We’ve all met the Porsche Taycan. Either online or in the flesh, it is an awe-inspiring marvel of seamless design and engineering. It is the future, and it knows it but could it fly?
If you think we mean to fly off the salesroom floor, its extended-range and generous top speed have already done that from before it even reached the dealerships. No, we are talking about it flying, um in the air? (Before you think that we have exceeded our redline and made it the entire way around the bend, give us the chance to explain…)
Disclaimer – We are not affiliated with SpaceX, Elon Musk or planning on heading to Mars. Yet. Porsche as we know it has never shied away from innovation. It is a company’s lifeblood, and can often save it from the doom of stagnation. Crazy ideas are nothing new in the automotive scene (AMC Pacer anyone?) but in today’s day and age of a very heavy bottom line, they are becoming increasingly rare. That is why it’s so refreshing to see a partnership between two very different industries. Lucas Films needed a fresh new fighter spacecraft for its upcoming movies in the Star Wars Universe, and what better company to collaborate with then Porsche? Porsche’s Stuttgart studio has been known to design more than just its iconic vehicles, but we’ve mainly seen other classic design items like personal wear, watches, glasses, and the occasional toaster.
Porsche’s Practical Approach To Styling In Six Iconic Points
- Sloping rooflines
- Strong hood topography
- Ultimate width/height Combination
- Unique Porsche form language (best described as the 911)
- Low nose with air intakes
- Emphasis on shoulder and tapering greenhouse
Apply this to something completely virtual, and things get funky. Film models are removed from reality and so don’t need to meet real-world problems such as legal requirements, passenger safety, and environmental concerns. These are very much front and center to Porsche’s design team. This, combined with the new skillset from the Lucas Film Designers allowed the team to come up with something completely out of the box (or should we say planet). In a short time frame of only six weeks, these Jedi masters managed to fuse the DNA of Porsche with that of The Force to create a novel starship for the New Republic.
Collaborating across two continents they were brought together by the same simple design brief:
- Maximum of 4 engines
- More than two, but less than five crew members
- Large rear cargo door
After an iterative process involving everything from the latest CAD systems to cut-and-stick, the team came up with a thoroughbred. Incorporating the sloping roofline, iconic rear light bar and Taycan headlamps the new ship only gets a few seconds of screen time to turn heads and a five-foot scale model premiered at the latest release. To quote Master Yoda, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future…”