Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

If Apple made a car what would it look like!

dacreativeguy said:
BMW is the Apple of car companies. The current 3 series coupe is to die for. The 5 series sedan is a close second. If only they weren't so damn expensive.
Click to expand...

Matter of perspective... To me, BMW's are the most boring, overpriced p.o.s. cars you can stand to buy. The fact that BMW's are all known to be driven by morons just proves my point as to why anyone sane would want to buy one.

But as Jezza pointed out on TG - it's true that alot have migrated over to Audi's now. Central is full of them.
 
I could certainly imagine Apple designing the onboard computer for a car, with a touch screen iPhone like interface. Of course running mobile OS X. That would be orgasmic.

Once you drove it to your house, it could sync with iTunes over wifi. It would have 3G for mobile browsing. And of course some **** would jailbreak it, causing it to brick in the middle of the journey, crashing the car into a wall.
 
Tom B. said:
Ewww, Apple would never make a car with wood on the dashboard. There is nothing more awful than that.
Click to expand...

Well Ofcourse It wouldn't be wood... it's just the default that was with the car.. i would imagine it would be aluminum or white. Thanks for that btw
 
dacreativeguy said:
BMW is the Apple of car companies. The current 3 series coupe is to die for. The 5 series sedan is a close second. If only they weren't so damn expensive.
Click to expand...

Eh...not really. If anything it's the other way around, Apple "trying" to be the BMW of car companies. People don't go "wow!" when they see an Apple computer. They might be like, "oh, nice"...but that's it. Every petrolhead admits the BMW is one of the leaders in car manufacturing...not Apple.

If you really want a match up in the automobile industry, I'd give it an Audi at most. Decent performance, but then the timing belt snaps and your engine dies 30,000 miles before checkup haha.
 
If Apple made an iCar I think this is what it would look like. (Or MacLife thinks what it would look like).
1126_icar_inter_credit_700.jpg


1126_icar_front_credit_1200.jpg


1126_icar_profile_credit_1200.jpg


Thanks to MacLife for those images.
 
this is what apple might partner with, maybe if they were on drugs or somthing:
Pagani_Zonda_F_32_2.jpg


Pagani-Zonda-S-73-Interior-1280x960.jpg


but more probably is this:
AMA803242%25201024x768_1e36bc69-fbc5-4bbe-8d09-d6723d67ae62.jpg


just listen to it, not only is it pretty fast but it turns like a car should, not like those great big crappy muscle cars :p
 
tsice19 said:
Well, if they made an iCar, it would integrate really well with all your other Apple products (iPod, iPhone, MacBook, etc;)

It would work great, but it would have to run on special iFuel and it would only drive on an iRoad.
Click to expand...

Also:
1. You would have to sign a 5-yr agreement to only use iFuel.
2. iFuel stations would be few and far apart. iCar effectively limited to trendy urban centers. Car will stall on any rural road.
3. iCars would be product-placed in every movie and tv series.
4. Car would be slow, but offer better user experience.
5. Power and fuel capacity can be updated, but only for extraordinary cost.
6. No radio or cd player. iTunes interface only, and only iTv for expensive optional rear seat entertainment system.
7. All upholstery made of hemp.
8. No non-Apple parts can be installed.
9. Car will be shipped without some common and expected feature, like maybe no air conditioner. Forums will furiously discuss this. Jobs will say it is not needed and only adds weight and decreases mileage. Years later, AC will suddenly appear on new model.
10. Only iTires will fit the 17.334 sized wheels.
11. Cars available in black for $2300 more.
 
Apple would NOT make a car like a BMW. BMW's are ugly ever since Chris Bangle became BMW's to designer. Every one of his designs is a controversial mistake, and the 3 series came out looking relatively OK only because they had a leash tied tightly around his neck. Notice the M1 concept looks pretty fine, but then look closer and find that Bangle had no hand in penning it.

Bangle started the unfortunate trend in recent years of over-styling cars, making them look busy and formless. His problem is that he has too many contradicting lines clamoring for attention. The new Acura's re too busy looking because VW made their very pleasantly simple cars very cluttered as well. Lexus hopped on the gravy train well before that. Mercedes all look like alien-designed formless blobs of putty and have absolutely no soul. They are making a comeback with the C class and CL class, though. But perhaps the best example of how BMW's look horrible are the cars made by Infiniti, which do their best to emulate BMW in every sense. They come pretty close to it.

Plus, iDrive? They ripped off the iApple trend but used it for something so user UN-friendly, it takes a teenager who can't afford a BMW to figure out how to do anything. BMW is Windows manifest. Not to mention, they aren't very reliable anymore. They get free maintenance for so-and-so many miles, but it costs a fortune to fix the simplest things. They also are some of the best-performing cars on the road, but they are fairly overpriced (like Vista).

Apple would make an iCar like the last generation of VW's. Great quality materials, simplistic, clean design, and good reliability. The new VWs use sub-par materials, are cluttered, boring, and completely average. Get in a Jetta, feel the door pull, and tell me that that doesn't feel like the kids' Little Tike's playhouse out in the back yard.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had a hell of a week, I'm a car geek and in that respect, I really miss 5 and 10 years ago. Mercedes looked good 10 years ago. BMW made cars that still looked good 10 years ago. Non-American cars used nicer materials 5 years ago.

