User:Keyu Deng/Oldsmobile Inca

The Oldsmobile Incas is a concept car designed by Italdesign Giugiaro S.p.A. in 1986.

Inspired by the 1984 Ford Maya, the 1986 Oldsmobile Italdesign Incas concept is a small five-door four-seat coupe with sport and aerodynamic lines.



Technical details
The 1986 Oldsmobile Italdesign Incas concept featured a quad-turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine with a displacement ratio of 2,260 cc and 137.9 cubic inches. The Incas is 175.2 inches long, 72.8 inches wide and 49.2 inches high. It features 4WD-driven wheels and has a 113.2-inch wheelbase. The Incas uses new DOHC inline four-cylinder engines. Known as the Quad 4, the engine was produced by General Motors' Oldsmobile division form the1980s to 2000s. It is capable of 230.0 hp at 500 rpm and has 101.77 hp per liter.

Development
As product of the collaboration between Giorgetto Giugiaro and Oldsmobile, it inherits the design characteristics of many of Italdesign's models, displaying an exotic style different from American cars. On the other hand, the Incas was born in the whirlwind of the energy crisis of the 1970s. During this time, car designers were trying to reduce wind drag in exterior styling to lower the fuel consumption. Thus, the Incas can be seen as an example of the gradual transition from wedge to aerodynamic style in automotive design.

Wedge Era
During the Wedge Era between the late 1960s and 1980s, car design was characterized by an angular aesthetic, such as the world-famous Lamborghini Countach. Giorgetto Giugiaro pioneered this technique with his "origami period," dominated by sharp edges. He grabbed the automotive world's attention with the Lotus Esprit, the Maserati Boomerang, and the Alfa Romeo Iguana. This period belongs the most important of the cars conceived by Giugiaro, which, as he declared was the Volkswagen Golf.

By the mid-60s, Giugiaro was in the midst of a legendary run of car designs for Bertone. In the span of a few years, he penned the BMW 3200CS, Ferrari 250GT Bertone, Fiat 850 Spider, and 1965 Ford Mustang concept before being replaced by a younger Italian designer – Marcello Gandini. Incensed, Giugiaro headed to rival design firm Ghia on a single-year contract in 1966. Over the course of the year, he produced only one design. That design, the revolutionary De Tomaso Mangusta, would define design standards for the coming decades and would serve as the basis for Giugiaro's signature "Folded Paper" aesthetic. Gone were the flowing, rounded curves of previous iterations. The replacement was flat surfaces and razor-sharp edges. The design became more geometric than organic, a trend that would continue throughout the design world until the 1980s. This angular look became the basis for Giugiaro's own Italdesign studio in 1967.

The "Folded Paper" style was applied for wildly different purposes and markets. In fact, Giugiaro designed the Lotus Esprit which became James Bond's car in "The Spy Who Loved Me," famously transforming into a submarine. Another highly-praised design by Giugiaro was the DMC DeLorean, picked as Marty McFly's car in the trilogy "Back to the Future." This wedge-shaped two-door sports car with a stainless steel body and gull-wing doors was based on the Porsche Tapiro. However, around the same time, he designed two opposite cars in the 1980s: the well-known Fiat Uno and the Fiat Panda. These models were conceived for the mass market. As Giugiaro said, they were like "a pair of jeans: a simple, practical, no-frills piece of clothing."

The impact of the oil crisis
The energy crisis of the late 1970s led to a rethinking of automotive styling. The wedge-shaped designs that had dominated automotive design for nearly 20 years were questioned – the chunky, rectangular styling led to excessive air resistance, which ran counter to the need of reduce fuel consumption. Against this backdrop, designers began to view lighter and curvier cars as representing the future and let aerodynamics guide their hands.

The oil shocks of the 1970s left U.S. automakers in the lurch, and each reacted with different plans for the future. The square, rectangular lines of production cars soon gave way to more aerodynamic shapes to reduce air resistance and thus consumption. Of the Big Three U.S. automakers, Ford was the most willing to go beyond right angles in planning its next generation of production vehicles. While GM and Chrysler continued to produce Caprices, Diplomats, and a series of derivatives of the square A and K models. In the early 1980s, Ford initiated an aerodynamic revolution that began in Europe, and quickly spread to its North American operations.

With a controlling interest in Italian automobile design firm Ghia, Ford was able to bring in the studio, which was one of the best in the concept car styling operation,to plot its next move.

Ford started the aero revolution with the Thunderbird facelift. Don Kopka, the executive director of Ford's Advanced and International Design studio, was impressed with its aggressive wind tunnel results and fuel consumption improvements. When he realized that aerodynamic efficiency could be applied not only to high-speed sports cars but also to more civilian passenger cars, Kopka approached Ghia with the request to build a clean, aerodynamic-oriented model for the masses.

The results of this collaboration were predictable. Amid the gloom of the energy crisis, the 1979 Frankfurt Motor Show was a low-key affair - but the Ford Probe I wowed the audience with its unveiling. The coupe, based on the Focus platform, used closed wheel openings, stretched rear glass, a soft windshield angle and a low profile silhouette to effectively bring the car's drag coefficient to half that of most American cars of the time.

Ford's next challenge was to downplay sci-fi elements and move it to a production-ready form, while ensuring it was aerodynamically oriented. In 1986, Ford ushered in the most important debut of the past decade: the first generation of the Taurus. It shaped the future of the family car and officially announced the automotive industry's complete shift into aerodynamic design. The design of the Taurus embraced the Kopka-led aero revolution - every corner was rounded, and each greenhouse and roof angle was carefully considered to reduce wind resistance.

