Ward's Automotive Interior Show

Each summer Ward's Automotive Group hosts yet another auto-industry confab in Detroit's Cobo Hall, with conferences and displays covering all aspects of automotive interiors. Designers, suppliers, and engineers get together to share cool new materials, features, and interior-design concepts and to talk through the many issues complicating interior design these days. Hot discussion topics this year included coping with pending regulations -- head restraints are in for a major redesign -- and managing the proliferation of comfort, convenience, and infotainment features without overwhelming and hopelessly distracting the driver.

Chrysler's interior-design boss Ralph Gilles gave a remarkably candid keynote address in which he opined that VW and Audi currently build the coolest interiors. He also gave props to Volvo for designing Zen-like interiors in which items disappear when not in use and to GM for its high-grade-material selections in new vehicles as the Acadia/Outlook/Enclave crossovers. He stated that Chrysler was looking to add 40 to 60 weeks to its interiors' gestation time to get things right and that the company is taking new steps to foster and retain gifted interior designers, rather than simply rotating exterior designers through the interior studios. Gilles also predicted several future interior-design trends: increasing usage of ambient and mood lighting (including lights that pulse along with the sound-system's beat), a move away from "technical" grains back toward better-executed animal graining, increased use of fabrics on doors and instrument panels, and a proliferation of panoramic sunroofs (the new-for-2008 minivan was designed for one, though it's not yet scheduled for production).

At the end of the first day, Ward's bestowed its eighth annual Interior of the Year Awards. Class winners included the Honda Fit, Saturn Aura, Volvo S80, Honda CR-V, Cadillac SRX, Chevy Silverado, and Lincoln Navigator. Special awards were given for best overall comfort (Lexus LS 460L), best interior trim (Infiniti G35), best brand expression (Jeep Wrangler), and best cupholder (Chrysler Sebring). Here's what else caught our attention as we walked the show floor:

Live Music, the final frontier in car entertainment
An iPod jack is so 2006, now Fender lets you plug in your electric guitar (or other electro-musical instrument) and jam to your own axe, as School-of-Rocker Joey Gaydos Jr. demonstrates. The guitar and amp icon showed a Chevy HHR concept with a complete amp integrated into the rear of the vehicle. The company hopes to break into the ranks of Bose and Infinity with its own branded high-end audio system developed in cooperation with Panasonic.

Point and click
It could be the ultimate user interface -- one you don't have to touch at all, but rather just point at. Ident's GESTIC system uses near-electric fields that work within a half-meter. A screen might have three such field sensors, and when a hand or finger enters the range of these sensors, they triangulate its position and the direction it's pointing or moving -- in much the same way that GPS satellite data is triangulated to determine a car's position on the globe. Another potential use for this technology is to place such sensors under the surface of the dash, then simply print button functions on the dash cover, and by triangulating finger position, trigger the appropriate functions. There's a concept that should be liberating in terms of interior design and packaging.

Any photo on any part
Ground Effects Ltd showed off a new procedure for transferring any photograph onto almost any sort of part. The image is first printed onto a plastic material, similar to the stuff breath strips are made of. Then it's floated in a vat of water and a proprietary activator is sprayed on it. The backing material dissolves and the activator keeps the ink together as the part -- which has been primed with a special paint -- is dipped into the vat. The ink interacts with the primer, absorbing into the surface like a tattoo, without distorting. A top clear-coat fixes it permanently. Wood tones, metallic sheens, and practically anything else that can be printed can now be transferred to a trim piece.