not hard to imagine that future cars may be very different than anything we’ve seen before. But our roads will be populated not only by these new vehicles, but also by an increasingly deep history of older cars. In other words, the car of the future will also be the car of the past.

The premise is simple: Today’s car manufacturers are working hard to build more ecologically sound cars, but despite their best intentions, the reality is that every new car made has a negative ecological impact far greater from its manufacturing process than from its use and eventual destruction. People are already keeping their cars longer, not merely for economical reasons, but because modern cars are made to last longer, and the aftermarket has become incredibly sophisticated. And like architecture, older cars can be more beautiful, unique, and personal than a new, mass-manufactured example.

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