Reckon you’ve got better ideas than the car designers of today? Not ambitious enough to actually go out and make that your career? Salvation is at hand: Ford has called out to Twitter for a little bit of help designing a new car, thus answering the prayers of armchair car designers everywhere.
Asking the internet for help with anything is an exercise fraught with danger, but Ford reckons it can prevent any corruption of the car design process by boiling down the decision-making process to a series of multiple choice questions.
Think of it as an R.L Stine Choose-Your-Own Adventure except, you know, with cars.
The risk that everyone will vote for a car resembling The Homer is also mitigated by the fact this car is going to be purely virtual. Ford’s crowdsourced car will be a central part of the company’s fledgling ‘Fordzilla’ e-sports team, and presumably used by its drivers in competition. That said, it’s not immediately obvious what game – or even what platform – the car will appear in.
Referred to as ‘Project One’, the Fordzilla race car will be guided by a series of Twitter polls. The first poll was released today, simply asking whether Project One should have one or two seats. Successive polls will home in on other aspects such as the powertrain, whether it should be an offroader, drift car, formula racecar, and other fundamental characteristics.
One thing is clear – it will not be based on any current Ford production car. Once the crowd has spoken, Ford’s designers will take over and merge those elements into one cohesive design in consultation with Team Fordzilla’s five national team captains from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
We’d expect Project One to eventually be used in a one-make virtual race series, though whether it’s intended for Gran Turismo Sport, Forza Motorsport, iRacing, Assetto Corsa or any other racing sim is not yet apparent. Fordzilla’s team members have been actively competing in all of those titles, so at this point it’s anyone’s guess where Project One will end up.
Want to help shape it? Hit the embedded tweet above and cast your votes.
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