Ferrari World Design Contest

Dramatic innovations from students around the world help shape the future of supercar design

21 July 2011

Ferrari invited us to their headquarters in Maranello, Italy to see the work of the seven finalists in their year-long World Design Contest.

The contest tasked the students with devising a concept car design with the brief to reduce fuel consumption and the car’s overall weight in order to increase driving pleasure. The teams used Autodesk’s Alias industrial design software, completing concepts first in renderings before generating 3D models. Each team displayed three different designs.

Beating out 299 schools and taking home first place was the Transportation Design team at Seoul’s Hongik University, who developed a “hyper efficient” two seat Ferrari. Dubbed Eternità, the carbon-fiber super barchetta features a layered carbon powertrain, physical flywheel energy storage system, superconductive motor and a hydrogen generator.

Inspired by wind, second place winner (from Torino’s Istituto Europeo di Design school) Samir Sadikhov’s Xezri concept positioned the wing of the car horizontally on the roof, which raises to cool the engine down when the car exceeds 200km/h. (pictured above) The third place winners from the Royal College of Art Vehicle Design Department created a racing car designed for the frozen riviera, called Cavallo Bianco. The turbo-charged four-cylinder engine runs on bio-ethanol to generate electrical power, which gives it “maximum grip in icy conditions.”