By PHIL PATTON 
Marc Newson's 021C concept car for Ford, premiered at the Tokyo auto
show, would be right at home on the floor of Totem. It's put together of
the round cornered rectangles or lozenge shapes popular there and its
trunk even pulls out like a dresser drawer.
"We've about reached the pain threshold of auto designers designing for other designers," explains J Mays, who has been intrigued by Newson's work for years and wears on of his Ikepod watches. "Not everyone has gasoline in the veins." Mays wanted a car targeted at non car enthusiasts who were nonetheless design enthusiasts. Busy as he has been on all kinds of major projects--he is working on a bar for Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel in Los Angeles and a prototype retail space for Apple Computer--Newson spent nine full months working on the car at Ford's Ghia studio in Italy. He was obsessive about the details of geometry, Mays says, down to the round push button door handles, the spermatozoa like pattern on the carpet and even the treads of the tires. 
But it's a fresh look, all right, with rear "suicide" doors opening to
the back and seats that turn on pedestals. The brief was for a basic,
economy car, capable of accommodating a future fuel cell or an existing
Ford Zetec engine. The resulting look is "retro futurist," a take on an
old Fiat or Ford Cortina that might have come from the cartoon studio of
Matt Groening.
"I wanted to create a car that was light, likable and fun," Newson said. "Ask children to draw a car and they'll draw something like this." The car is clear kin to Newson's well known furniture designs for Cappellini and objects for Magis and Alessi, to his interiors for such clubs and restaurants as Mash in Manchester and Coast in London. But it is not his first transportation projects: Newson has also designed the interior and livery of a $40 million Falcon 900B jet and a bicycle for Denmark's Biomega. There is Mays says no sinister coincidence in the fact that both Ford CEO and Newson are Australian. But it was Nasser, he adds, who gave the car its name: Futura and Orange, two other contenders, presented trademark problems so it was Nasser who suggested simply naming the car after the Pantone designation for the hue of orange it is painted. Books · Recent
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