The success of the Taurus is undeniable proof of Ford's foresight. After its release, the Taurus became a best seller, as annual sales would exceed 200,000 units for the 1986 model year and over one million by 1989. by the end of production in 1991, the first generation of Taurus had sold over 2,000,000 units. Benjamin Hunting, the editor of InsideHook Automotive, wrote "there's no doubt that the original Taurus was a gutsy move for Ford to counter the massive inertia impeding progress on that front. Its phenomenal success in the marketplace also forced the rest of the industry to play catch-up and finally question the straight lined, sharp cornered, and overall boxy hegemony that had dominated traditional American car design for decades."

1980 Lancia Medusa
Situated in the context of the energy crisis, the talented Giorgetto Giugiaro also echoed the aerodynamic design movement previously mentioned. He came up with the idea of turning the Pininfarina-designed Montecarlo mid-engined sports car into a four-door sedan. Aside from the unusual engine placement for a family car, the Medusa also had an aerodynamic body with a drag coefficient of 0.263.

This four-door "three-box" berlinetta built on the platform of the Lancia Montecarlo 2000 made its public debut at the 1980 Turin International Motor Show. The concept aimed to demonstrate that the maximum balance of vehicle roominess and aerodynamics can be achieved in the Giugiaro's innovative, pragmatic style.

Medusa is the first concrete example of a non-utopian but aerodynamic car. It used the Lancia Beta platform with the back and central engine mechanics, creating a very outlined head-on.

Smooth lines and some other design solutions, such as handles and windows close to the bodywork, resulted in a 0,255 Cx with cast model, which increased to 0.263 with the plate prototype. According to Italdesign's description, Medusa was the most aerodynamic car in the world at the time.

1984 Ford Maya
Giugiaro pioneered the collaboration with Ford long before the Oldsmobile. The earliest example is the Ford Maya concept. It was designed and built by Italdesign for Ford Motor Company. We should not define it as a one-off, non-running, dream machine, even though only a total of three were produced between 1984 and 1985. In fact, Ford intended to put the "Maya" into production, so the concept was built as a fully functional, running and driving car. With a rear mid-engine and rear-wheel drive layout, the "Maya" was powered by Ford's 3.0L V6 engine that produced 250 horsepower and was mated to a five-speed manual transmission. After the initial Ford Maya concept was publicly unveiled at the 1984 Turin Motor Show in Italy, Ford eventually introduced two more concepts – the Maya II ES and the Maya II EM.

Giugiaro leveraged the experience of creating low-slung, mid-engined wedges. The Maya was typically wedge-shaped and reminiscent of prototypes such as the Mangusta, Boomerang or Tapiro, but it was smoother and guaranteed a drag coefficient of 0.30.

Body
On the basis of Giugiaro's 1980 Lancia Medusa, the 1986 Oldsmobile Italdesign Incas kept opening a new shaping thread that is going to characterize many Italdesign Coupes in years to come - abrupt lines, straight radii and pronounced corners give way to softness and litheness.

Giugiaro used a rear-engine layout to achieve the best compromise between groundbreaking styling and spacious roominess. The Incas had a rounded, clean shape, and removes protuberances and rough edges that cause noise and turbulence. Its wide plexiglass areas provided greater visibility and additional brightness. The essential structures of the bodywork architecture constituted the doorframes, pillars and window areas without any additions. The front door frames were flush with the windshield pillars. The rear hatch was at the same level as the second door, while the drip grooves on the roof had disappeared and the side view mirrors had been pulled back to an aerodynamic-friendly position. The Incas had a rounded roof that was highly innovative for its time.The headlights were retractable and the wiper attachment was faired by an overhang so as to reduce rough edges.

A prominent horizontal graphic element midway up the side of the car, visually divided the body into an upper and lower half. The doors revealed quite a bit with the glass going down to the legs.

The wrap-around canopy did not include A-pillars. The top of the canopy was capped by a roof panel of tinted Plexiglas, and behind that was a large hinged hatch. There was also a large curved tinted Plexiglass panel, over the storage compartment. The taillights are made of polycarbonate and integrated into the rear bumper's shape so as to not disrupt the rear body lines.

Doors and hoods
The front row of the car was accessed through a single, front-hinged canopy with a windscreen of safety glass. The gull-wing doors for rear passengers were considered an exotic and fancy design solution at the time. It contained a "cross" steel central structure that carries longitudinally through the hinges of doors and hoods, while transversally becoming a rolling bar.

Interior
The interior of the Incas concept was similarly futuristic in appearance, yet completely functional. The curved dash design carried over into the door panels, but the Incas had no center stack to speak of. Thus, designers crammed all of the car's buttons and controls on the steering wheel, just like the Medusa.

The steering wheel or what could be more accurately described as a fighter-jet style yoke was designed to improve the precise handling of the vehicle. Market research had shown that a new generation of car buyers who had grown up with video games would prefer this approach to a traditional steering wheel. The driver could control an entire host of car functions including radio, cruise control and gears.

Benefiting from the swift steering ratio of the Incas, the yoke steering wheel only required as little as 180 degrees of rotation to turn from the left-most steering extent to the right. On the right half of the yoke, there were gear controls, air-conditioner controls and the windscreen wiper controls. On the left half, there were lights, direction indicators, stereo and cruise controls.

Individual hand grips ensured more effective and precise handling of the vehicle.

Buttons on the yoke included the HVAC, radio, audio, cruise control, automatic transmission controls and gears.