In 2008 BMW created a new concept car that can change its shape, has a textile skin and it still challenges our perception of what a car should look like, as it did 8 years go. The BMW Gina Light Visionary Model, a shape-shifting car concept, was originally constructed exactly 15 years ago in 2001 and went straight to the BMW Museum in Munich when it opened after renovation in 2008. The car is actually “driveable”, although it was never intended for mass production – the point was to produce a symbol of “challenging and consciously breaking through as many conventions of automobile construction as possible”.
The two-seat roadster was a design exercise conducted by Chris Bangle, Chief of Design at BWM from 1992 to 2009, and his team and built it on Z8 chassis with a 4.4-liter V8 and six-speed automatic transition – a fully functional minimalistic car with wide lines and sculptural appearance. The car’s name GINA stands for “Geometry and functions In ‘N’ Adaptations” and instead of steel, aluminum or carbon fiber body it has a seamless fabric – polyurethane-coated Spandex – stretched over the metal frame. This allows its drivers change its shape at will and adapt the vehicle to specific driving conditions. This can be seen when the headlights are not active – they are hidden under the special fabric, and as soon as the driver turns them on – the contours of the front end change.
Chris Bangle said that GINA had allowed his team to “challenge existing principles and conventional processes” and produce creative space for pioneering innovations. BMW explained their design philosophy during the official unveiling of the visionary model: “It is in the nature of such visions that they do not necessarily claim to be suitable for series production. Rather, they are intended to steer creativity and research into new directions.” Let us know in the comments if you think that GINA has managed to do so since being introduced more than 15 years ago.
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