Lexus had two SUVs twisted into a ring and a spiral
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Lexus gave Brooklyn art collective MSCHF two electrified SUVs and got back one ring and one spiral. The electric RZ 450e was bent until its nose met its tail, while the RX 450h+ plug-in hybrid was twisted around its longitudinal axis like a wet towel.
Fortunately, Lexus has not discovered a new design language. The two sculptures were created for the MOTOMORPHOSIS exhibition opening in New York, and they will no longer be driven.
A “form car” instead of a concept car
MSCHF calls the works Form Cars. The idea turns the usual logic of the concept car on its head. A concept car normally shows what a future vehicle could be like. These two offer nothing for the future; instead, they take an existing car and remove its most fundamental quality: the ability to go anywhere.
Circle Car is based on the all-electric Lexus RZ 450e. Its body forms a closed circle, with the front and rear of the car meeting. The result looks like a model bent in a 3D program and accidentally exported into the real world.
Twisted Car uses the RX 450h+ plug-in hybrid. The entire body rotates lengthways around an imaginary axis, with the windows, lights and other familiar details stretching and twisting along with it.
MSCHF drew inspiration from the squash-and-stretch technique used in 3D animation and so-called smear frames, which animators use to distort a fast-moving object in individual frames. Here, the same effect has been frozen in steel.
These are not simply real Lexus models put under a press
Although the sculptures are based on production cars and partly use genuine Lexus parts, the artists did not simply twist two finished SUVs out of shape in a giant machine.
MSCHF built the sculptures using conventional bodywork techniques. The structure is built on a steel framework, onto which thousands of individually made elements were fitted. The surfaces were then finished with materials and paint commonly used in body shops.
As a result, the outcome is visually strange yet convincing. The cars’ lights, glass, wheels and surfaces appear to stretch with the body, although visitors are in fact looking at a carefully constructed sculpture.
Lexus will also place a standard production car beside each work at the exhibition. The RZ 450e will stand next to Circle Car and the RX 450h+ beside Twisted Car, making the deformation as obvious as possible.
Electrification without yet another kilowatt debate
For Lexus, the project is part of a broader attempt to link electrified cars with design and art. This time, at least, the marketing is more interesting than usual, as nobody is trying to prove that another light installation symbolises “the mobility of the future”.
While the choice of the RZ 450e and RX 450h+ gives the project an electrification backdrop, their battery capacity, output and range are not materially important here. These cars will not move a single metre.
MOTOMORPHOSIS opens on 24 September at Chelsea Industrialis in New York and will remain open to the public until 26 September during Armory Week.
For a European Lexus buyer, the project naturally changes nothing. The RX remains an RX, and the RZ will not start chasing its own tail with its next model update. From a car-design perspective, however, the experiment is telling: only when a familiar car’s proportions are completely disrupted does it become clear just how much of a model’s identity actually depends on the body and its orientation.
