Wear 3D glasses and you feel as though you are inside the image

here in front of the very eyes of the assembled company was a radical new Mercedes sports car. Its cab-forward design implied a mid-engine configuration, a cocoon-like roofline taking strong styling cues from the Audi TT. Swollen wheel arches concealed massive tyres, the body narrowing at its waist in a series of swooping curves.

Sadly, it’s not real, but a concept rendered in startling clarity by a Silicon Graphics computer behind the ‘Powerwall’ at Mercedes-Benz’s Sindelfingen Design Centre near Stuttgart.

As the image metamorphoses into the shape of the current SLK, the implication is inescapable: a future generation of the SLK will give no quarter to the likes of Porsche’s Boxster, but tackle it head to head.

Virtual reality is the latest tool major manufacturers use to design new cars and the optically perfect 6m x 3m Powerwall produces models with a photo-realistic quality. If you wear 3D glasses connected by a cable to the computer, the perspective of the virtual image from a 3D projector changes realistically as you move around.

Peter Pfeiffer, head of design for both cars and commercial vehicles at Mercedes, says there are huge advantages in using computer-based design tools, especially since the different processes can occur concurrently rather than sequentially.

“Designers can work together on a project with development and production engineers at the same time. If a designer makes a change, an engineer can correct him immediately if that change is not achievable.”

For that reason, the total development process has been shaved to between 35 and 40 months or by at least 20 per cent. “But our target was not to get the world record for the shortest time in which to design a car,” asserts Pfeiffer.

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Powerwall projects photo-realistic images to assist both the design and engineering process.

e stresses: “We want to build the best engineered car in the time available.”

Shorter life cycles also increase pressure on companies to move design on quickly, but there’s more to it that just following fashion, says Pfeiffer. “Design can’t follow fashion - it must set trends. And Mercedes has the power to set new trends.”

Challenged as to whether such huge computing power produces too clinical a result, robbing us of great design icons which owed much to the intuitive skill of their creators, like the E-Type Jaguar, Porsche 911 or the Mini, Pfeiffer is keen to set our minds at rest.

“If you look at a car and can see the computer’s influence, then the designer has not done his job properly.”