EyesOn Design Awards Winners announced

On the second day of the Detroit auto show, the traditional EyesOn Design awards took place in the newly-opened Atrium Stage of the Cobo Hall.

For the first time in its eight-year history, the judges of the competition (who include present and retired design directors from almost every major automotive OEM) awarded the 'Best Concept Vehicle' award to two designs – the Ford Atlas and Nissan Resonance, beating the Hyundai HCD-14 Genesis and Lincoln MKC concepts to the award.

In the production car category, the Cadillac ELR was a somewhat surprise winner, beating internal GM rival, the new Corvette Stingray to the award. Slightly oddly given that they are sport lines of existing models, the Audi RS7 and BMW M6 Gran Coupe were the other finalists in the production car award.

Speaking exclusively to Car Design News immediately following the announcement of the winners, Mark Adams, executive director for Global Cadillac and Buick Design said he was immensely pleased to win the award and that it marked "a fantastic couple of days for Cadillac – with ATS as car of the year yesterday and then production design today."

Previewed by the Converj concept in 2009, Adams added of the ELR: "Someone asked me earlier if it's difficult to get the concept into a production car. I think if you look at the exterior it's very, very close to the concept, while the interior is actually better and that's very unusual for the overall vehicle to be better than the concept vehicle.

"What I really like about the interior in particular is that we've managed to get a nice balance between the hi-tech interface of Cue and a really bespoke, hand crafted environment of wood and leather."

Video: Cadillac ELR with John P. Mack, Director of Design EREV Exteriors GM

EyesOn Design takes place each year at NAIAS and was set up by the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving independence for those with blindness and visual impairment and conducting research in the field. Its next major event is the annual EyesOn Design Auto Design Show, which takes place on June 16th at Edsel and Eleanor Ford house.

By Joe Simpson