Design Student in U.K. Honored for ’20 Qoros Concept

A Korean design student in the U.K. takes Qoros for a spin into the future with his vision of the Qoros 9 luxury sedan the Sino-Israeli automaker plans for 2020.

Jihoon Seo, 29, showcases the design concept at the Coventry University Degree Show after a 5-month spell with the brand’s designers in Shanghai as part of the Qoros Design Team’s internship program.

Qoros tasked Seo with creating a flagship concept sedan for the fledgling China-based brand to launch in the year 2020, specifically aimed at 40- to 50-year-old professionals living in a modern metropolitan city.

The new design is a fresh interpretation of Qoros’ New Premium philosophy, featuring several design cues from the Qoros 3 Sedan – on sale in China and Slovakia since late 2013 – and the Qoros 3 Hatch arriving in showrooms in China in mid-2014. It also introduces some new concept design themes for the future.

Qoros has sponsored Seo through his final-year project that represented the culmination of his studies at Coventry University’s School of Art and Design.

 “Qoros is a rapidly growing brand and we are dedicated to helping and educating young, up-and-coming talent,” Gert Volker Hildebrand, executive director-design says, adding, “Finding the very best talent will be a crucial success factor for our company in the future.

“Our internship program also allows us to give something back, offering the same opportunity today that many of us in the Qoros design team benefited from when we were students or working in our earliest days in automotive design,” Hildebrand says. “Jihoon is a very talented young designer and it’s been our pleasure to be involved in helping him on the first steps of his career.”

The student designer took to the university show a 1:4.5 scale clay model of the Qoros 9 Sedan Concept he created under the tutorship of Qoros Senior Manager Tim Pilsbury. He received an award for Best Flat Work for his sketches and renderings of the Qoros 9 Sedan Concept.

The 2014 awards are sponsored by Wacom, a Japanese company that specializes in graphic tablets, and judged by Automotive and Transportation tutors and students from Coventry University’s School of Art and Design.