Darby Barber – a familiar name to those who’ve seen the Motor City Masters TV show – recently graduated from the College for Creative Studies’ Transportation Design program. Over the course of her studies, she created a few concepts, including two while on internship – one at General Motors’ Chevrolet truck studio and another at Honda’s advanced design facility in California. Here are her concepts.
Chevrolet Baja Truck
In the summer of 2014, Barber went on on internship in GM’s Full Size Chevy Truck Studio. “My project was to create a concept 2020 Baja truck, she says. “I created the brief and customer so it had little to no restrictions. I wanted the truck to look very strong and powerful yet have a unique and identifiable graphic break up.”
Honda Buggy
Barber also went on an internship at the Honda Advanced Design studio in Los Angeles, CA, in the summer of 2015. While there, she worked on another concept. The brief was a 2020 Honda works Baja 1000 Class 1 Buggy.
“I decided to make it a single-seater, dual-electric motor, off-road racing machine,” she says. “Everything on this buggy has a purpose, from the F1 style suspension to the battery cooling intake on the roof. This vehicle is meant to go to extreme speeds and also over extreme terrain.”
Volkswagen Race Car
“The brief was to design a concept vehicle for VW that you yourself would buy,” Barber says of her second semester Junior year project, sponsored by VW. “Essentially I was my own customer, which made for a really fun project.”
Barber wanted to create a visually dramatic yet technologically raw, back-to-basics, pure race car: The R50 Cup Car. “After I came up with the concept, I made a 1:5 scale half model of the car, which was then chosen along with two other models to be milled out and finished as a whole model.”
Mercedes-Benz Family Vehicle
This was Barber’s Senior year, second semester project, sponsored by Mercedes-Benz. The brief was to create a six-passenger concept vehicle for a wealthy, publically known, target customer with a growing family. Her goal was to keep the design simple and pure, yet beautiful and advanced.
