College Exhibition: IED Degree Show 2006

Students of the Transportation Design course at Turin's Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) have been busy designing a new road-going McLaren sports car for the British brand.

Third-year students developed 14 super cars for project sponsors McLaren as part of their final-year project for the 2005-2006 academic year. The brief was to come up with a sports car capable of speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph), that would provide its owner with road-going F1 technology and unparalleled dynamic and aerodynamic performance.

The project, called 'A 320 km/h plus sports car', was led by Fulvio Fantolino, course co-ordinator and began in February 2006. All 39 students visited McLaren's Technology Centre in Woking, U.K to acquire a better understanding of the British sports car brand before dividing into 14 groups in March. Each group then presented three concepts. Of these proposals, McLaren's Product Planning Manager, Jonathan Carrier and McLaren Head of Vehicle Design, Barry Lett selected one proposal per group.

After a further review in May, the 14 projects were produced in 1:4 scale models and presented to Anthony Sheriff, Managing Director, McLaren, Mark Vinnels, Director of Future Programmes, McLaren, Jonathan Carrier, Product Planning Manager, McLaren and Barry Lett, Head of Vehicle Design, McLaren.

First prize went to Alessandro Belosio, Vito Possidente and Massimo Terranova for their project 'M eleven B'; second prize went to Davide Amantea, Igor Fedorov and Ori Yemini for the project 'Manta'; and third prize went to Giuseppe Mariniello, Carlo Olivieri, and Davide Valpreda for the project 'MP 11'.

Three more prizes were awarded to projects that stood out in specific categories: A prize for the 'best aerodynamic solution' was given to Giuliano Dosio, Darena Iliev, and Enrico Mellino for their project 'Vortex'; 'best representation of the values of the McLaren brand' went to designers of the project 'Can-Am' - Cosimo Amadei, Jean Paul Fondeur Gill and Stefano Laruffa; a prize for 'best project coherence' went to 'M1 - 06 BlackTiger' by Silvia Maletti, Christian Taddei and Fabrizio Vacca.

See more at the project website

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