17 May 06
During the early stages of the Ka's gestation, the two men who influenced the project most were Jacques Nasser, then chairman of Ford of Europe, and Claude Lobo, its original chief designer.
'When we decided to do the car, I said to Jac that we can try to do something new and different because it was a new entry in our brand. He agreed to that and gave me carte blanche,' says Lobo.
'We wanted to do an anti-Twingo. The Twingo, as such, is a very clever car; it's a mini-minivan, but we couldn't repeat it. I was not willing to do that. My philosophy was really inspired by the original Mini; I wanted to design a car that was so strong in its appearance and thinking that we wouldn't have to carry out a mid-life facelift. When I presented the Ka to the board in the US, I told them that we either sell it and sell it well or you scrap it - but you cannot facelift it.
'We were looking for something new, a new type of design vocabulary because everything was soft and round and we wanted to create a new character, a new face. We knew that new technology would permit us to introduce new graphics and that was the most important thing.
'On top of that, it was a question of manufacturing. If you include concave and convex shapes, you don't see the panel gaps anymore. Take for example, the front of the Ka: the wings are convex and the bonnet starts in a concave way, so if it's out of alignment by a few millimetres, you don't see it because the gap itself is a feature line.'
