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Fuore Jaguar XF-10
by Jon Winding-Sørensen
In 2000 a new design house was established in Barcelona, the increasingly important design capital of southern Europe. Three years later Fuore design launches their first ”own” concept model. At the Barcelona Motor Show which opened on April 25 Erwin Himmel proudly presented his Jaguar XF 10, and put himself and his own company into the spotlight after three years in the shadows of big car manufacturers.
Erwin Himmel is Austrian, and studied architecture at the University of Graz and at Vehicle Design at the Royal College of Art in London. He worked at Audi until 1994 and had his name connected to all the great production Audis from that period, but he also had much to do with dramatic show stoppers like the Audi quattro Spyder.
At that time Audi had their own little secret studio in Munich, managed by Himmel and where people like J. Mays used to work. So maybe it was natural to despatch him to Sitges, just south of Barcelona, when the Volkswagen Group in 1995 decided to establish a studio for alternative proposals there – partly on Himmel’s own advice it seems.
There was a story at the time that Hartmut Warkuss, VW-Group’s omnipotent design boss wanted Himmel to move to Prague to head Skoda design and replace Dirk van Braeckel who was moving to Crewe, UK, to head Bentley’s new design overhaul. Himmel apparently resisted, so forcefully - it seemed - that Sitges designers like Julian Thomson (ex Lotus) gravitated (happily it seems today) towards Advanced Design at Jaguar.
Then Himmel disappeared from the general circuit for some months. Rumours were that he should replace Carlo Fugazza as head of Fiat Stile or that he was to set up at Mitsubishi Studio in Barcelona. The last one was closest to the mark.
A press release advised that Fuore Design was to set up office by April 1 2000, headed by Erwin Himmel, and staffed by 12 persons in a converted villa in Barcelona. And the first offering from the new studio, even if Mitsubishi often forgot to mention it, was the radical Pajero Evolution, presented at Frankfurt 2001. Then the 2+2 version for Geneve 2002 followed, culminating in the 2003 Paris Dakar winning Pajero which was also a Fuore design and development.
Lately we have seen the Subaru B11 S concept car, which debuted at Geneva this spring. Also Fuore design, in spite of Andreas Zapatinas (ex Pininfarina, Fiat, BMW and Alfa) being hired by Subaru last year to get some sense of direction into Subaru design. The B 11 S was apparently penned by a young Subaru designer, Yoji Takenaka and the sketches given to Fuore Design International to develop. Ask Himmel about that, and the famous discretion is also very much in evidence.
But even if it is generally known that Fuore has an accord with Subaru to look into all kinds of corporate design , it is interesting that at the same time as Himmel whipped the red cloth of his dramatic Barcelona concept, Subaru made it known that they were going to establish their own design studio in Barcelona.
Himmel is very clear when it comes to his Jaguar XF 10. It’s pure fantasy, something he – not any of his designers and no outside interests – wanted to do, and did. A very muscular, closed two seater with lots of racing background. Even the name spells racing, X is a well-used Jaguar letter, from the XK120 to today’s X-Type, but the F spells Formula and 10 is the number of cylinders used in the current Grand Prix engines. At the same time there are traces of roadability here too, reflecting the famous C- and D-types who could easily be driven on the road from Coventry and back, winning a Le Mans race on the way.
This is the studio's sixth full scale project, some of them have been rolling, all of them of excellent quality. The five previous are the three Pajeros already mentioned, the CZ2 cabriolet (also Geneva 2003) and the Subaru B11 S. Those who looked would have seen the discreet Modarte sign, and those who asked would have found that this is a fairly new (2 years old) company, headed by Stefano Ardagna, formerly of Stola.
Related websites:
www.fuore-design.com
www.modarte.com
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