The Road Raptor is my latest (as of July 2012) experiment in car design. After the success of the Xtreme KinematiX concept I wanted to venture further into experimenting with exotic geometries blended into contemporary design curves.Design in general and particularly car design usually follows well defined trends and periodic styles, which, combined with production requirements, makes most cars of a period look pretty similar; in the '80s we had squarish modern-looking cars, in the '90s those ice cubes started to melt and get more rounded, the 2000s things got more organic. Now we have that same organic spirit with sharp cuts and lines to increase the aggressive looks, but depending on the way you use those sharp lines, that bombastic effect can last very little, so I tried to add and balance some classic elements and reinterpret some lines in a totally new way.
From the beginning, I had the idea of this old Ferrari I had seen somewhere, one with the wheel covers of the front almost totally separated from the intake, and yet it looked so aggressive and futuristic. I had no idea about what it was and and only later would discover it was a prototype; the 250 Testarossa of the 1957.
I started sketching the front with those exotic parts that extended like blades, which allowed for a thinner nose, like that of a jet. And here came the second bid inspiration; that of working around a jet fighter metaphor to give more power to the rear lights of a Ferrari. After several refinement attempts on this part, I loved the rear a lot, but also wanted a disappearing tail/air brake. A traditional one would obviously not fit on that jet-like back,... the solution was a jet-like tail.
During the design process, I was however very careful to keep this jet similarity as subliminal as possible, by distilling only the aggressive and powerful components of those geometries and integrating them in a very automotive context. The result is that the final lines of the Fx1 are well balanced and do not show their inspirational elements in a blunt, easily digestible silhouette. The new geometries are all fused into a contemporary context and also take into account the brand's own DNA and history, a DNA that in some parts is decades old and mingles to make the Fx1 really FEEL like a Ferrari.
