Interview with Iman Maghsoudi
  Winner of the Hawai'i Motors Competition

  With Local Motors' Ariel Ferreira Cronk

AFC: Hey, Iman! Congratulations on a fantastic competition. Where are you from?

IM: Thank you very much. I was born in Tehran/Iran, the country of ancient wise emperors, and current crazy presidents!

AFC: Did you go to school for transportation design?

IM: Well not actually. I’ve studied Industrial Design, at Azad University of Tehran, in which I have always been selected as an Elite Student during my college years. But my main interest has always been Transportation Design. I am especially focused on Car Design; I’m actually a Piston head. I had my first experience as a design team member when I was only 17. I designed a Van based on an off road platform at Pars Khodro’s R&D Center.(Pars Khodro is a local car manufacturer).

AFC: I heard that you have won several other competitions in the past – congratulations! What do you like about car design competitions? Do you sketch in hopes of winning the prize, do you enjoy the practice? Any other reasons?

IM: Well it is a little complicated , back in school I have always been told that, "Iman, you’ve got the gift…”, but I had to knew it for sure. So my first competition was a test, to find out where do I really stand among the other designers. Surprisingly I won the race! I was shocked, it was my first experience, was it chance or something like that?! I was confused, so I immediately searched for another design competition, guess what . . .? Another win, followed by job offers from DCI France and BMW-mini group, which unfortunately I couldn’t accept, because I was still a student. Then I decided to improve my portfolio, I started to look for interesting topics to work on, and if you ask me the design competitions topics are great, whether you win or lose, you have added a complete project to your portfolio, plus the enormous joy of excitement and fun, during the design process.

AFC: What type of research did you do when preparing and ideating for Hawaii Motors?

IM: Well I did not limit my research to the island’s ancient culture my main focus was on the Island’s ecosystem and its influence on the Hawaiian lifestyle. I figured out that an ancient warrior cannot [concentrate on only winning] the battle; he must be tuned to match the current conditions! I studied Hawaiian interests, and I gathered information about anything related to cars. The level of its impression was so enormous that my first sketches turned out to Badass Hotrods! …That was a dead end!

I needed a very unique source of natural inspiration, to develop a proper form with golden proportions. I encountered to Hawaiian Humpback Whale, which is an icon, but there was a problem it just had a very clumsy look. I didn’t gave up, I made a research on the whale, there I found out that there are very exciting forms hiding under the skin, like the Skeleton, the Jaw bone, …etc. It was great, and the rest of the job was a piece of cake!

AFC: You mentioned earlier that you thought msmcardesign was going to win. Were his designs one of your favorites? If no, which other design was your favorite? Why do you like it?

IM: Yeah, definitely. His entry was one of my favorites, although it was a little too busy to my taste, and I couldn’t find strong relations to Hawaiian customers, but I admire it for its pure sense of excitement. I also liked the Piero’s entry very much.

AFC: In our last competition, Manhattan Motors, you placed 9th. Now you are 1st! How do you think you went from a 9th place design, to a 1st place design? What did you do differently?

IM: That’s a very good point, and the answer is simple: I didn’t really want to be the Winner! That may sound a little crazy but that’s true, I just wanted to participate in the last competition. I had some Ideas about a sort of unique carline for a coachbuilder company (like LM), that promises a strong, distinctive character, and I just wanted to share it with the others. Let me tell you a something, I am not selfish or cocky so please don’t misjudge me about what I am going to say. I have won competitions before, while competing with 700 graduated car designers from all over the world, so believe me that it wouldn’t be a very hard task for me to win a competition with about 70 entries, and I do really agree that that there must be something different done here, in this competition, Let me tell you my secret! I have a personal formula to win a competition: “take it really serious”!

AFC: What competition do you hope Local Motors will run next? Any preference?

IM: I’ve started the countdown for Texas Motors and Alaska Motors competitions!

AFC: What is your dream job?

IM: Oh come on . . . I am going to tattoo this title on my forehead: “Born to Design”!