That headline is a quote from the video above. It’s only one of the many great lines from one of the many smart people interviewed in this thought-provoking video from Honda. They were asked the simple question of what they thought transportation might be like in 80 years. It’s crazy, fun, and absolutely vital that we speculate on the possible answers to questions such as this. Projecting out a few decades unbinds us from the constraints of now, of the current state, and empowers us to not only stretch our imaginations, but to tap into the collective desire to unwind the status quo and envision something that is truly better for all of us.

Via Punk Planning.

Wow! Chris Bangle has left BMW. This is surprising news, in many ways, but perhaps most of all because I think many of us were beginning to think that Chris Bangle WAS BMW. So, yes, I was very surprised early this morning when the automobile sites that I follow were buzzing with news that after 17 years leading design for BMW, Chris Bangle had resigned. Being a loyal customer of BMW’s for almost exactly as long as Bangle has been directing design there, I have to say that this news made me a little sad. Yes, Bangle has had a controversial tenure at BMW. Yes, some of the designs that came from his leadership were not well received. But many, many others were, and it was under Bangle that BMW saw both its brand awareness and its sales rise to fairly incredible levels. Bangle was not only responsible for numerous designs for new vehicles, but also for incredibly visionary and forward thinking vehicle concepts (like the GINA Light Visionary Model). All of these, the good and the bad, found their DNA in the cohesive design language that Bangle developed in the 1990’s for BMW (anybody remember “flame surfacing”?) This language, and its evolution, is still in place. While controversial, Bangle’s influence on BMW is unmistakable, and is best summed up by Klaus Draeger, BMW’s Board Member for Development:

“Christopher Bangle has had a lasting impact on the identity of BMW Group’s brands. His contribution to the company’s success has been decisive, and together with his teams he has mapped out a clear and aesthetic route into the future.”

Another impressive accomplishment by Bangle was the successful creation and direction of BMW’s design consultancy Designworks USA. Designworks is now a formidable design agency in its own right, working with international brands and companies in a wide variety of industries and doing work that is innovative, cutting edge, and very impressive.

Apparently, Bangle is leaving BMW but he is not leaving design. How could he? His stated plans are to continue designing in a non-automotive related industry. I wish him the best, and am excited to see where he goes next.

Strangely coincidentally, just two days ago I decided to watch, again, Chris Bangles’ presentation at TED from back in 2002. It’s excellent, has some great back story on the design of models that seriously influenced cars that are now on the road, and benefits from his passionate use of profanity:

I’m one to flog motorsports analogies to help make a point. The image above is one I’ve used often in presentations to help businesses understand how a team comes together in support of their goals, and that success is determined by the ability of this team to work together and not by the talent inherit in any one individual. This is as true for designing buildings as it is for designing websites. The team is much, much bigger than the sum of it’s parts. When talking about this, I’ll often say something to the effect of:

“If our client is the driver, the car is their business, and the track is the competitive marketplace, we want to create, lead and support the best team to help our client win.”

I know, it’s a bit excessive. But it works. There’s something about a Formula 1 pit crew, as pictured above, that makes this clear and that everybody gets. First, races are often won or lost based on how well the pit crew can execute the pit strategy, and the pressure to perform is intense as they typically have between 4-8 seconds to change tires, refuel, and make important adjustments. Each member of the crew is very highly accomplished not just at their specific task, but in their ability to seamlessly integrate into the larger event of a pit stop. Each crew member must intuitively understand where they fit into this precision drill, and understand their physical relationship to the other crew members, the vehicle, and the crew leader. It’s exciting to watch a team in action, and with Formula 1 racing the best spectating is often just watching the different teams execute their pit strategies.

And so it is in business, design, architecture, marketing, advertising, and anything else that depends on people working together for success. Henry Ford was right, putting effort to team building and understanding, to learning how to work well together, is success itself.

Update: A friend sent on the image below to further beat the pit crew analogy to death. It’s a great image, and adds some clarity to the six second chaos we spectators witness when the racing cars enter the pits.

I have written about the Honda culture of innovation twice before in the last year. That’s because the history of innovation at this company, and how they have maintained a consistent focus on innovation for several decades, is a pretty incredible story that is totally worthy of investigation.

Also incredible, though, is Honda’s passion for failure. This would be something they share with another innovation icon, Burt Rutan, who also very clearly understands the relationship between innovation and failure. They are inextricably linked, and without failure there can be no innovation.

A favorite line from the video above:

“You can fail 100 times as long as you succeed once. We can only make fantastic advances in technology through many failures.”

Takeo Fukui, President and CEO Honda Motor Company, LTD.

Despite the video above being a gratuitous advertisement, of sorts, I appreciate how earnestly it addresses the role of failure in success at Honda, and the honesty in how these failures may be humiliating at the time but ultimately lead to determined success. There’s a couple complimentary videos which are also quite good at Honda – the Power of Dreams.

