Saab Aero X Concept Car

red dot: luminary
red dot award: design concept 2007

design:
Saab Automobile AB	GM Europe Design

The GM Europe Advanced Design Team was charged with creating a concept car for the Saab brand to showcase its future design direction. In search of a distinctive theme, the team looked back at Saab's heritage as an aircraft maker and incorporated several ingenious features. 

The GM Europe Advanced Design Team’s partnership with the Innovation Team proved to be the essential success factor in the design of the Saab AeroX Concept Car. Various key features were executed with professionalism that not only stole the show at Geneva 2006, but will inspire Saab products for generations to come.

The overall design reflects such innovative features as the 'forward tilting canopy' opening, a pillar-less one piece wrap around windscreen, the 'ice block' headlamps, tail lamps and instrument cluster, exposed 'raw' carbon fiber chassis, and 22" front and 23" rear 'turbo fan' inspired wheels. All are superbly executed. The form language and many of these 'show stopping' features are already inspiring various stages of future production projects (ice block lamps, instrument cluster, wheel design, and so on). The project team required cross border co-ordination with design, clay and math modelling in Sweden, engineering in Germany, and model building in Italy.

The Saab AeroX was voted 'Best in Show' in the Geneva Motor Show by Autoweek magazine, and has been nominated for a 'Concept Award' by the prestigious Louis Vuitton Classic Awards. The Saab AeroX is regarded as one of the most innovative show cars and also the 'greenest' supercar concept, as its twin turbo E100 Biopower engine runs on 100% bio-ethanol.