Tag Archives: Automotive

You Can Now Own a Piece of Verstappen’s Controversial 2021 Championship-Winning F1 Car

Posted on by

Remember where you were on December 12, 2021? If you’re an F1 fan, chances are you do, because that was the day Max Verstappen snatched his first world title away from Lewis Hamilton on the literal final lap, in the literal final corner, off the back of a safety car restart that stewards are probably still debating in group chats somewhere. I was rooting for Hamilton that day, and honestly, watching it unfold live still ranks as one of the most gutting sports moments I’ve sat through. Verstappen fans got a legend born in real time. The rest of us got years of “what if” conversations that still spark up whenever Abu Dhabi comes up.

F1 Authentics just gave fans a way to own a literal piece of that chaos. The official F1 memorabilia arm, run by Memento Exclusives, has dropped a new Mystery Box collection where every single box guarantees a genuine piece of bodywork from the RB16B, the Honda powered Red Bull that carried Verstappen to that maiden championship. Only 1,000 boxes exist worldwide, with 500 going up for grabs online, priced around £1,000 GBP ($1,348 USD) a pop, which also happens to be the minimum guaranteed value of everything packed inside.

Designer: F1 Authentics (Memento Exclusives)

That RB16B earned every bit of the spotlight it’s getting now. It was an evolution of the 2020 car, finally sharp enough to go toe to toe with a dominant Mercedes squad, and it carried Verstappen through nine wins across one of the most contentious title fights modern F1 has produced. Hamilton led early, Verstappen clawed the lead back mid-season, and the two arrived at Abu Dhabi dead level on points. We all know how that ended. Owning a fragment of that car means owning a piece of the exact machine that decided, for better or worse depending who you asked, one of the sport’s most argued about championships.

Photo by Batchelor/XPB Images

Somewhere in that run of a thousand boxes sits the real chaos generator, a redeemable ticket for an official F1 replica front wing and nose, pulled from cars across Aston Martin, Cadillac, Racing Bulls, Red Bull, Williams, or Alpine, and valued north of twenty grand. It’s a genuinely wild pull rate, turning what could have been a straightforward memorabilia drop into something closer to a scratch card for grown adults with disposable income and a soft spot for motorsport history.

Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

F1 Authentics has been building toward drops like this all year, following an earlier sold out box tied to Lando Norris’s championship car and a March release that hid an £89,000 racing simulator inside one of just 150 units. F1 memorabilia is getting gamified, and this RB16B drop might be the most emotionally loaded chapter yet, especially if you were the one yelling at your TV that night in Abu Dhabi.

The post You Can Now Own a Piece of Verstappen’s Controversial 2021 Championship-Winning F1 Car first appeared on Yanko Design.

JCB Hydromax sets a new hydrogen land speed record at 406.320 mph

Posted on by

A pair of hydrogen-powered engines developed for construction machinery has just been pushed into territory normally reserved for purpose-built speed machines. JCB’s Hydromax has reached an astonishing 406.320 mph (653.6 km/h) at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, becoming the fastest hydrogen-powered vehicle of any kind and setting a new world land speed record for a hydrogen internal-combustion car.

The 32-foot-long streamliner is powered by two production-based JCB hydrogen combustion engines, each tuned to produce 800 horsepower for a combined 1,600 bhp. Rather than using hydrogen in a fuel cell to generate electricity, Hydromax burns hydrogen directly in its internal-combustion engines. The engines are manufactured at JCB’s factory in Foston, Derbyshire, and are based on the same production engines powering JCB machines in the UK.

Designer: JCB

Its record-setting run was completed under FIA rules, requiring two passes in opposite directions within an hour. Driven by Wing Commander Andy Green OBE, Hydromax recorded 400.623 mph on its first run and 412.135 mph on the return, producing the official average of 406.320 mph. The result comfortably surpassed the previous FIA-officiated hydrogen internal-combustion record of 185.5 mph, set by the BMW H2R in 2004. It also moved beyond the 303 mph hydrogen fuel-cell record, making Hydromax the fastest hydrogen-powered vehicle in history. The record remains subject to formal FIA ratification.

