Page 48 - Marcello Gandini Maestro of Design Revisited

560City Car Share FOr OPAC
REVISITED
ON WATSON FINE BOO
The Bolloré Bluecar, as it was branded, featured
unpainted aluminum panels bonded onto a space frame,
CITY CAR
SHARE FOR OPAC
2011
Pininfarina’s BO electric vehicle concept at the 2008
Paris Motor Show may be considered a milestone
design as it was perhaps one of the earliest cars
designed to serve the car share market, a concept
whose time has come now, but was a tad too early then.
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to keep costs down and simplify the manufacturing
process. The aluminum panels were of smaller sections
so that tooling costs could be minimized, and composite
was used wherever possible for bumpers, headlamp and
rear lamp nacelles, and interiors. With many small pieces
bolted and bonded together, the manufacturing was
relatively labor intensive and complicated, and the costs
of the car turned out on the higher side. And then there
were quality issues.
Concerned with the shortcomings of the vehicle that
they were producing, CECOMP’s Gianluca Forneris
approached Marcello Gandini to design a car similar in
concept to the Bolloré Bluecar, essentially a three-door
two-box hatchback of around 3.3 meters long, which
could seat five comfortably, and be powered by an electric
motor driving the front wheels, but with a much simpler
manufacturing process requiring lower investments.
In fact, the BO concept was preceded by, and was a
huge improvement over, the strange concept called the
BlueCar that French battery manufacturer Bolloré had
shown at the 2005 Geneva Motor Show.
With Bolloré signing with the city of Paris to launch the
Autolib car share program, the next step was to develop
the BO for small volume series production. This was
tasked with Italian prototype and small series specialists
CECOMP SpA (Centro Esperienze COstruzione Modelli
e Prototipi, or the model and prototype construction
center), from near Turin.
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Basing it on the technology that Gandini was developing
for Tata Motors for the Falcon project, his proposal
matched the Bluecar in its packaging objectives, and
minimized complexity by using between 25 to 30
composite panels in total for the entire car (sans a
separate chassis). A brilliant feature was the pair of sliding
doors with angled runners which were designed to allow
gravity to slide the doors forward shut automatically
when not being pushed back. A simple but ingenious
solution to the safety concerns of getting sliding doors to
shut when the car starts moving.
 With an overall size like that of the Bolloré Bluecar, the Marcello Gandini proposal was partially based on the technology he had been
developing for a mostly composite car. MARCELLO GANDINI ARCHIVES
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