A Humble Car With An Interesting Design You Never Heard Of: The Hafei Lobo

[Ivan Leon]

It’s always interesting to see the work well-known auto design houses have done for markets that most of our readers (by no means all, of course) get to see—it’s sort of like when you find out that some big American movie star has done a Japan-only commercial.

In this case, the markets are China, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Sri Lanka, and a few others. The design firm is the famous Pininfarina. The car is the Hafei Lobo.

I wasn’t really aware of the Lobo until I saw a tweet featuring one the other day, and was immediately struck by the incredible bold geometric lighting design:

Sure, it’s kind of a dumpy little econobox, but at the same time there are some really interesting design ideas happening there and, as the tweet notes, one of the very few examples of base-of-the-A-pillar indicators I can think of!

The production version kept remarkably close to the concept design, with the only major visible change being the pillars were now body-coloured instead of blacked out, sort of a reversal from most modern cars, and likely a cost-cutting measure.

The cost-cutting makes sense, since this thing was dirt cheap when it was finally discontinued in China in 2011: the base model, with a 1.1-liter 68 horsepower engine was only about $5,140 in U.S. dollars, which is only about $6,108 in today’s money. Still dirt, dirt cheap.

Is this the cheapest Pininfarina-designed new car people could buy? I think it might be!

A Humble Car With An Interesting Design You Never Heard Of: The Hafei Lobo

It’s always interesting to see the work well-known auto design houses have done for markets that most of our readers (by no means all, of course) get to see—it’s sort of like when you find out that some big American movie star has done a Japan-only commercial. In this case, the markets are...

jalopnik.com

 

[Hemi300c]

Some things can't be unseen

 

[KingMikel]

You like ugly, vrot cars.