Stolen Idea
Picture yourself (in 2007) in a car park, and in front of you is a car whose silhouette you drew thirteen years earlier!
Not a vague resemblance to some drawing made one day, but a real concept sent in 1994 to a car manufacturer and put into production in 2003!
Originally, this design was intended to replace the “Lyra” model. In the end, it was used to replace the following model, a full product cycle later.
According to the press, the success of this design, named MC1 and 2, was mixed: it was criticised for being too modern, even though I had drawn it 9 years before its release!
All this was done without my consent and without my being paid. If in the future you want to market one of your ideas through Rochet-Schneider, we are committed to offering fair payment.
Warning: do not use the website’s contact form or email to share ideas that you consider to have commercial potential; protect your idea first. Using the form or email means you give up all your rights to the idea.
Why? We may be secretly working on the same idea. You could then claim that we copied your idea. You need to go through a process that is secure for you.
The 1994 design features a symmetrical profile, an idea that would prove very successful on the Audi TT, whose concept car was unveiled at the end of 1995 and the production model in 1998. The treatment of the rear is also very distinctive, a feature that would only be taken up in 2001 on Chris Bangle’s BMW 7 Series (E65), causing an outcry.
A car is rarely out of step with its time. Ideas come and go. Symmetrical profiles already existed at Panhard in the 1950s. They are still lines that meet or don’t, and in the end the alternatives are “finite” (limited in number).
Coming up with a new idea is not easy, but Rochet-Schneider will always reward the work done.
To follow this project, subscribe now to our two YouTube channels and be notified of new releases:
An opinion, an idea, an insight? Leave us a message
Every new adventure needs a manifesto:
“Creative work will be recognised and rewarded”