This video does an excellent job making clear what to do when encountering somebody on a Segway while driving. It’s a potentially confusing situation, so the technique demonstrated by Ken Block is much appreciated. The Segway lesson begins at about three minutes into the video, but it is worth watching the entire thing. If you have even the most basic understanding of vehicle dynamics you will find this video utterly amazing.

via NextAutos

The vehicle above is the Peugeot RD concept created by 25 year old Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar of Colombia and chosen as the winner for the recent Peugeot Design Contest 2008, which ended back on September 15th. Like other automobile companies, Peugeot hosts these contests to open wider the search for innovations, vision, and ideas for the future of its products and while the RD will probably not actually be made, some of the smart innovations that it incorporates may very well inform the Peugeots of the immediate future. Some of the innovations in the RD concept are focused on shrinking the vehicle’s footprint, like the ability to fold and being single seat 3-wheeler, as shown below in a detailed rendering:

As of late there have been several automobile concepts that take advantage of folding functionality. This is a response to the reality of space constraints of navigating urban environments and the need for a smaller parking footprint. We’ve also seen more single seat concepts, a design approach that takes up less space, less material, and subsequently less weight. In many ways, the single seat concept is one that takes the great efficiencies of a motorcycle and wraps them in the safety and convenience of an automobile, making vehicles like the RD concept above seemingly ideally suited to urban commuting and meeting the needs of a flexible city car.

This video would be the first thing viewed via my RSS feed this morning, and it pretty much sums up my present attitude. Nothing like starting your day with a little Ferrari racing action. Grrr.

Video via UGG Ferrari Friday at Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness.

That is Soichiro Honda (1906-1991), the founder of Honda, above in an image from 1963 when Honda was still somewhat of a fledgling company, though already a powerful innovator. He is sitting on one of the many racing cars, this one for Formula 1, that Honda was developing at the time, and not because racing for Honda was a marketing exercise. At the time most of Honda’s attention had been focused on motorcycles, and it was in 1963 that Honda became the best selling motorcycle in the United States. Moving into automobiles was the next priority for the company, and only as an innovator. As Honda began building cars, so it also started racing them, just as it had been doing successfully with motorcycles (in 1966 Honda won the Constructors Championship and all five motorcycle Grand Prix classes). For Soichiro Honda, racing IS Honda, the ideal environment for Honda’s engineers, designers, and leaders to be challenged, to innovate and address situations, problems, and opportunities in a way that ultimately benefits the entire culture of the organization. This approach is not an ancillary element of Honda culture as Mr. Honda succeeded in making racing synonymous with the culture of Honda. He had been a successful racer himself, winning and setting longstanding speed records in the 1930’s, and understood intimately that the passion for winning in motorsports can translate into product innovation and market success. Previously, I had written about innovation at Honda and touched on the racing culture of the company. Just recently, though, I had cause to dig deeper into how Honda’s passion for racing has informed the entire company, and lead to innovations across the comprehensive product range that Honda offers.

Several automobile manufacturers benefit from comprehensive racing programs. Think about BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, and Toyota. For each of these companies, as with Honda, R&D happens on the racetrack, and the successes from the track quickly make their way to the road, to the customer. For Honda, though, there is something deeper with regards to racing and innovation, and this is due to the place that Soichiro Honda ensured that racing held in corporate culture. More than the engineering benefits of a successful racing effort, Honda has imbued its entire culture with a passion for innovation that found its inception on the racetrack, but now touches and informs the development of robotics, aircraft, marine engines, and a long list of other products. Honda doesn’t just race cars and motorcycles, they race everything. Or, perhaps, it is accurate to say that for Honda everything is a race. For people like me, who share similar passions (and I have never owned a Honda product), it is windows into the Honda culture of racing and innovation, like below, that continue to earn my admiration and respect:

Video found at UGG.

Visually beautiful, modern, and purposeful. I would ride this, but prefer my motorcycles in low-visibility black. Summing up this concept motorcycle from autoblog:

“The concept motorbike is the work of Israeli designer Amir Glinik, who centered his design around the theoretical application of the Ferrari Enzo’s V12 engine, chopped down to four cylinders and modified to drive just one wheel in a motorcycle frame. Around the V4 engine, Glinik has designed a fluid shape that may appear more futuristic in its styling than inspired by current roadcar designs, but certainly catches your attention. Glinik has even planned out the theoretical controls, which blend elements from an F-16 fighter jet (more common in his home country than Ferraris, anyway) and the Scuderia’s high-tech Formula One steering wheel, supplemented by a weatherproof touch-screen LCD atop the fuel tank.”

There is a convergence of technologies and materials happening that, when added to the forces driving change with regards to how we get from one place to another, is going to yield some incredible advances in transportation design over the next decade. I am both optimistic and excited for what these advances will reveal, and I believe that this motorcycle concept embodies some of what I am optimistic for with regards to design.

I awoke to sad news this morning, that Paul Newman had died. There are several of his movies that I love, movies that truly represent the independent, driven energy that Newman brought to everything that he did. For me, though, it was his passion for racing that I found inspiring, ranking up there with James Dean and Steve McQueen who also shared this passion for going fast well. Paul Newman was a great actor, no doubt about it, but he was also an incredibly natural race car driver. He discovered this racing, and his talent for it, in the 1970’s. He went professional in 1977 racing and winning in a long, long list of events. One highlight would be his team’s second place finish at Le Mans in 1979 (that is Newman at Le Mans that year pictured above). On racing, Newman famously said:

”Racing is the best way I know to get away from all the rubbish of Hollywood.”

Paul Newman (1925-2008)

I think it would be hard not to respect Paul Newman. He embodied an integrity and love for life and family that provided a role model for a generation. He had a legendary sense of humor, an obvious devotion to his wife, and a lifelong desire to help others. He will be missed.

A commercial featuring Newman’s SCCA win in 1985 that I found and enjoyed: