The Design
The Story
The design narrative is R&K’s imagination of those special, one off, cars that have appeared at the great Car Shows of the 1940’s through to the 1980’s. These concept cars stretched the boundaries at the time. Inspired by these original creations ROCKY cars aim well beyond being a nice toy for children or an interesting item for the design conscious, to stimulate the imagination of young and old. The examples below show where designers have departed from the normal and shown us stimulating new ideas.
design process
The Rocky cars are one off, individual, designs and are developed using traditional hand drawing and making. They start with rough sketches to investigate various design ideas of shape and details.
The sketches are developed into “3 view” or “orthographic projection” hand drawings. This is the traditional engineering, architectural and designer’s way to define the shape of an object.
The 3 views are transcribed onto a wooden block which is carved away to “discover” the car within. These solid wooden models are extensively workshopped by the R&K team and the shape and colour refined over numerous iterations. There is much handling and tactile input which helps gives the object a strong “human” quality and an almost tangible spirit.
These wooden prototypes are then drawn up in 3D CAD to create a digital model. Further design changes may be made to at this stage and the shape is then “frozen”. Test items (these are the cars in our photos and video) are made using CNC and additive printing (“rapid prototyping”) to confirm details for production – the production models will be made by injection moulding.
design process
The production of the Rocky series has been led by R&K co-founder, Saxon Rudduck, Architect and Designer. Apart from a successful career in architecture he has had extensive involvement with the design and making of bicycles, automobiles, and inventions. He had a major involvement in the “Tigerfish” advanced float plane and has worked with Boeing and Airbus on airliners. Saxon has a lifetime interest in classic cars and the Rocky series is a result of this love and enthusiasm from him and the Rocket& Klein team.
