STAGE01
SKETCH
Every change starts as a side view on film at 1:10. Wheelbase, roof height and tail are fixed here, before anyone touches clay.
- SCALE
- 1:10
- SKETCHES
- 40 TO 60
- KEPT
- 1
Six people, two drawing boards and a clay room next door. The Halden 60 has been drawn here since the first car. Every sheet is checked by someone who did not draw it.
A change to the car takes eight months to two years. Most of that time goes on checking: the clay against the drawing, the drawing against the tunnel. The line itself never leaves this building.
Every change starts as a side view on film at 1:10. Wheelbase, roof height and tail are fixed here, before anyone touches clay.
The chosen sketch goes up on the white wall at full size in black tape. You can lift a curve and lay it again in seconds.
Warm clay goes onto a foam buck, then three modellers cut it back to the tape line with rakes and steel slicks.
The finished clay is scanned. A surface modeller rebuilds it as clean patches, checked against the clay at every section.
A milled model runs in the tunnel with smoke at the nose. If the air leaves the roof too early, the line goes back to the clay.
The final line is drawn once more, on film, and signed twice. Only then does it get a revision letter and leave the studio.
Each of us initials the sheets we sign. Hover or tap a card to see the mark, and which drawings you will find it on.
[HOVER OR TAP A CARD]Draws the side view and decides what changes. Has redrawn the roofline four times and kept it each time.
Every elevation sheet since the fourth generation.
Turns the scanned clay into clean surfaces. Checks every patch against the clay to half a millimetre.
Surface data, section sheets and the second signature on most elevations.
Cuts the full-size clay by hand. Keeps a drawer of thirty rakes and uses four.
Clay section templates and every wheel arch sheet.
Runs the tunnel and reads the smoke. Will send a line back for a single millimetre of lip.
Airflow, wing and underbody sheets.
Chooses the five paints and every stitch inside. Judges colour outdoors, at noon, never under lamps.
Paint sheets, the seat and the steering wheel rim.
We use few materials and keep them the same, so a line drawn today matches one drawn sixty years ago. Each one has a single job on the way to the finished sheet.
SEE A SHEETSEE A SHEET→Polyester film, not paper. It does not stretch with the weather, so a 1:10 drawing stays 1:10.
2H for construction lines, HB for the line you mean. Nothing softer, because it smudges.
3 mm tape on a white wall for the full-size side view. It bends into a fair curve on its own.
Industrial clay warmed to 60°C, cut back by hand, then scanned. The scan becomes the surface data.
A sheet leaves the studio only when two people have signed it: the one who drew it, and one who did not. Then it gets a revision letter and the studio stamp.
[EVERY SHEET, EVERY REVISION]The initials of the person who drew the line. They answer for every curve on the sheet.
A second person measures the sheet against the clay and the scan. It is never the one who drew it.
A letter for each signed change: A, B, C. Old revisions are kept in the plan chest, never thrown away.
Pressed in ink on the day the sheet is released. Without it, a drawing is still a draft.
A viewing is an hour long. You see the tape wall, the clay room and the plan chest. Or read how a line turns into a car.