What Chevy Volt Concept?

[Ming]

Originally Posted by NfamousZ24

Make the most effecient Chevy Volt and make the exciting concept Pontiac Volt. Yes Keep the name Volt for both brands. They can even make a Saturn Volt for all I care.

Just don't call it the Pontiac (Toyota) Voltz!

[ral1960]

The concept was probably a styling exercise that originally had nothing to do with E Flex technology. It simply isn't a practical vehicle, much less an aerodynamic one. Would the Volt have gotten half the attention if it had looked something like a Prius or an EV-1? It still doesn't look like it will have much trunk room, but at least it will hold adults in the rear seat.

The camouflage may be fooling me, but it looks like it has a much more vertical rear window with large sail panels.

[drew630]

I have never like the concept Volt. Its just ugly to me. I like the image MonaroSS came up with from the wind tunnel model though. It looks more normal, but not in the bland way, to me. I don't see much of a Prius resemblance but, of course, the image is only of one angle.

[WWI Flying Ace]

Originally Posted by tgagneguam

...if the primary purpose of this vehicle is to be the most miserly of the gas miserly, I can understand GM's dumbing down of the exterior design. I briefly thought it might be a good idea for GM to have the only stylish "green" (what a gross marketing word) car on the road, but alas, this sucker's gotta sip gas. And if that means it looks like the god-awful Prius, so be it.

Alas, you speak the truth. Too bad...I really liked the way the concept looked. I still want GM to have spectacular success with the Volt, and I understand if they need to do this for aerodynamics...but dang, I did like the long hood on the concept a lot. I thought it was really stylish.

[usa1]

The Volt concept was about the powertrain and nothing else. I never expected the concept car look to carry over significantly to the production model. No one, especially GM, talked about how cool the Volt looked, they only talked about the powertrain.

The Volt was a "throwaway" concept design in my mind.

Mark

[rhvfd10]

Originally Posted by usa1

The Volt concept was about the powertrain and nothing else. I never expected the concept car look to carry over significantly to the production model. No one, especially GM, talked about how cool the Volt looked, they only talked about the powertrain.

The Volt was a "throwaway" concept design in my mind.

Mark

They did talk up the interior though. I'm sure that the interior will be much closer to the concept.

[igotzzoom]

Originally Posted by WishIhadatruck

I still think the car shown above is pretty good looking and unique as well.

Yeah. It's not bad-looking. MUCH more stylish than the Prius. Honestly, the design of the Volt concept wasn't very efficient or aerodynamic for many of the reasons noted here. Big wheels, squarish front-end, etc.

I still think GM might have a few tricks up its sleeve for the production model. I personally hope it's a 5-door and not a notchback. I think one of the reasons the 2nd-gen Prius has been so successful is because of its practicality compared to the first-gen model.

[zete]

The Volt is about mileage. I hope they can keep it looking like the concept, but we all knew there'd be compromises. Such is life when dealing with fuel economy. Form, as one poster stated, has to follow function.

And you know they want to get 40mi/60km out of the initial version of the Volt. And they'll do whatever they have to do to accomplish that. I say go for it. They'll sell all of them regardless.

[EllwynX]

I never expected it to look like the concept. I wasn't all that fond of the concept aside from the front end.

If the possible production version shown above is true, I think it looks fine. Much better (in that angle) than the Prius (sorry, don't see any resemblance to the Prius).

The concept was a too wild to appeal to the average buyer imo.

[MonaroSS]

Hi guys, I'm glad to provide a talking point like this. What is really interesting is that nobody camos a wind tunnel test model as they are always indoors under lock and key. It's not like they are going to drive it outside where prying cameras will see it. So we can assume that GM WANTED this model to be seen and examined, but not too much detail. Why? To manage expectations.

The model clearly shows that the packaging has changed and by letting this model be shown GM is trying to avoid expectation shock when the real Volt appears. If people were ignorantly expecting something very like the stylish Volt Concept then they could have a negative reaction to the release of a new model that GM wants a lot of support for. So now that the Concept has done it's job of exciting so many people to the IDEA of the Volt, it's time to nudge those expectations a bit to realign them with what the actual Volt will look like. And so people know what to expect.