According to project lead, JCB Engineering Director Ryan Ballard, “This record belongs to the engineering team which took a hydrogen digger engine and made it the fastest of its kind on earth. This has been an amazing challenge from the outset, with it being set in February last year. We came here fully prepared, and the car delivered.”

The achievement follows an earlier milestone at the 2026 Bonneville Speed Week, where Hydromax averaged 368.347 mph over two runs to establish an SCTA record in the Blown Gas Streamliner class. Its first run reached 367.141 mph, followed by 369.554 mph on the return. That result surpassed the previous 348.342 mph class benchmark, while giving JCB an important test of the car before its FIA attempt.

Much of the car’s engineering focuses on making extreme speed controllable. Hydromax drives all four wheels through twin transmissions and clutches, while its body was shaped around aerodynamic efficiency and stability. JCB says the suspension, traction control, aerodynamics and camera placement were all stress- and simulation-tested before the attempt. Prodrive handled the car build, Ricardo worked on engine tuning and Xtrac supplied the transmission expertise.

The record also carries a strong sense of continuity for JCB. Exactly 20 years after Andy Green drove the JCB Dieselmax to a 350.092 mph diesel land speed record at Bonneville, he has returned to the same salt flats to establish an even faster mark using hydrogen. The Hydromax project was conceived in 2025 as a demonstration of JCB’s hydrogen combustion technology, turning engines developed for working machines into a record-breaking powertrain.

 

The post JCB Hydromax sets a new hydrogen land speed record at 406.320 mph first appeared on Yanko Design.

This solar-powered ambulance brings medical care to remote communities without relying on the grid

Posted on by

Stella Juva has the proportions of a futuristic ambulance, but its most interesting feature is what happens when it stops. Instead of simply waiting to transport a patient, this solar-powered vehicle can turn into a self-sufficient medical facility wherever it arrives.

Developed by 23 students from Eindhoven University of Technology as part of Solar Team Eindhoven, Stella Juva is designed for communities where hospitals can be hours away and access to reliable electricity and fuel can be limited. Its role is not only to get medical workers from one place to another, but to bring the equipment and energy needed to provide care with them.

Designer: Solar Team Eindhoven

The vehicle’s body is covered with 542 solar cells, turning much of its exterior into an energy-generating surface. Electricity from the panels is stored in a 50-kWh battery, which powers both the vehicle and the medical equipment inside. Under favorable sunny conditions, Stella Juva can travel up to 444 miles on paved roads, with a top speed of 74 mph. The battery also gives the ambulance a degree of independence from immediate sunlight. When the vehicle is parked at a remote location, stored energy can keep its medical systems running after sunset or when solar generation drops. That is particularly useful for a vehicle intended to operate in places where plugging into a dependable electrical grid may not be an option.

Inside, Stella Juva is equipped more like a compact mobile clinic than a conventional ambulance. Its equipment includes a defibrillator, portable X-ray and ultrasound systems, blood-testing equipment, and a refrigerator for vaccines. This allows healthcare workers to carry out examinations and provide medical assistance on location instead of relying entirely on a long trip to a hospital. The idea builds on Solar Team Eindhoven’s previous experiments with solar-powered mobility. The team created Stella Vita, a solar-powered motorhome designed to combine travel and off-grid living, followed by Stella Terra, an off-road solar vehicle developed to handle rough terrain. Stella Juva takes the same focus on energy efficiency and pushes it toward a more practical application, where every watt generated by the vehicle can support both mobility and healthcare.

Its next stage will take the prototype out of controlled testing and into the real world. Solar Team Eindhoven plans to test Stella Juva in Kenya in collaboration with Amref Health Africa. The trials will put its solar-electric system, medical equipment, range, and ability to cope with local road and operating conditions to the test. Stella Juva is not intended to replace every conventional ambulance. Instead, it explores what an emergency vehicle could become when it is designed around places where infrastructure cannot always be relied upon.

