Rochet-Schneider Manifeste
Setting out to design the first Rochet-Schneider in 100 years, and to make it absolutely unique and unforgettable, can be stressful.
Stress is a great inhibitor of creativity.
One way to fight this harmful effect is to fill one page, then two, then three, with no particular goal. A drawing can be just three lines. Then you look at it, and it is the eye that is creative.
I noticed that I never fully drew the wheels, to save time and try out as many ideas as possible.
So I decided to turn this first car into a three-dimensional sketch with incomplete wheels.
What’s more, rather than making one particular type of car, from one particular era, for one particular use, all far too limiting, the idea came to simply express the creative freedom that will drive the brand, as well as its very strong connection with reality.
We dream, but we don’t lie.
So there are real technical parts, such as the front air intakes and side air outlets that show the engine’s need to breathe. These intakes strongly affect the shape of the car, distorting it around them, clearly showing the link between mechanics and aesthetics, which must go hand in hand and cannot be separated.
The car sits motionless on the ground, as if on a pedestal, with wheels that could “spin in the void”. This feeling of stillness, even of inability or powerlessness to move, is offset by the momentum of the shape, very expressive in profile but also from other angles; even the rear logo seems to have been stretched by the movement of the form.
Freedom is expressed through the shape’s independence from the ground, whose straightness and flatness it does not follow.
The shape must of course “contain” the mechanics and the occupants, but it also features concave surfaces, hollows and openings.
Its pre-war profile contrasts with aerodynamic research, and while its proportions are generous, they are never caricatured.
She introduces herself first with her initials, then her first name and finally her surname. She wears the brand’s colours, which are also those of the city of Lyon.
In the end, imagine holding a small model of the Manifeste in the palm of your hand.
Now place it on a shelf next to other small cars.
What do you notice?
It is truly unique and unforgettable.
Mission accomplished.
Your Manifeste at home?
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The palette proposed for the Manifeste takes up the four heraldic colours of the coat of arms of Lyon:
“Gules, a lion rampant argent, armed and langued; on a chief azure three fleurs-de-lis or”
Your Manifeste is revealed in a setting paying tribute to the Place des Terreaux in Lyon, the work of French visual artist Daniel Buren, architect and urban planner Christian Drevet, and lighting designer Laurent Fachard.
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Every new adventure needs a manifesto:
“We declare our wish to be free to explore shapes and lines without limits”