I am sure there will still be some interesting styling surprises, as all I have done is give a basic shape and packaging to the model. There is no way I can show fine and subtle surface treatments, which the final car will undoubtedly have. The devil and the beauty are often in the detail.

Originally Posted by ral1960

The camouflage may be fooling me, but it looks like it has a much more vertical rear window with large sail panels.

I initially thought that too, but with close examination and the benefit of being able to zoom in and study every detail it turns out that 'effect' of what looks like a flying buttress or sailplane on the far side is cause by the cream tape across the top of the rear window being cut at an angle at the far end, and it is emphasised by the whitish smoke trail flowing over the car.

But if you look closely at the cream tape on the trunk, which forms a ‘V’, you will see that it follows a curving plane up the truck and rear window that is consistent with the window I rendered and which the Volt Concept had.

Originally Posted by cincygoblue

I'm not sure how you managed to interpret where the cutlines, glass to body lines and fender flares end up, looking at that vidcap, so I don't buy into your premise yet.

There is a reason for every detail and cut line I put on the rendering, but it would take pages to explain each detail. The door cut lines though are consistent with the Volt Concept and are consistent with many recent GM cut line designs like the G8 and Insignia and given that GM has to change the general Volt shape so much from the Concept I have assumed that they would take every effort to carry over as many design cues as they can where function does not dictate they need to change it. As to where the cut lines for the door go this was taken from the position of the door handles which can clearly be seen on the model.

The front door handle is the most obvious as the light and shade reflects off its bulge under the cream horizontal tape covering it. Travelling back from there the light reflected off the black tape over the rear door handle bulge is less obvious but still clearly there.

As to the side window shape. At the rear of the side windows you can see a piece of white tape which half way down it has a shadow caused by it indenting into the recess of the rear side window. That indent shadow is consistent with the shape of that rear window line on the Concept. The lower side window line is set by the obvious horizontal light reflection that appears across all the various color tapes at that point and you can see the angle of the side of the tapes changes consistent with that slope out from the lower window line to the side door crease above the door handles. The top of the windows is set by the roofline and the front by the wrap around front windscreen intersect at the A pillar.

The wheel arches are clearly shown and the fact there are no large flares are obvious, but one can assume that GM would not go to a complete slab side when they have not done this on any recent design, especially when they can have a subtle wide flair which uses light to give its effect rather than substantive shape. And a close examination of the subtle light shade changes on tape around these areas is consistent with such subtle large area flares, similar to those on the Invicta Concept.

So there is some of my reasoning, there was a lot more……..

[MonaroSS]

Originally Posted by EllwynX

I never expected it to look like the concept. I wasn't all that fond of the concept aside from the front end.

If the possible production version shown above is true, I think it looks fine. Much better (in that angle) than the Prius (sorry, don't see any resemblance to the Prius).

The concept was a too wild to appeal to the average buyer imo.

I actually didn’t mean it would look like a Prius, but that it would be more Prius-like in it's size, shape and packaging than the Volt Concept gave any indication of.

Both the Volt and the Prius will be large passenger compartment vehicles relative to their overall size with short hoods, and have higher Kamm backed rear ends for aero efficiency.

BTW, it was actually LeSabre digging up this old chop of mine below that got me thinking about rendering the Volt model to better expose it's shape.

[member12]

The volt in the spy pictures have a very Prius like profile.


They are obviously trying to maximize fuel economy by making the car very aerodynamic. We will probably see flush head lights and fog lights, wipers that tuck under the hood, a hatchback bodystyle, very tight gaps, low stance and ground effects, small wheels with low resistance tires (and narrow track), air dams, integrated antennas, funny looking mirrors......the works.

[igor]

GM said that the concept was NEVER tested in the tunnel, and once they did test it, it had HORRIBLE aerodynamics - Lutz said, that the concept has better aerodynamics when they put it in BACKWARDS!!!.

That aside - the Concept is clearly a RWD showpiece - the Volt will be BUILT ON COBALT PLATFORM - you cannot get RWD proportions and long hood out of he Cobalt - NEVER.

This was expected - at least by me.

Igor

[johnstarnes]

It will be fun to see how the original "Camaro on acid and steroids" look evolves into the production model, and what its co-efficient of drag will be.

[F14CRAZY]

the long hood was sweet...why'd they have to get rid of it?