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The Icona Vulcano is the World’s 1st One-of-a-Kind Titanium Supercar

08.19.15 | By
The Icona Vulcano is the World’s 1st One-of-a-Kind Titanium Supercar

The Icona Vulcano is a one-of-a-kind, ultra exotic material high-performance vehicle with an international pedigree worthy of United Nations designation. The map-hopping Vuclano roster includes French designer Samuel Chuffart formerly of Nissan Design in Europe and the US helming the design, and ex-Scuderia Ferrari director Claudio Lombardi in charge of the heart of the supercar. The project was designed at the ICONA Shanghai studio, while the final single model car was hand-built in Italy by coach builder, Cecomp.

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“Inspiration for the Vulcano came from the world’s fastest plane, the Blackbird SR-71, whose sharp and dramatic silhouette complimenting its sensual surface transitions was key to the styling of the Vulcano.” – Icona design director Samuel Chuffart.

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The Icona Vulcano isn’t just fast, but an innovative example of modern day technologies affording car designers shapes and materials formerly out of reach before the era of computer modeling and manufacturing processes. The car’s body is constructed with weight-saving titanium and carbon fiber, optimizing acceleration powered by way of a 670 horsepower, supercharged V8 engine. The mid-front engine positioned, fighter jet profile required over 10,000 hours to sculpt, resulting in track numbers of 0 to 60 miles/hr in a mere 2.8 seconds or 120 miles/hr in 8.8 seconds. The interior cockpit is equally eye-catching, with a glowing red touch-sensitive center console mirroring the vehicle’s exterior lines and representing a “consistent theme of dynamic triangles set in horizontal symmetry”.

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“As different ideas came together, the most challenging design issue which we faced was how to create a balance between power and beauty. When you’re trying to create a feeling of aesthetic harmony, you risk creating too many sweet lines, which decreases the feeling of power. On the other hand, if you make too much of the powerful features which are necessary to a super sports car such as its cooling cutouts and blades which manage the air flow, they become graphically too dominant, and this makes the car less beautiful. The way we found the right balance was usually by looking for the greatest simplicity” – Icona design director Samuel Chuffart.

What do you think? Did the Icona team strike an aesthetic harmony between beauty and power? Tell us what you think!

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.