The post This solar-powered ambulance brings medical care to remote communities without relying on the grid first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ex-McLaren Designers Just Built a $130,000 Carbon Fiber Chair

Posted on by

Luxury furniture has long borrowed the language of high-performance design without much of the substance behind it. Carbon fiber panels get applied as surface decoration, automotive references appear in product copy as shorthand for precision, and racing-inspired silhouettes turn up on lounge chairs. The materials may occasionally be genuine, but the engineering thinking behind them rarely makes the trip from one industry to the other.

Ennua’s Element 01 takes a different position. The people behind it didn’t simply borrow from the automotive world. They came from it directly, having spent years shaping supercars including the McLaren Speedtail, Elva, and W1. The Element 01 isn’t furniture dressed up in engineering language. It’s the result of applying actual supercar design methodology to a seating object, starting from materials and working outward.

Designers: João Dias and Patrick Carton

The first thing Element 01 does well is refuse to announce itself. Walk into a room with it, and it doesn’t immediately read as a chair, a sculpture, or a piece of furniture. That ambiguity is deliberate. The design prioritizes silhouette and proportion the way a supercar does, making the form something to encounter before it’s understood. It takes a second look before the seating function even registers.

The structure is built from carbon fiber, the same material used on high-performance cars for its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio. The carbon frame can reportedly withstand loads equivalent to around 2,000 kg, more structural assurance than any home seating has any practical need for. Layered over it are automotive-grade leathers chosen for texture and durability, and precision-machined metal components that bring a jeweler’s precision to every connection.

Several named configurations are available, each built around a specific combination of carbon finish, leather tone, and metallic accent. Options like Abyss, Aurora, and Ruler’s Solace suggest a naming sensibility closer to bespoke watchmaking than furniture retail. Each variant is treated as a distinct piece rather than a colorway, making the Element 01 more akin to a collector’s commission than an item that ships from a warehouse.

Ennua positions the Element 01 for private residences and architectural landmarks rather than conventional retail environments, which says something about its intended context. Sit in one, and it functions as a chair. Stand across the room, and it reads as something else entirely, a deliberate quality shared by the cars that influenced it. Most objects are content to be one thing, while this one insists on being at least two.

Element 01 is described as only the opening move for the brand, which already has the next five years of products planned, hinting at everything from audio equipment to fitness gear and a possible return to automotive design. The ambition is to never become known simply as a furniture brand. Every future object is expected to carry the same logic of function and sculptural presence as the chair.

The Element 01 is priced at around $130,000, placing it in the territory of bespoke timepieces and limited-edition automotive commissions rather than furniture purchases. It costs as much as a well-optioned sports car, and that comparison isn’t accidental. It’s built like one, designed with the same tools, and asks to be treated with the same regard that most people reserve for things with four wheels and not four legs.

The post Ex-McLaren Designers Just Built a $130,000 Carbon Fiber Chair first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Rooftop Tent Has a Skylight, a Ladder, LED Lighting, and deploys with a button.

Posted on by

Most rooftop tents still act like tents. You climb in, you’re surrounded by fabric, you sleep, you leave. The Sky Cruiser is going for something a little different, it wants to feel like a room you happen to be sleeping in above your truck, complete with a skylight and windows doing the job curtains and walls usually do back home.

That shift in identity starts the moment you arrive at camp, honestly, because you barely have to lift a finger to get there. The X-frame construction pops open and locks in place in seconds, no wrestling with poles or praying the wind cooperates. Once it’s up, the GlowRail lighting kicks in after dark like a little mood setting feature, and the SkyHold storage keeps your gear from turning the place into chaos. It’s less “put up a tent” and more “open a room with a very good view.”

Designer: Cinch Outdoors

The skylight is doing most of the emotional labor here, and it earns the attention. Instead of a fabric ceiling that separates you from the sky, Cinch swapped in a clear panel that turns your bedtime routine into a low-key planetarium show. Pair that with the panoramic side windows and you’ve basically got a tent with no bad seats. It’s a small architectural decision with a big payoff, since most rooftop tents treat the view as a bonus you get through a mesh door, not the whole point of the design.

Getting up there is handled by the WideTrak ladder, which telescopes out in one motion and locks with a click, so you’re not fumbling with separate rungs at 9pm with a headlamp between your teeth. Once you’re inside, ThermaSoft flooring and a high-density foam mattress do the unglamorous but essential work of keeping the whole setup comfortable regardless of season. None of this is flashy on its own. What’s smart is how Cinch bundled it together so the tent doesn’t just look good in photos, it actually holds up once you’re lying in it at 2am wondering why you forgot a blanket.

