Here’s a design challenge: Take a tricked out race car, make it look more like a production sedan, but don’t take away any of its performance. That’s what designer Bill Ferguson was asked to do with the 2011 nose redesign of the Ford Fusion and Chevy Impala for NASCAR.
Unfortunately, some of those race car extras were functional. Ferguson had to hide certain performance features to give the cars a street look.
Ferguson’s design process involved running ideas past a panel of stakeholders, wind tunnel testing, sending models out for manufacturing, and finally road, or rather, track testing. His process also involved some sophisticated design tools–in this case, Creo Parametric. And, yeah, the new more ordinary-looking noses are every bit as fast as last-year’s models.
Watch Ferguson talk more about his work at NASCAR and Creo Parametric in this interview from Planet PTC Live in Las Vegas recorded just a few weeks ago.
