Qiantu is hardly a household name outside China. But the brand with the dragonfly logo produced two
fascinating concepts at the Beijing show, designed by flamboyant ex-GM man Dan
Darancou, who explained them to us. One, the Concept I, is a luxury sedan
designed for the well-heeled and chauffeur-driven with an innovative interior –
and the other, the K20, is a cute sports car intended for their lucky
offspring.
This doesn’t mean that the little sports coupé,
slightly reminiscent of the Smart Roadster, is just a low-budget toy, It has
some clever tricks of its own built in. There’s a boot-mounted drone, of
course, for instant tech bonus points, but its brushed-aluminium finish is
particularly worthy of mention – it’s not actually bare metal, though it looks
highly convincing, but a wrap over the car’s composite panels.
This wrapping material is made by some
very reputable companies like 3M, and they offer a huge range of finishes. The
great thing with this method is that you can drop your car off at the dealer
and pick it up the next day with an entirely different colour or finish. And of
course it makes accident repair very easy.
The interior also features swappable upholstery
panels, and an interior fabric with a metallic sheen to complement the
exterior, while there’s an impressively large, swooping expanse of glass
forming the windscreen and much of the roof. However, there’s a little hope that
regulations allowing cameras instead of mirrors may come into force soon,
allowing the neat door-mounted arrangement to stay.
Meanwhile, across the stand was the Concept I, a
sleek and elegant sedan with an attention-grabbing interior in two different
colours and finishes – not split front to rear as is sometimes seen, but
diagonally, in silver and gold.
There are certainly plenty of entertaining ideas in
the Qiantu concepts, and Dan has given them a very distinctive look which may help them get a foothold in their chosen market, the
upmarket/luxury EV space.
