Ford Start Concept busts out of Beijing

[Blackseal]

Ford has jumped into the burgeoning urban car segment with both feet at the Beijing Motor Show with the Start concept. The design study was developed to look at ways of building a smaller, more affordable car using fewer raw materials. The structure is a combination of aluminum and high strength steels to keep weight down without sacrificing safety, while the body panels are made from recyclable composites that already have the color molded in, eliminating the need to paint.

 

The Start's styling is clean and simple, but not as interesting as the "Kinetic" design of cars like the all-new 2011 Focus. The simpler shape is surely less expensive to manufacture than Ford's current crop of vehicles and that simplification strategy extends to the interior where the Start introduces MyFord Mobile. This MyFord iteration relies on smartphones to provide much of the functionality provided by MyFord Touch without having to install all the extra hardware.

 

Ford emphasizes that, with one exception, the Start is purely a design study with no production plans for the time being. However, the Start's powertrain