Damn Gina! Thinking Outside the Boxster

By Matt Van Hoven 

Fridays here and across every industry that appreciates summer mean doing things differently than during the rest of the week. For BMW, every day is a Friday &#151 and that kind of thinking is what’s lead them to create cars like Gina.

The vehicle is astonishing. Designers replaced the metal “skin” used in traditional vehicles (unless you drive a Saturn &#151 the outside of those things is some kind of plasticy-hybrid) with a cloth material. BusinessWeek covered the new car, and added some interesting insight.

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Could changing a car’s shell impact the way we think about automobiles? Current gas prices indicate a need for adaptation. The skin is supposedly less costly to manufacture, doesn’t need paint, and in a crash won’t turn a vehicle into a metal cage (well, less so than before).

Is there a market for this kind of car?. What would an ad look like? Will buildings and computers one day have a fabric shell?

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