2005 Ferrari Pininfarina Crowd-Sourced Design Contest Is Gift That Keeps on Giving

You know your brand has reached top-level icon status when you can ask the world to give your their best ideas, to possibly be used without credit, free of charge.

That is exactly what Ferrari and styling lead Pininfarina did in 2005 to solicit ideas for a new hypercar flagship – something along the lines of the Enzo 2.0, or what we now know as LaFerrari eight years later in present-day.

Do you recall the 2005 Ferrari and Pininfarina design contest? It was big news at the time and led to the full-size scale model of the MilleChili being lauded as a new chapter in ultra-light and lean engineering and design.

It is interesting to look back on many of the student proposals now – to see what might have been influential, innovative or just wacky and unfeasible – both then and now.

The winning designs were the:

• MilleChili

• Fiorano

• TreDiviso

• Ascari

They all informed the surface language and curve/crease relationship we see in the Ferrari F12 and LaFerrari, among others. The ‘Fiorano’ seems to have informed the new one-off F12 TRS in particular.

Curiously absent in the winners group is the ‘Testarossa’ design, which (along with the Ascari) might be most similar to how LaFerrari looks now, in real-life, years later.

Another curio is this: One might argue that Pininfarina doing a student project was not super popular within Ferrari itself, however.

LaFerrari was designed in-house – in what many think is a less-than-subtle nudge for Pininfarina to up its game if it wants to still be a starting player on the Ferrari team….

368 SR

ASCARI

AVANTI

CHIAROSCURO

DUE MASSE

450 GT

595 DAYTONA

612 LAFAYETTE

650 BERLINA

F ZERO

FIORANO

FIORANO 2

LAUDA

MILLECHILI

ROSACORSA

SCABRO

SPIRALE

TESTAROSSA

TREDIVISO

VIGNORE

 

 

Official Details below from Ferrari and Pininfarina.

Ferrari New Concepts of the Myth winners were:

‘Millechili’ – by Luis Agullo Spottorno (Spain) and Felix Hiller (Germany) – Istituto Europeo di Design, Turin

‘Fiorano’ – by Rob Battams (UK), Tom Hardman (UK) and David Imai (USA), Coventry University – School of Art & Design

‘Tre Diviso’ – by Daisuke Nagasato (Japan), Kim Teakyung (Korea) and Hiroaki Yakubo (Japan) – Tokyo Communication Arts

‘Ascari’ – by Manuele Amprimo (Italy), Werner Gruber (Italy) and Yu Jae-Cheul (Korea) – Istituto Europeo di Design, Turin

Special mentions for significant proposals have been given to:
The high level of attention and care shown towards the project: Tokyo Communication Arts

The most voted project at the ferrariworld.com website: ‘Ferrari F Zero’ – by Jean-Michel Raad (France), Shen Jiang (China) and Leon Dang (China) – Coventry University School of Art & Design

Best project name: ‘Millechili’ – by Luis Agullo Spottorno (Spain) and Felix Hiller (Germany) – Istituto Europeo di Design, Turin

Female team: ‘Vigore’ by Keiko Ikeda (Japan), Hye Jin Kim (Korea) and Yanagimoto Kazuo (Japan)

‘612 Lafayette’ – by Shigenori Maeda (Japan), from the College for Creative Studies of Detroit, has won the Alcoa Award, a special design prize for Excellence in Design for Aluminum: the winner will receive an aluminum reproduction of his model.