Oh, and the Holden Commodore has hit the US as the Pontiac G8. No glory name of yesteryear, just plenty of V8 rear-wheel horsepower at a good price. Jeremy Clarkson takes it over a BMW 5 any day of the week, and the American motoring press is in love with it. It looks halfway decent too, until you step inside and it starts to look vaguely "blah." But for an Australian car, its not bad at all. Now when is the US going to get the Ford Falcon? Ford US is so desperate, they couldn't afFord to bring the new EU Focus to the states, instead replacing it with an inferior plastic toy.

Perhaps the best example of an Apple on the road is Saab circa 5 years ago.
Overpriced for less performance than a BMW, but very simple to operate (the switches are large, clearly marked, and well within the driver's reach in intuitive places), very clean but unconventional (and practical) design, had novel engineering that allowed a common GM chassis to drive completely differentley, fairly well-built, made with pretty good materials, and more reliable than Ikea's existence. But it can be expensive to fix should something occur.
(I drive one. Can you tell? :p)
 
The new Acura's re too busy looking because VW made their very pleasantly simple cars very cluttered as well.
Click to expand...

Last time I checked an acura was a honda which has nothing to do with VAG (the company behind vw etc) :confused:
 
simie said:
The challenge is to design a car, either external view or internal looking at the dashboard.
Click to expand...

I don't know how it would look like, but
  • if you want your tyres changed, you'll have to bring it to an Apple approved garage
  • the first model would feature an exotic engine, which, according to Steve jobs, is much faster than the engines used in other cars...
  • when the Apple-car owners have pissed off all their neighbours with their permanent comments on how poor the engines in their non-Apple-cars are, Steve Jobs would suddenly announce that future Apple-cars will use standard engines, which are 2 times faster than the engines used in the original Apple-car model
  • the technology in the newer Apple-car models would come from other manufacturers, with Apple only designing the dashboard and the steering wheel
  • Apple would start building their own roads, claiming that the roads built by the state are not sufficiently optimised for the Apple-car
 
LeviG said:
Last time I checked an acura was a honda which has nothing to do with VAG (the company behind vw etc) :confused:
Click to expand...

Do understand I had a long week, so please excuse my less than accurate sentence structure.

Yes, Acura is the luxury branch of Honda, which is in no way shape or form affiliated with Volkswagen AG.

Acuras became over-styled after VW followed suite with BMW and Mercedes, as opposed to Lexus (Toyota) and Infiniti (Nissan) who both jumped ship earlier on.
 
^^^^ I think that second one is an electric Tata Nano prototype. Cheap as dirt and no amenities, that's not Apple's style.

I found these:

the elusive iCar prototype circa 1999:
icar.jpg


And the earlier Apple Car, designed by Richard Scary:
apple-car-727637.JPG
 
Gretchin78 said:
What, you havent heard!!???

Well here is a sneak peek at their first ever car! =)

snip
Click to expand...

HAHA that's actually pretty cool, like a little room on wheels ;)
bet its the least safe car though, what about suspension, and most other things? :p

If apple were ever going to make cars they would team up with audi hands down! no competition.
They could make the iCar mini like a giant mighty mouse :p just like a Pod
Cant be bothered to go into the tech side since it'll basically be everything you've ever dreamed and more.
This looks pretty slick though, a sort of mesh material instead of the bodywork, How easy to steal an engine do they want to make it? zip down the bonnet, un-bolt and run :p

http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/06/10/bmw-no-more-dents-and-dings/

http://www.audi.co.uk/audi/uk/en2/experience/Studies/audi_rsq.html

I had a picture of what I seem to remember was an audi design exoskeleton sort of car, looked awesome but cant find the image :rolleyes:
 

Attachments

  • bmw_gin2.jpg
    bmw_gin2.jpg
    23.4 KB · Views: 194
  • 2908555_58_full.jpg
    2908555_58_full.jpg
    130.1 KB · Views: 190
  • Concept (3).jpg
    Concept (3).jpg
    22.4 KB · Views: 633
Gretchin78 said:
What, you havent heard!!???

Well here is a sneak peek at their first ever car! =)

futuristic-car-peugeotcopy.jpg
Click to expand...

So it's a Peugeot...

inspired by Segway...

on two rail-thin tires...

with an upside-down Apple logo on the window of the Lamborghini-esque circle door? (Look through to the passenger side and you'll see what I mean)

Also, this design does have the potential to be safe.
A. You've got a sphere, a three-dimensional iteration of a circle, which, when cut in half, forms an arch, which was one of the earliest forms of advanced engineering (Romans) because under no reasonable circumstances should it ever cave under pressure.
B. All collision points hit the tire, or are close enough that a minor yield in the body will make the tire the primary impact absorber. Hitting dead on the tire is the safest way to crash, as is the Smart Car design philosophy. You are thereby hitting the primary opposing force directly in a collision rather than an appendage of the reactionary forces.
 
waffle911 said:
So it's a Peugeot...

inspired by Segway...

on two rail-thin tires...

with an upside-down Apple logo on the window of the Lamborghini-esque circle door? (Look through to the passenger side and you'll see what I mean)
Click to expand...

Ok ok, now I see how that door works. So my Apple is a bit off...

But it looks good! =)

Thanks for pointing out my flaws man!!!! ;)
 
Heck why don't they start by letting you color the fonts in your iTunes playlist names, so you can find the ones you're working on or were messing around with when your Mom called and said hey come jumpstart my car so I'm not late to work...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back