17 May 06
'Once the programme started, the Twingo was one of the cars on the image boards because it was one of the competition,' Clements explains.
'The Ka was consciously trying to reach another pole. We saw the Twingo as being cuddly, cute and Fisher-Price, largely inspired by the cartoon headlights and some of the coloured plastics used on the interior. We were trying to do something that came across as being much more sophisticated - still very novel, but less playful, less cute, less cuddly, but more sophisticated and a design original.
'The Ka certainly helped to make Ford design exciting again. That was an outcome, in my humble opinion, of how the project was created and executed. It was an extremely simple concept and that was the genius of it.
'In terms of pure exterior design, it was an object lesson in that you start off with an architecture and a proportion. Then there's the sculpture which is overlaid on the architecture, which is what really epitomises New Edge design. The surfacing really speaks for itself and the design manager Scott Strong's description - of it being like a boiled egg with a slice taken off - is very accurate, because it is an organic form that has been sliced to leave hard edges and very sheer surfaces in contrast with the more organic surfaces around them.
'Then overlaid on top of the surfacing are the graphics, which on the Ka were just beautiful. Pure, intersecting, clean lines formed these very novel, highly distinctive headlamp and grille shapes. It was the same with the circular tailgate where the rear lamps are just created by a single line taking a bite out the tailgate.'
