The design brief for the McLaren Meliora project was to envision a new sense of design direction such that it maintains and captures a clean, exciting and original form of a car that excels on every level, with performance, engagement, and efficiency sharing equal top-billing to be a part of McLaren's history of pure automotive.
Design
McLaren having its beautiful racing heritage, also encapsulates design as a pure art to create the most beautiful and exhilarating driving experiences in the world. The combination of enhanced refinement and instant driver engagement under throttle enables the Meliora to fulfil its dual role as a vehicle that can be driven every day in regular urban traffic and an incredibly immersive supercar on the road or track.
The main purpose is to look beyond the possibilities of a car that gives the true DNA spirit, defining every heartbeat of Mclaren Automotive. The car is technically beautiful, looks as if it is sculpted by the wind having its best curve that exhilarates the aerodynamic capabilities, achieving the form-function principle.
Bringing back the funky pop up/down retro style headlamps of the popular 80s and 90s. The headlamps of the Meliora are designed in such a way as to provide a high beam LED headlights along with a seamless pop down motion that when it encloses it further helps in ventilation of the air coming in cooling the hot tire paving the road.
The M-Logo: Feature element
A massive side vent helps relieving the pressure built up on the front end of the car this profile gave an image of the M-logo on the Meliora. The main feature of this design is the elliptical ringed (this simple form came up accidentally upon a thought of connecting nature with a slight idea of modern interpretation) shaped profile aesthetically placed such that connects the front and the side of the car through a single vent split arrangement, this gave a pure and mysterious sense of form which uplifts McLaren DNA. The race car is powered by a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine that is expected to produce 200 horsepower similar to the line of McLaren
Because of the half ellipse on both side of the front, it gave a focused, aggressive overall look on the car. After its ideation and form development Krishnakanta tried out several proportions and sketches which further gave me more unique design directions exploration to select the best-looking concept.
The Rear View
The rear of the car is highly inspired from the beautiful McLaren p1 and the legendary Gordon Murray F1. Which can be seen as 4X2 arrangement of the rear vents. Mclaren which has its own creative way of designing the exhaust placed above the tail can also be seen on the Meliora concept place just perfectly between the lamps mapped across a hexagonal heat shield. One of the main challenges of this project was to combine the brand’s DNA with the most-simpler look.
About Designer
Krishnakanta Saikhom is a Mechanical Engineer who graduated from JSS Science and Technology University, India. He is currently looking for opportunities in Masters for Transportation Design in India and keeping in touch with possible internships along the way.
