First sight: VW ID. Every1 concept
VW design boss Andy Mindt gives an early walkaround of the new concept which, two years into his tenure, now sets the stage for a new design language
Since joining back in January 2023, head of design Andreas Mindt has been on a mission to bring the Volkswagen brand back in line with its core values: cars for the people, design with functional – with purpose – and universal appeal.
As any changing of the guard should, the process has not been rushed. The incoming design boss has gradually made his mark, most evident in a series of concept cars that have been rolled out over the past couple of years. These include the ID. 2all, a stocky hatchback; the ID. GTI, a stocky hatchback; and now the ID. Every1. Can you guess how we’d describe that, too?
This new electric hatchback follows a similar formula to those that came before it, but is now more refined and balances stocky proportions with clean surfacing and an approachable ‘humanised’ face. More on that later. Showcased in a deep golden yellow paint, it is very different to the ID. GTI (red) and ID 2.all (blue). From the side, the overhangs are both exceptionally short front and rear, emphasised by large 19” wheels in concept form.
The black A pillar and dark windows creates a kind of Spartan helmet effect, as if the glasshouse is a visor. Perhaps it is just the gold effect that gives this impression; or maybe I’ve seen Gladiator too many times. Moving on.
The car itself was revealed yesterday evening, but Car Design News managed to grab some time with Mindt earlier this week to learn more about his philosophy for the VW Cars brand, his appreciation for heritage more broadly and why chunky wheel arches could be seen as part of his design signature.
Car Design News: How long have you been working on this concept, when did things get started?
Andreas Mindt: We began last summer and we had way more time in comparison to the ID.2all.
CDN: How much of a concept is the Every1?
AM: The car we are showing is 80% reality, 20% fiction, you could say. Maybe even 90/10 – it is really close to production. We started the production car and thought about showing something on stage earlier. We have beefed it up a little bit, but it has a clear direction and purpose. This strategy makes sense to me because you’re not over promising anything, and with positive feedback we have an argument to ensure the production version looks just like the show car.
CDN: These wide hips and flared wheel arches… Is that a signature characteristic of Andy Mindt designs?
AM: Yes, absolutely. When you keep the main body slim and the track very wide, you have a nice offset and automatically create a nice proportion – regardless of whether it is a big car, small car, luxury car, or everyday car.
Friendliness is something I always associate with a Volkswagen product
CDN: How did you apply that strategy here?
AM: In general, I think stance and volume is super important when it comes to designing a car. The lines come after but they’re not the most important thing. When we walk around the concept, you can see the wheel arches really sticking out. At the rear there is a really wide track, and from every perspective it has a great stance – to my eyes there’s a little bit of Lancia Delta Integrale going on…
CDN: The front end looks approachable. Was this by design?
AM: Friendliness is something I always associate with a Volkswagen product, as well as stability and something that has that ‘special sauce’ on top. This is very clear in this car. It’s likable and really has a human face: the headlamps have a depth to them like human eyes. They’re not just stickers on the front. We repeated this at the rear, too.
CDN: The roof concaves slightly at the centre. Why is that?
AM: It’s a “double bubble” roof: because it’s a four seater, we could drag down the middle of the car to make it more aero.
CDN: What was the process of putting the car together? Was it mostly digital or did you do a physical model?
AM: We do both, starting with a digital phase and then pretty quickly milling it out in full scale. We never do quarter scale, we always do full scale – you’re going to need this in the later stages anyway. The clay shows us the proportion, the sizes, the surfaces; you cannot really see this exactly with things like VR. It’s artificial and you can’t judge for sure whether a surface is too flat or too full. That’s my belief, anyway.
CDN: Do you have a finished interior yet?
AM: Not finished all the way. The interior is interesting because it’s designed for a mix of users. From very young drivers, perhaps just getting their license, to more elderly drivers as well. Then there are a lot of B2B customers with certain requirements and thus a big theme is flexibility. It will start with a very simple and approachable interior that offers lots of space, probably without a middle armrest. But then you can pump it up to be more like a modern living room.
We took the fact that we don’t have too much money for decoration and turned that into a good thing
The air vents mirror the front face to create a very consistent design, and there is a screen in the middle because there’s a lot of content to deliver. In the past, affordable cars didn’t have this consideration, so with less money to spend on decoration – wheel cover, sill cover, door cover, and so on – we found new ways to make the interior look more valuable. Everything is painted and there is a high class feeling in spite of being very affordable.
CDN: It sounds like you’ve had to be quite smart with this project and find some… Is it fair to say shortcuts?
AM: That’s the right description because that reduced budget pushed us to create something that is super clean. There’s no decoration. It’s a pure shape, and in my eyes the most beautiful cars in the world have this trait. This is very rare today and I think there’s a certain beauty in it. It’s a little bit Bauhaus, this notion of “let’s delete all of this ugly decoration and be left with a beautiful thing.”
CDN: So ‘less is better’ in a way. Dieter Rams would approve…
AM: Yeah, I’d love the chance to show the car to him and hear his opinion because it’s pretty much reduced to what a car is all about. Cars are very complicated because you have to deliver a lot of requirements, and here we took the fact that we don’t have too much money for decoration and turned that into a good thing. Maybe this is a way for cars to go into the future more generally – to delete all the decoration and make it very clean.
CDN: When you joined from Bentley, we spoke about the importance of leveraging brand values. This feels like a manifestation of that?
AM: Yes, absolutely. I really like to understand brands, what they are for, why they are bringing this particular ‘thing’ to the market For me as a designer, this is very interesting – I’m not just a sketch monkey! [laughs]
CDN: You’ve done launches like this a fair few times before. Does it ever sort of get old seeing it roll out on stage, or is it always quite exciting?
AM: It’s always exciting. Always. With every new car, everything is always a new story and it never wears out. For me, it’s like Christmas and I’m 12 years old and the little toy train is running around the tree. When I saw the finished show car it was such a good feeling to see everything come together. It never gets old.