Students pursuing the Master in Transportation Design course at IED, Turin are a lucky lot being geographically close to Fiat-Chrysler EMEA Design Center. The Alfa Romeo Style Centre proposed a product brief to twenty students of the said course in IED, Turin all of whom came back with a 1:4 clay model of their concept. The one that fit Alfa’s brief most was selected and the students have worked on it and will present the full scale clay model at the 83rd Geneva Motor Show set to open form the 5th of March 2013.
Alfa Romeo has been pushing for a North American entry for sometime now the first steps laid down by the Alfa Romeo 4C which will also debut at the Geneva Motor Show. The ‘Gloria’ concept is Alfa Romeo’s proposal for a V6/V8 biturbo engine powered saloon for the American and Asian markets. The Gloria is 4700 mm long, 1920 mm wide, 1320 mm high and with a wheelbase of 2900 mm. Leather straps up front are a nod to the leather straps found in older Alfa Romeo cars which were used to secure the luggage compartment.
“We asked the students in the Master programme to give us their completely independent interpretation of a new Alfa Romeo saloon,” states Lorenzo Ramaciotti, Head of Fiat & Chrysler Design. “During development, we commented, discussed and guided the projects in order to get the most from their spontaneous expressions of creativity. The result was stimulating and marked by professional and creative excellence.”
“The possibility of developing a concept car in collaboration with the Alfa Romeo Style that we were offered was a great opportunity to demonstrate that the IED is, first of all, an Italian school that aims to generate beauty,” states César Mendoza, Director of IED, Turin. “What better brand than Alfa Romeo to teach our students how form and volume can convey strong emotions, fuelling the desire to design a car? The passion that the brand evokes had a powerful impact on the students and teaching staff, allowing them to push themselves within tight deadlines to achieve the final delivery of a project which was unquestionably complex. Today, the European Design Institute is proud to represent Italian teaching excellence internationally.”
In addition to the 1:1 clay model at IED’s stand at Geneva, there will also be an augmented reality application run on an iPad that will let visitors swap the alloys on the Gloria for five other designs, again results of a collaboration between the students and OZ Racing. OZ Racing also sponsors the current 20″ alloys on the Gloria.