Cinch isn’t new to the instant setup game, which is worth mentioning briefly before we move on. Their Air Cruiser leaned on an inflatable Air Frame to get you from flat pack to full tent in minutes, no poles required. The Sky Cruiser swaps that approach for a mechanical X-frame instead, trading the pump for a fold and lock system that holds its shape in rough weather without needing air pressure to stay rigid. Different mechanism, same obsession with cutting the setup time down to almost nothing.

At $4,999, the Sky Cruiser is planting itself firmly in premium territory, right alongside tents like the Thule Widesky that treat rooftop camping as a lifestyle upgrade rather than a budget workaround. That price buys you a hardshell that survives rough weather, a skylight that makes stargazing effortless, and enough small conveniences (the ladder, the lighting, the storage) that the whole experience feels considered rather than cobbled together. Whether it’s worth it depends entirely on how much you value showing up at a campsite and doing almost nothing before the best part of the night starts. For a certain kind of camper, that’s not a luxury. That’s the entire pitch.

The post This Rooftop Tent Has a Skylight, a Ladder, LED Lighting, and deploys with a button. first appeared on Yanko Design.

This solar-powered EV generates more energy than it uses, so you could drive without charging as often

Posted on by

What if an electric vehicle didn’t just consume energy, but quietly made more of it while sitting in the sun? That is the premise behind Clemson University’s Deep Orange 17, a boxy two-seat EV concept developed with BMW of North America. Also called Luminetta, the experimental coupe rethinks the relationship between a car’s body and its energy needs, turning the exterior into something more than a protective shell.

The most unusual part is its photovoltaic skin. Instead of placing a conventional solar panel on the roof, the student engineers integrated more than 1,781 solar cells across the vehicle’s exterior. Developed with Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, the system is designed to keep generating electricity even when parts of the surface are shaded. It essentially turns the car itself into a mobile solar collector, capturing energy whether Luminetta is driving or simply parked outside.

Designer: Clemson University

That idea makes particular sense for an EV. Cars spend most of their time stationary, often exposed to sunlight for hours. Deep Orange 17 uses that otherwise idle time to replenish its energy reserves. According to simulations conducted using weather and sunlight data from Greenville, South Carolina, Frankfurt, Madrid, and Mumbai, the concept could generate enough additional energy to deliver an average of around 31 miles of driving range from a typical 12-mile daily commute.

But the solar technology is only half of the equation. To make the most of every watt it generates, Clemson’s team designed the vehicle to be exceptionally light. The prototype weighs just 550 kilograms (1,212 pounds), achieved through a multi-material structure combining steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, and 3D-printed metal joints. With considerably less mass to move, the electric drivetrain needs less energy in the first place.

Its shape follows the same efficiency-first philosophy. Inspired by the boxfish, the exterior combines a streamlined profile with a surprisingly practical volume for a compact two-seater. The final prototype is an EV that looks less like a conventional production car and more like a physical experiment in aerodynamic sculpture.

Energy recovery is built into the driving experience as well. Regenerative braking captures some of the energy normally lost during deceleration, while torque distribution and drivetrain controls are optimized to minimize unnecessary consumption. Rather than chasing headline acceleration figures, the project focuses on a more fundamental question – how little energy can a car need to perform its everyday job?

Inside, the experimental approach becomes more familiar. Luminetta features a custom interface for displaying live vehicle data alongside Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, giving the futuristic concept some everyday usability. Developed by 16 graduate automotive engineering students through Clemson’s Deep Orange program, the project took roughly two years to move from an industry challenge to a working prototype. It is not intended to be a production vehicle right now, but as a research platform exploring what an energy-positive EV could look like.

The post This solar-powered EV generates more energy than it uses, so you could drive without charging as often first appeared on Yanko Design.

