INFINITI CANADA - Youthful, spirited and spontaneous, the design language of the new Infiniti Q30 Concept was achieved by giving the Infiniti design team the license to be adventurous in envisioning an Infiniti compact premium entry for the future. Q30 Concept is the latest project to emerge from the design team headed by Alfonso Albaisa, Infiniti Executive Director of Design. It shares with Infiniti Q50 key cues of Infiniti’s new lightweight design language, but also explores bolder styling freedom to signal the brand’s future direction – clearly influenced by previous Infiniti concepts, Essence, Etherea and Emerg-e. Infiniti Q30 Concept melds the qualities of traditional coupe, hatch and crossover body styles to create a sleek, poised and dynamic design shape for the future. It features a dramatic exterior shape, particularly the body side, which includes bold sections, deep undercuts and intersecting lines. “Q30 Concept is slender, sleek and seductive,” said Albaisa, who played an influential role in recent Infiniti designs including Emerge-e Concept and Q50. “When you see speedy big cats, like cheetahs, they have a slenderness and a lightweight stride. It’s almost like they’re floating. That’s the muscularity we were aiming for with Q30 Concept – a fluid turbulence of full bodied sections that are suddenly lightweight, floating and effortless, lines and forms crossing over, almost spiralling through a very slender silhouette.” Albaisa and his team are pursuing a much more muscular look for Infiniti design looking ahead. Designers are given the freedom to search for spontaneity and fluidity in their designs as artists. As a result, Q30 Concept evokes traditional Italian design flair and the modernity of the latest, high-tech materials. “We fell in love with the notion of the art of sculpture but with lightweight materials like composites and carbon fiber,” Albaisa said. “Imagine Michelangelo’s David being sculpted out of carbon fiber instead of marble. It still has the romance, the seduction and the sculpture of marble but it’s lightweight, floating and effortless from the technical aspect.” As Infiniti hones the performance and precision of its product character, this combination of sculpture and technical materials is an important avenue for the design team’s exploration. Albaisa says his mandate to make Infiniti design more emotive, sensual and contemporary, in a way that the established premium brands do not, is a rewarding challenge. “Infiniti moving forward will definitely focus on the romance of the automobile. We will create the seductive alternative. We will constantly pursue a kind of bespoke, one-off rarity that will connect with the spirit of a new generation of premium customers.” |