Page 98 - Sharp September 2023

TANGERINE
trunk shows in fashion. You can’t buy the clothes and most of the time you can’t even wear them. They’re just for show — for showing off a new icon for the brand.”
DREAM
Enter the Vision One-Eleven, Mercedes-Benz’s latest brand- shaper. Cooked up in Carlsbad, California (where the marque main- tains one of four global Advanced Design Studios), this space-age, shark-nosed concept was inspired by the experimental C111 series of cars first developed by the brand during the 1960s.
“But you can see that this car is not just a copy,” says Wagener. “It’s inspired by the C111 — but it’s a very modern, contemporary interpretation of that car. It brings it into the future. And this is what we do with everything. We’re always looking back as a source of inspiration.”
The spirit of the original C111, a car launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show over half a century ago, courses through this concept, from its distinctive gull-wing doors to its vivid orange paintwork. The seats are quilted in showy silver leather; a squared-off steering wheel gives a nonchalant nod to Mercedes’ motorsport heritage; and the sleek swell of its glass cabin canopy looks to the future.
But its most distinctive feature? The car’s low-lying, illuminated grille. Interpreting the distinctive round headlights of the original C111 in a uniquely digitized way, the front grille (along with the rear light array and dashboard inside the cabin) achieves its 3D, pixelated appearance by mounting small glass cubes on top of high-resolution screens. You can even program 8-bit text to scroll across these displays in the style of an old news ticker. It’s one of many retro-futuristic touches inspired by the brand’s rich history.
MERCEDES-BENZ’S CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER ON THE CARMAKER’S LATEST CONCEPT
By Jonathan Wells
THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF CONCEPT CARS. AT LEAST,
that’s what Gorden Wagener, chief design officer of Mercedes- Benz, tells us, and he should know. Since joining the company in 1997, Wagener has been a commanding presence at the marque’s drawing board — sketching up and rolling out mainstream models including the fifth-generation C-Class, the S-Class, and the GLE.
He’s also dreamed up a bunch of mind-bending, body-twisting prototypes — cars which steer us back to those three concept cat- egories. “First, there are pre-production show cars,” Wagener says, “which announce a new direction for a production car one year prior to market. Then there are the research cars like our EQXX, which have lots of new technical input. And then there are the Vision cars, which are pretty much brand-shapers; cars that show crazy ideas and creativity.”
These are Wagener’s favourites. “For me,” he says, “they’re like
AUTO
98 SEPTEMBER 2023
SHARPMAGAZINE.COM