You Still Can’t Buy Airless Tires Even After A Decade… But You Can 3D Print One

Posted on by

Back in March 2021, we wrote about a bicycle tire that would never go flat, ever, for the entire life of your bike. It was called METL, it was built out of a shape memory alloy that NASA had cooked up for Mars rovers, and it was coming to a bike shop near you in early 2022. Then early 2022 came and went. So did 2023, 2024, and 2025. The tire is now, finally, genuinely orderable, five years after we first got excited about it. Which raises an awkward question about the entire airless tire industry: if the technology has been sitting there this whole time, propped up by NASA and Michelin and Bridgestone, why has it taken this long to reach a single bicycle?

A YouTuber named Berm Peak got tired of waiting and printed his own. The tire comes out in segments, four at a time on a consumer machine, and bolts together into a ring with basic screws and dovetail joints. Flexible TPU for the tread, a stiffer variant for the structure, and eight foot sections to hold the whole thing to the rim. He rode the finished set into a rock garden in a green so loud it counts as a safety feature, and they absorbed bumps like real rubber. Michelin has been showing off airless tires since 2011 and still has not sold you one. A guy with a printer and a garage got there first.

Designer: Berm Peak

He also had some skin in the game most people wouldn’t. Berm Peak part owns Klik, a valve company, so a viable airless tire flooding the market would technically cost him money too. He didn’t seem too worried about it. He’d already gone through a graveyard of other people’s attempts, including a friend’s genuinely knobby TPU tire that survived real trail abuse, and a completely different build made from sliced up PVC pipe bolted together (which we covered back in 2023). Neither one was quite the science fiction object he had in his head.

His first working prototype was, in his own words, brutally stiff. He’d used X shapes for the suspension because they were easy to model in CAD, forgetting that X shapes are basically made of triangles, and triangles do not flex. Version two ditched the X’s entirely and dropped the weight in half. That’s the one that ended up on the bike, printed overnight on a Bambu Lab H2D with a support material that peels away clean because it’s chemically allergic to the tire filament sitting right next to it. Genuinely clever trick, and one you’d only think of if you’d already burned a few prototypes finding out the hard way.

The ride itself proved to be the ultimate trial by fire. Traction was better than expected, especially climbing, to the point where he didn’t feel a single wheel slip on the way up. Then he started pushing harder and the rear wheel began falling apart one segment at a time, cascading into the next joint over, while the front wheel came home completely untouched. That’s not a flaw in the story. That’s the whole story. Rear wheels take more abuse than front wheels on every mountain bike ever made, printed or otherwise, and watching that principle play out in real time on a tire nobody has ever sold you is a pretty satisfying way to spend fifteen minutes.

The moral of this story is slightly bleak, but worth knowing if you’re up for the project. Airless tires aren’t the solution, they’re A solution – the problem they’re trying to solve is punctures, and something as stupidly simple as liquid sealant solved that problem years ago. Mountain bikers swear by it, and it sure beats carrying a screw and 3D printed spare parts on your expeditions. There is, however, a certain flair to riding a bike sporting tires as eye-catching as these. Berm doesn’t quite say it outright, but maybe the most obvious solution is to mix and match tires, using airless ones on the front, and something more durable at the back.

You don’t need a NASA contract to try this yourself, and that’s the part worth sitting with. The file, the printer, and the material all exist right now, sitting in a hobbyist’s garage instead of a corporate lab. Whether that ever turns into something you can buy off a shelf is a separate question. Whether you can print one this weekend is not.

The post You Still Can’t Buy Airless Tires Even After A Decade… But You Can 3D Print One first appeared on Yanko Design.

BRABUS’ first luxury catamaran gives you superyacht comfort with the thrill of a performance boat

Posted on by

For decades, BRABUS has built its reputation by transforming high-performance Mercedes-Benz vehicles into machines that are as bold in appearance as they are in capability. Carbon fiber, aggressive styling, and immense power have long defined the German tuner’s identity on the road. Now, that same philosophy has found a new home on the water. Partnering with luxury catamaran specialist Sunreef Yachts, BRABUS has unveiled the ULTIMA 55, a vessel that translates its signature design language into a sleek, high-performance yacht without losing sight of comfort or craftsmanship.

