Lincoln Shifter Design - Concept to Production

Lincoln Shifter

The twists and turns of how a product gets to market in large corporations is always a surprising journey.

This shifter design was part of a larger project by the Component Studio at Ford to create a high end interior concept for the Lincoln brand. The Component Studio worked on individual components like steering wheels, gauges, entertainment systems, seats and other parts that were common across several vehicle brands and platforms. While we designed several items in an interior we never designed the whole thing. The studio chief decided we needed to show our full talent and so developed this "secret project" to design a Lincoln interior.

Lincoln Shifter Concepts

On this project, my responsibility was the shifter development. I began with some color sketches that took inspiration from aviation and nautical themes. From there the direction was narrowed down into a more conservative approach with greater attention given to proportion and refinement. The upper right design was chosen to explore further.

While developing the design I was also making Alias models and having rapid prototypes made to judge the physical feel and appearance of the shifter. Often parts developed on the computer lose their sense of proportion and need a reality check with a physical model. I was later surprised, after we showed the final concept, that Lincoln produced a Zephyr concept car using one of these early Alias models as a reference. I did not even know they were doing a concept car until I saw it on television. Here is a picture of the shifter as it appeared then.

Lincoln Zephyr Concept Car Interior

Development continued with more sketches focused on getting the proportions right with just the right amount of chrome center and finished wood sides.

The design in the shaded box above was pretty much the final sketch that became the final design for our secret luxury interior project. Below is an Alias rendering from the same cad files use to create the actual shifter parts for the project.

Lincoln Shifter Concept

The final concept was a chrome center portion flanked by two dark stained pieces of walnut wood. Integrated on top is the Lincoln logo.
The "secret project" was well received by upper management. The studio chief was even asked to stop presenting so they could " just take it all in".

That ended my involvement in the design and I continued on with the several other projects meant for production. A few months later my studio chief told me that the shifter design had been picked up for the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX crossover SUV models that were being developed at the time. The design was changed by adding a big radius transition from the top to the back and eliminating the logo on top. The walnut pieces were also replaced with "leather" covered caps and a lock out button was added.

Ford F-150 Shifter

Product managers eventually decided that the design should also go into the Ford F-150, as pictured above.

To summarize, a luxury Lincoln shifter design for a "secret project" to show case design talents of studio designers that was never meant for production becomes the design used in the highest selling non luxury vehicle in the US for the average Joe. It was rumored to me that that was how the Ford GT came into existence too. But I can not verify that.

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Ducati SS-T "Design your Dream Ducati" Contest

This is a little personal project I did in 2003 for the "Design your Dream Ducati" Contest.This is an example of Ducati doing "crowd sourcing" before it became hip. Over a 1000 entries were submitted from all over the world at the cost of only two motorcycles. Okay, so on to my entry....

The SST is a Super Sport Touring bike. The idea being that you could ride it at the track by easily removing the side mirrors with integrated turn singles, quickly drop the  clamp-ons below the shock's top clamp and raise the rear set up under the seat. Then you could revert it back and comfortably ride the bike on your favorite set of road twisties for a few hours.

I challenged myself to style the bike in a very clean and graphic manner. I split the windscreen down the middle but ran it clean around the bottom of front fairing giving it a vertical layout . In contrast most sports bikes at this time had a horizontal layout of intakes and headlights. The SST headlights were hidden behind the windscreen to  keep the lines clean. The air intake was put at the very front center of the fairing to grab the air before it was disturbed by running across any body surfaces. The side fairings are kept clean, like the 999, not junked up with a bunch of gratuitous styling elements like most other sportsbikes.

 

To run the air the from the front intake straight into the airbox I had to change the design of the normal center steering tube. Instead I created two very large being races for the steering to work from and then connected the top and bottom with support framing on the side. This allows the air ducting to run straight through the axes of the steering and into the airbox without any bends. The ducting can be faintly seen through the large steering ring.  Had this been a cruiser or chopper bike I would have put the RPM gauge in the the ring but to keep it and the over lapping speedometer easily visible I placed them in the normal position.

Another difference from most sportsbikes is the shape of the front fairing. In top view you can see that it tappers off to the sides more than most designs to divert air flow around to the sides of the rider. Not all air  goes around but it reduces the amount of air being directed straight up into the rider's chest and head, reducing drag and wind buffeting.

The modeling and render for this project was all done in Alias.

To see more examples of real projects and the design services I offer please visit my website by clicking here, Bullseye Design Worx. To see more computer modeling and renderings click here.