We put the cars back in space cars!

So one of my class projects had me design a concept car.  I'm not a designer nor an engineer by trade so the thought of designing anything remotely convincing put me in a creative rut for a couple of weeks before hatching the semblance of a decent "car."  My instructor George Kontos urged me to check out this book called "Cosmic Motors."  It's a concept book about designing futuristic space machines.  Although they do some cool stuff in the book, the designs were a little too unconventional for my taste.  It provided me with a perspective though: I knew that I would design a futuristic flying space car: it had to fly and I wanted it to resemble a classic muscle car.  Now the question was, "why did I want to conform the design to an old standard?"  The setting is suppose to be the future for fucks sake...2125 respectively; shouldn't the design reflect the changing time?

I don't know what cars are going to look like in the future, but judging by films like the Fifth Element, they really haven't changed that much; except that the cars themselves don't have tires. That was my start off point.  I eventually came up with sketches of my concept car.

Now I needed a story behind the design and explain why the shape hadn't evolve to ground the fiction.  So, in 2125, generic looking space cars with their rounded aerodynamic corners and circular flying saucer-like chassis designated for safe functionality ruled the skies. Theses designs were so uninspired and dull, bored rich elitists clamoring for nostalgia idling in their floating mansions and  re-watching Steve McQueen's Bullit on hologram projections yearned for something much more classical and tough.  That's when I came up with the idea for Tarmac Sky.  Tarmac Sky is a space car manufacturing company that specializes in creating very expensive space cars that resembled old tough muscle cars like the Ford Mustang.  Since the outdated shape for the chassis of these vehicles don't meet space flight regulations, Tarmac Sky hires specialized space auto engineers to make the designs work.  These space cars don't come cheap and are only commissioned by the rich.  Once the company was set, I needed a brand logo.  Here are some sketches of Tarmac Sky's logo:

Here is the final rendered image:

Now that I have my fictional car company, brand logo and a brief explanation of the zeitgeist, it was time to build the EV-13 space car.  I used Maya to complete my project.  It took a couple of iterations before I settled for the final look.  Here are some early renditions:

After a bit of modeling I realized that I was losing the classic, tough, and muscular aspect of what I was originally going for.  It took a while before I settled on the final design.  Here are the finished renders of the EV-13:

I wanted to keep the shape classically muscular as I could.

It wouldn't be a flying space car without some turbine and intakes.  In the end, I think the EV-13 turned out pretty nicely.  From an engineering point of view, it probably wouldn't get 2 inches off the ground, but hey, in my pipe dream, it's the next best thing to a DeLorean.