BRABUS has worked closely with Sunreef to reinterpret the ULTIMA 55 platform through its own design lens. The result is a 55-foot power catamaran that carries the unmistakable BRABUS DNA, from exposed carbon-fiber elements and illuminated branding to a monochromatic exterior that feels more like a supercar than a conventional yacht. Every detail, including the custom air vents, sculpted aerodynamic accents, and LED-integrated hardtop, reinforces the brand’s familiar obsession with performance and precision.

Designer: BRABUS and Sunreef Yachts

ULTIMA 55 also challenges the perception that catamarans are designed primarily for leisurely cruising. Powered by twin 725-horsepower six-cylinder engines, it is capable of exceeding 40 knots while maintaining the stability that multihull yachts are known for. A hydrofoil system further enhances the experience by reducing drag and lifting the hulls higher above the water; resulting in improved efficiency, smoother handling, and a more composed ride at speed. It is a combination that allows the yacht to deliver sports-boat excitement without sacrificing long-distance comfort.

Built with a 16.8-meter hull and a beam of 7.5 meters, the BRABUS ULTIMA 55 offers the generous proportions expected from a luxury catamaran while retaining a streamlined, performance-oriented profile. Buyers can tailor the yacht with a range of BRABUS Masterpiece interior themes, premium upholstery, and exterior color combinations to suit their preferences. The yacht also incorporates advanced navigation and onboard systems designed for extended cruising without compromising everyday usability.

The exterior is designed to encourage life outdoors, with spaces that adapt effortlessly throughout the day. Fold-down side terraces expand the deck when anchored, creating additional room for lounging by the water. Convertible sunpads, a retractable carbon-fiber dining table, a wet bar, and an electric barbecue turn the aft deck into an inviting social space, while an additional sun lounge at the bow offers a quieter place to relax. The flexible layout makes the yacht equally suited for entertaining guests or enjoying a peaceful escape at sea.

Inside, the atmosphere shifts from sporty to sophisticated. Floor-to-ceiling glazing floods the interior with natural light, highlighting premium wood finishes, carbon-fiber accents, and carefully curated materials that echo BRABUS’ automotive cabins. Owners can choose between a two-cabin configuration with a spacious master suite and VIP cabin or a three-cabin layout that accommodates up to six guests. Both options include dedicated crew quarters, ensuring the yacht balances luxury with practical functionality for extended cruising.

While BRABUS and Sunreef have not disclosed a base price, the ULTIMA 55 is positioned as an ultra-exclusive offering aimed at discerning owners looking for a bespoke blend of performance, design, and luxury, with deliveries expected to be handled through Sunreef Yachts’ global network.

The post BRABUS’ first luxury catamaran gives you superyacht comfort with the thrill of a performance boat first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Folding Scooter Looks Like a Briefcase So You Never Need a Lock

Posted on by

Electric vehicles have reshaped how people cover long distances, but the stretch between a parking spot and a front door hasn’t changed much. That last hundred meters or so still comes down to walking, and for city commuters or suburban drivers who park several blocks from their destination, those gaps add up in ways that no amount of EV range improvement can address.

The VtoV 1000 takes aim at that problem with a three-fold electric scooter designed specifically to travel with a driver after the car is parked. The “V to V” in the name refers to vehicle to vehicle, positioning the scooter as the connector between one form of transport and wherever the final stop actually is, not where the nearest parking happens to be.

Designers: Ikhyeon Kim, Soonman Kwon (second white)

Getting a scooter from a car boot to a building entrance and back daily only works if the scooter itself doesn’t become another thing to manage. The three-stage fold brings the VtoV 1000 down to a size that fits in one hand, making it suitable for stairs, elevators, office corridors, and shop floors without needing to leave it chained to a post outside or locked to a rack.

The folded form is where the concept gets more interesting. A folio-style side cover closes over the chassis when packed down, concealing the hinge mechanism and keeping the rider’s hands away from any grease or grime. Folded, the VtoV 1000 takes on the proportions of a flat rectangular briefcase, nudging people to carry it inside with them rather than leave it on the pavement.

