HOW THE VOLVO XC40 SKETCH DIRECTLY MADE IT TO PRODUCTION!
Volvo's new SUV got to the assembly line looking almost identical to the initial sketch – quite a rare occurrence. The crossover's look is the same as the day it was first drawn!
"We were convinced we had something in our hands with this car," Volvo Chief Design Officer Thomas Ingenlath said of the day he saw that early image of the car.
"We took it from a tiny sketch to this," he added at a press event, ahead of the compact SUV's debut yesterday.
Ian Kettle, a British exterior designer and a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, was behind the original sketch. Kettle was 26 when he first produced the sketch and said that his creation succeeded because, unlike the eight other choices presented by his colleagues that day, he didn't make a scaled-down version of the XC60 and XC90.
This was because he knew that it would ride on a completely different platform.
"It is more like a cousin than a brother, meaning it has the same DNA but it's its own person," said Kettle.
Kettle feels as though the design represents a "tough little robot" because when he penned the original drawing it coincided with a period when he was being inspired by science fiction.
An original sketch very rarely survives all the critiques that take place before the design is frozen, Ingenlath is proud that Kettle's creation is a unique exception!
"It's not watered down and driven into mediocrity by clinics and marketing impulses," said Ingenlath. "This is the car we wanted to do."