The future for luxury and performance

What Car? The Lamborghini Miura Concept. When will it become a reality?

Walter de Silva The Miura Concept car is a homage to the classic Miura because it celebrates its 40th anniversary. There were never any plans to manufacture it. For me, the Miura by Nuccio Bertone and Marcello Gandini is one of the most fascinating automobiles. It was a wonderful assignment to set about reinterpreting it. I would hope the Miura Concept reflects just how much respect for the original automobile we exercised in our approach to this assignment.

What Car? Can Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini adapt to meet the changing world, or will they simply hide behind legislative opt-outs for low volume brands?

Walter de Silva The luxury brands will of course make their contribution and thereby demonstrate their ability to adapt to the demands of the future. Experience has shown that there is always a market for premium-class products. An authentic premium product uses premium engineering that offers more than just the one-dimensional aspect of performance.

What Car? What difficulties and opportunities do alternative power sources present to car design?

Walter de Silva Aside from drive technology, we always have prospects for developing new concepts and coming up with new forms. The important thing is to ensure coherency between vehicle engineering and vehicle architecture. Only once alternative forms of drive technology and corresponding energy-storage technology result in fundamentally changed properties will we have the credible basis for a design that symbolises alternative drive technology.

Conventional forms of powertrain will continue to have a dominant presence on our roads in the near future. The biggest challenge in my view is to give these vehicles a form that is in keeping with societys changed relationship with mobility.