Forget the Mustang four-door coupe, we want this stylish shooting brake
- Ford recently held a design contest in China, which challenged students to re-imagine the Mustang.
- The Mustang Mach-S Concept is quite the looker and imagines the pony car as a shooting brake.
- The Mustang Super Utility Concept is an EV that blends coupe styling with truck-like capability.
Stellantis’ Drive For Design contest is coming to a close, but Ford recently held a similar competition for the Mustang in China. Known as “Mustang: A Grand Tour Of Re-imagination,” the event partnered Ford Design China with local design students to sketch out the future of the legendary pony car.
The program kicked off late last year and attracted 25 students from 22 different colleges and universities from China and abroad. In February, eight students were selected to go to Ford’s design center in Shanghai to embark on an immersive, week-long design program where they’d work one-on-one with professional designers. As part of this process, they turned their sketches into three-dimensional digital models.
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In the end, three designs “stood out” and were selected to be transformed into physical vehicles. The undisputed star is the Mustang Mach-S Concept by Liu Sizhuo. The Tsinghua University student created a stylish shooting brake that’s instantly recognizable as a Mustang, but is far more practical.
Germany’s Xie Yian went in a radically different direction as his Mustang Super Utility Concept seeks to combine coupe styling with the practicality of a pickup truck. The model is also envisioned to be fully electric.
Lai Yushun’s Mustang Hyper Tandem Concept draws inspiration from racing and features a tandem cockpit design similar to fighter jets. This puts drivers at the center of the action, while the rest of the car has an “exaggerated and visually impactful aerodynamic design.”
All three concept models will be showcased at the Shanghai Auto Show, where Ford’s Max Wolff expressed his pride, saying, “We are honored to have attracted so many outstanding young design talents to this very rare training opportunity.”
