Born in the late ’80s, when Japanese carmakers were considered infallible, Acura (Honda’s luxury vehicle division) has, like Honda itself, gone through fits and starts from a design perspective. The outgoing TLX tried to signal a balance between luxury and performance visually, but that left it stuck in the middle. In fall this year, however, we’ll see the just-unveiled, American-designed 2021 TLX (based heavily on …
Earlier this year, we sat down with SungYup Lee (now the head of design at Hyundai and Genesis, formerly the design head at the latter) and Luc Donckerwolke (then the chief design officer of Hyundai Motor Group, which also includes Kia, who recently left the company). The two longtime friends have worked together at multiple manufacturers over the years and shared an office at the …
It’s been six years since Toyota‘s FT-1 concept car debuted in Detroit, and not many fully understand its relationship to the 2020 GR Supra (co-developed with BMW) that’s available now, nor just how novel the car was in the first place. When Kevin Hunter—president of Toyota’s North American design studio, Calty Design Research—was working on the FT-1, there was no plan to return the Supra to production and …
