Ten years ago automotive design was on the verge of some radical changes.
Cars with smooth, flowing lines were about to get some strong competition from models with angular, intersecting lines.
Alfa Romeo would introduce a look that would pay dividends for more than a decade.
And a Pininfarina concept would show styling cues that would soon become part of the most distinctive new car of the last 10 years, the Smart ForTwo.
Lorenzo Ramaciotti witnessed all of these changes -- and played a key role in many of them -- during almost three decades as a design manager at Italy's Pininfarina.
New edge
Ramaciotti says the concept cars shown at the major auto shows in 1996 indicated that the 15-year dominance of one design philosophy was beginning to wane and a new style was about to be born.
"The so-called bio design had already peaked, therefore many creative people already were trying to respond," Ramaciotti says. "At the Detroit show in January 1996, a number of concept cars represented the first attempts to express a new trend, which would later become known globally as the new-edge design."
Great examples of the competing design philosophies were on display that year in Detroit.
The Chrysler LHX and the Dodge Intrepid ESX exemplified the bio design, which was characterized by curvy, almost sensual, shapes.
Ideas from the LHX were used in production versions of two Chrysler models, the Concorde, launched in January 1997, and 300M, which debuted in January 1998. Only the 300M was sold in Europe.
Styling cues from the ESX found their way into the Dodge Intrepid, which debuted in January 1997. The car was not sold in Europe.
The first examples of the more aggressive, more imposing new-edge design were the Lincoln Sentinel and, to a lesser degree, the futuristic Ford Synergy 2010.
Ford -- which would coin the term new-edge design -- completely switched to the new look.
Production vehicles such as the Ford Ka and first-generation Focus are examples of Ford's interpretation of new-edge design.
Competitors such as Mitsubishi and Nissan followed Ford's lead. Some of the resulting models were the Nissan Primera, which debuted in September 2001, and the Mitsubishi Grandis, which was launched in May 2003. Cadillac also switched to new-edge design with the introduction of the XLR coupe cabriolet in January 1999.
But the birth of new-edge design didn't kill bio design.
"Some companies, Chrysler in particular, but also many in Asia, are still connected today in one way or another to bio design," Ramaciotti says.
Examples of bio design live on in current models such as the Lexus GS and SC and the Mazda RX-8.
True concept car
Ramaciotti says the 1996 Alfa Romeo Nuvola is the perfect example of a true concept car -- a car that served only to show what could be done on a production model rather than being a lightly disguised version of what a automaker soon would start selling. An example from 1996 is the Mercedes-Benz AA Vision, which would basically morph into the first-generation M-class SUV.
Though the Nuvola was never built, Ramaciotti says it exerted a strong influence on the Italian brand.
"With the Nuvola, Alfa Romeo reappropriated some of the design cues of its best years and created a new design language for the brand, which would be fully exploited with the 156 lower-premium and the 147 entry-premium models," Rama-ciotti says, adding that the Nuvola was "the true beginning of Alfa's design renaissance."
Smart ideas
Ramaciotti's own work in 1996 also continues to influence today's production models.
Pininfarina unveiled the Eta Beta hybrid city car at the Turin auto show in April 1996.
At that time, Ramaciotti told Automotive News Europe that the Eta Beta was "more a piece of urban furniture than a typical car design, as its shape comes more from the way its different materials are put together than from the continuity of the body surfaces."
The concept featured many parts as they would appear during the construction of the car. The doors, hood and tailgate were unpainted anodized aluminum, and the car's door frame and the roof were unpainted plastic.
Those characteristics may sound familiar.
Although Pininfarina was not involved in the design of the Smart ForTwo, the cult city car was the first to use so-called exposed materials on its exterior.
The ForTwo was shown as a concept at the 1997 IAA in Frankfurt and went on sale in 1998.
"It is fair to say that, we [Pininfarina] and our colleagues at Smart had the same design idea at the same time," Ramaciotti says. "Nevertheless, I was told that in late spring 1996, the Smart design center was full of Eta Beta pictures."
Minivan mistake?
The influence of two other Ramaciotti-styled cars that debuted at the April 1996 Turin show also can still be seen today.
The Sing and Song twin medium minivans were done for Fiat to show the carmaker what it could create off its lower-medium platform to compete against the Renault Scenic.
The twins were shown one month after the first-generation Scenic made its debut at the Geneva auto show and five months before the market launch of what is still Europe's favorite minivan.
But Fiat didn't use Ramaciotti's design for its first minivan, instead opting to develop a car penned in-house. The Multipla, which had a more radical look than the Sing or Song, wasn't launched until autumn 1998, missing the two-year sales bonanza experienced by the Scenic.
While Fiat didn't use design cues from Ramaciotti's 1996 minivan concepts, he says the Sing's sporty flair can be seen in the 2004 Seat Altea.
He adds that the Song, a four-wheel-drive minivan with the looks of an SUV, served as a preview of 4wd minivans such as the Scenic RX4, which debuted in February 2000.
Rebirth of a trend
When Ramaciotti looks back on 1996 he concludes that the birth of new-edge design served as a long-lasting wake-up call for designers by ending a 15-year period during which car styling became homogeneous.
"Since 1996, the creative people designing cars better understand they should find their own design language for their brands rather than duplicate what everyone else is doing as they did with bio design," he says.
At the same time, the concepts that debuted in 1996 remind him that not everything that looks different and trendsetting is really new.
"Two-tone exteriors were born before the first motor car, appearing on luxury horse carriages more than two centuries ago," Ramaciotti says. "But after Eta Beta they once again became a ‘modern' feature, used over the last decade not only on luxury cars, but all the way down to tiny city cars."
