The Toyota FT-1 concept is a pure performance, track-focused sports car model created by CALTY Design Research, Toyota's North American Design branch. The FT-1 concept is a symbol that captures elements of the emotion and energy we can expect to see in future Toyota vehicles designs. Its design is heavily influenced by Toyota's long sports car tradition that includes vehicles such as 2000GT, Celica, Supra and most recently, FT-86 (Scion F-RS).Toyota's Calty Design Research in Newport Beach, California, the words describing the sports car's styling concept came first -- words like "sexy," "honest," "organic," "kick-ass." Followed by proportions -- front/mid-engine, rear drive, just the right scale. And a wild guess at price -- maybe $60,000? "It's a Toyota," says Shen. "It ought to be affordable." Only then did lines start to appear. But when they did, it was an avalanche. Virtually every designer in the 65-person studio submitted sketches, hundreds of them, many drawn at night, some sketched on lunchtime napkins, altogether exploding the number of lines Calty's president, Kevin Hunter, and Shen's team slowly culled for the very best ideas. At least the hurricane of lines that would become their sports car was now just a flurry. . Usually, when people draw cars, they're actually creating an outline, which in drawing parlance is a contour line -- delineating the "contour" between the positive space (the car) and the negative space (the emptiness around it). In the realm of car designers, the language differs; for them, the line's a "silhouette." A contour is applied across a surface to understand its shape. For Shen, though, it would be a challenge for his silhouette not to recall that of the Mark
The canted roofline creates visual stress without unbalancing the overall shape.
When Calty pitched its plan to Toyota's Nagoya headquarters, its timing couldn't have been better. Tokyo auto show, Akio Toyoda had insisted, "Now we have a new slogan, 'Fun To Drive Again.'" And he'd made no secret of wanting a Supra-like car restored to the lineup. Calty was wise to the pitfalls, too, having been down this particular road five years earlier with its hybrid-drive, Supra-esque FT-HS, a car stillborn during the freefall of the great recession. But with the world economy healing and Toyota's helm in the hands of a guy who'd donned a helmet to drive in the Nürburgring 24-hour race, the starter button was firmly pushed. With Akio's blessing, Calty's in-house Supra-esque sports car got the green light to become a concept car to be judged by the world. A timeline was plotted, milestones marked. The team set to work. Unlike the Supra, the FT-1 has racing fingerprints all over it. The wind is shat- tered by a prow dominated by a Formula 1-inspired beak. Consequently, the radia- tor's air is divided between twin shark-like mouths, each stuffed with electric fans sitting atop angled splitters whose shape is repeated higher up via streaking light signatures that fishhook around intense, triple-LED headlights. Toyota FT 1 Headlamp.
Red, which emphasizes highlights, was the only color ever considered.
Classic "silhouette cars" -- ones you'd be inclined to draw in outline -- are typically relaxed, simple fuselage forms that tran- quilly speak to you through their broad pools of subtly reflected light. Think of the soft, slightly balloon-ish shapes from the '50s and '60s -- a particularly good example for me being the Lancia Aurelia B20.On the other hand, "gesture" in drawing puts an emphasis on the action and vitality. A good (or bad) example of gesture is the 1984 Ferrari Testarossa, a very, very busy design. Draw it, and your pencil becomes animated trying to capture the long strakes across its mammoth side-radiator gills. Recently, this sort of hyperactive, big-sculpture automotive design seems to be reemerging: the new Corvette, anyone? The FT-1's extreme gesture mixes positive and negative space even more turbulently; somehow, it's both windswept and forward-leaning.
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