car design

Coming back from the summer break with recharged batteries and a suitcase full of souvenirs and good intentions, September always seems to do its best to challenge this with a tsunami of shows. For myself and my colleagues at Quarterre, a transport and product design studio based in London, this has centred around two things this year: The London Design Festival, when the world and its soft furnishings comes to our doorstep and the Paris Motor Show, a veritable Grande Dame of the automotive industry whose glory days might be behind her now but who still knows how to put on a class act.

The Milan furniture fair is always an enjoyable feast of out-there work. Typically art-masquerading-as-furniture or installations of dazzling complexity and bewildering utility. Which makes it all the more interesting that over the years, a number of car manufacturers have chosen the Salone as the location for model launches or campaigns to promote their brands outside the benzine-tainted halls of motor shows. One of the most high-profile of these is MINI.