I admit it. I didn't pay too much heed to the Volt concept: I assumed it was another piece of eco-tokenist misdirection with little true bearing on the showroom reality anytime in the near future ('No, don't look at the BOF SUV with an iron age V8 that actually constitutes our bottom line - look at the shiny eco-car concept, isn't it cuuuute!'); even if I had realised GM were serious this time I still wouldn't have had any expectation that this concept was a template for production: styling was going be a long way down the list of priorities. As a production model from one of the Big Three (™) it's potential significance was huge, but this concept was clearly nowhere near production and on a purely stylistic level there seemed little of note or relevance here. Preview concepts are essentially what the punters will find in the showrooms 6-18 months hence, and are now such an established part of the development model that some manufacturers actually name them as such. Usually they are the future production item with bigger wheels plus some polished / milled / brushed (delete as appropriate) alloy detailing that – if it makes it to production at all – will have been transformed into a too-shiny cheap looking plastic item. To anything but the most casual observer it was clear that the concept Volt was not such a beast. Further examination would have also indicated that this was unlikely to be a showcase concept (like the Ford Iosis), used to introduce a new design direction – there wasn't anything feasible or coherent that could be used, and GM didn't make a big enough deal out of it (design wise) as they would if this was the Next Big Thing.
I guess an LEV concept that doesn't set out to deliberately wound the eye should count as some sort of progress, but if this juvenile caricature were a conventional car then I'm sure the response would have been quite different. I've seen some praise for it's 'muscle car looks' – could someone please clarify exactly which muscle car this looks like? With its large (even for a concept car) wheels pushed out to the very extremes of the body it looks oddly stumpy; the long nose, 'cab back' design and ridiculously exaggerated wheelarches are meant to communicate power, but seem a little, er... overcompensatory. Especially for a hybrid.
The beltline is unusually low in comparison to the scuttle height; the reason for which seems to be the exaggerated wedge profile which - instead of deploying any of the standard tricks - is literally just that. This sets up a strange conflict between the pillar box greenhouse and more normally proportioned DLO. To dig themselves out of this hole, the shoulder line is carried through the side glazing, which is.... unique. This is the worst kind of stylistic gimmick: a feature that could never be realised in production and lacks any intrinsic design or aesthetic merit; it smacks of one of those random 'ideas' that arises in the absence of anything else.
The base of the A-pillar is a mess, and the odd wing mirror placement doesn't help; the scuttle area is cluttered with odd shaped panels and shutlines with no obvious purpose. The A-pillar itself was painted a dark silver so that it relates to nothing else – surely it should have either been body colour or black (as per the rendered images.) A (fussy) feature has been made of the charging sockets but the fuel filler is an afterthought. The bonnet shutline is contrived; the encroaching fender shutline is presumably meant to make the front wing & wheels look even bigger and more muscular, but just looks clumsy; and the door shutline / DLO graphic is no better.
Were it not for the wheelarches themselves there wouldn't be any planform to speak of; at the front, the headlights are confined entirely to the front elevation, reinforcing the squared off feel. The more complex form adds interest at the back but the wedge shape means that the rear deck pretty much bisects the drivers rear view, rendering the lower rear screen of little practical use. The slim, horizontal biased lights – good in isolation – in this context seem almost intended to emphasise the height & bluffness of the tail, though the form in the corner above the wheelarch relieves this is little.
The surfacing is handled pretty well, and some of the detailing in the lower front air dam is quite subtle and well resolved. The character line trailing from the wheelarch lip into the lower portion of the doors is a neat feature which ties things together well: the nose would look even more exaggerated without it, though the socket feature and raked front door shutline also help in this regard.
In summary: meh
Another cartoonish concept to round out the quota for that year's Detroit show. This also seemed to be the general consensus as well; until the first images of the production Volt emerged.....
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