That behavioral shift matters more than it might seem. Urban micro-mobility tools spend a lot of time sitting unattended outside buildings, collecting dents and theft attempts until the owner comes back. Designing something that users naturally want to carry in solves the security and durability problem without requiring a lock, a garage, or any extra infrastructure at the destination end.

A vertically oriented smart display sits at the center of the handlebar, showing battery level, remaining range, current speed, and turn-by-turn navigation prompts without requiring the rider to glance at a phone. The display connects to a companion app, but the riding interface itself is kept simple enough to read at a glance, keeping attention on the road rather than the screen.

The physical design follows a deliberately restrained logic. The chassis is machined aluminum throughout, kept to a minimal part count with no decorative additions. The scooter deploys and folds back through the same three-point sequence each time, which builds the kind of familiarity that makes a product feel genuinely woven into a daily routine rather than something you have to consciously negotiate with every morning.

The VtoV 1000 sits at the intersection of two product categories that rarely overlap, personal transport and everyday carry. It isn’t trying to replace a bike lane or a bus stop. It’s a fairly narrow answer to a specific problem, and that specificity is exactly what gives it its appeal. Plenty of scooters fold down, but very few look like they belong in a meeting room when they do.

The post This Folding Scooter Looks Like a Briefcase So You Never Need a Lock first appeared on Yanko Design.

Bugatti Destrier shaves off Bolide’s bodywork for a one-off hypercar meant to be felt with the heart

Posted on by

Bugatti had set a high benchmark with the track-only Bolide, released in 2020, and was later followed by the Brouillard and F.K.P. Hommage. Now, as a part of the French marque’s bespoke Solitaire programme, a new coachbuilding performance car has emerged inspired by the Type 57G and Type 57C Tank. Adapting the same carbon-fiber monocoque as the Bolide, the machine, christened Destrier (after a medieval warhorse), has a flatter front end to shed the performance hypercar image.

The grille on this new beauty has gone wider, and the LED headlights get a more 2026 aesthetic. In fact, from the side profile, the car gives off a longtail vibe, extenuated by the massive flared wheel arches on the C-line. That wing and splitter on the Bolide have been stripped away to make it road legal, a more toned-down version of the original. That said, the 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 engine (producing 1,600 PS), the mechanical heart, has been retained to have the same performance.

Designer: Bugatti

Destrier was unveiled online just before its slated global public appearance on August 16, 2026, at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. At first glance, the hypercar’s shaved-off bodywork is evident, giving it a streamlined waistline curving inwards behind the forward-hinged doors, and then again widening out at the rear with a muscular tone. Just 1 meter tall, the hypercar’s cabin is sandwiched between the front wings and the bigger wheels measuring 20 inches up front and 21 inches on the back. Clearly this one is meant for purists who are not going to complain about the difficulty of getting in. According to Bugatti’s Director of Design, Frank Heyl: “Destrier is not a car you understand with your head; it is a car you feel with your heart.”

A chrome trim goes across the bonnet and onto the roof at the back, followed by a wing-shaped spoiler positioned above the skinny taillights. Complementing the muscular rear is the large diffuser with four exhausts. Highlight among all this mesmerizing aura is the Sapphire Celeste paintwork, which is produced in multiple layers to achieve a diamond sparkle that changes color depending on the ambient light falling on it. Aluminum parts on the car stand out against the bodywork, and the engine compartment is completely hand-hammered to give the medieval plate armor finish. This supports the brand’s claim that “Destrier’s story is one of proportion and craftsmanship, not outright performance.”

Move to the inside, and the motorsport cockpit is quite fashion-forward, contrasting the crystalline exterior. The attention to detail is apparent from the advanced 3D-knitted technical fabric resembling snake skin, paired with the smooth leather and velvety nubuck, both finished in warm brown Ambre Voyageur shade. The flying yoke-style steering wheel is paired with the infotainment system that is a part of the single large screen offering relevant information, both for driving and entertainment when parked. There’s no word on the price yet, but considering the Bolide costs $4.8 million each for the 40 limited edition models, this one could cost a couple of million more!

The post Bugatti Destrier shaves off Bolide’s bodywork for a one-off hypercar meant to be felt with the heart first appeared on Yanko Design.