“You could stand and look at this car for hours. The thing is littered with fascinating details – it’s exceptionally beautiful and well proportioned”
BAC’s design philosophy is one that’s centred around form enhancing function: striking designs not only creating visual desires and bridges to people’s hearts and minds, but also enhancing vehicle properties for ultimate performance.
When BAC first laid plans for Mono, it was a totally new type of vehicle in a brand new niche, warranting an all-new aesthetic with the potential to totally revolutionise the world of car design.
As such, the team had absolute freedom at their disposal; they were able to completely rewrite the rule book on what’s possible for a machine and produce one of the most iconic designs in British automotive history.
They turned to the science-fiction space for inspiration, rather than elsewhere in the car world, and landed on Björk’s 1999 music video for All Is Full Of Love. The robot within the video has a wholly futuristic aesthetic, but it’s also being totally honest with itself – it’s a machine that’s not masquerading as anything other than that.
With Mono, the same principles applied: this supercar is a phenomenal machine first and foremost, with visual openings that keep it honest as a machine and a thin surface simply stretched out over it to provide organic appeal.
Naturally, Mono still needed to respond to legal, aerodynamic and real-world requirements – including the likes of driver accessibility, airflow and light placement – but solutions were found while maintaining their design values.
When it came to the comprehensive redesign for BAC’s new-generation supercars, it was a case of turning everything up a notch from the original design brief with the help of new innovations.
“Designing Mono R was very much like the difficult second album. We were building on the success of Mono while seeking to add greater sophistication to the aesthetic – I’m thrilled with how that came together”
The result is a smoother, more organic, thinner and more technical shape that builds on the Mono design aesthetic but doesn’t lose that original identity that heralded so much success.
Mono R and the new BAC Mono set the new brief for Monos of the future, but the BAC design philosophies of form enhancing function and thin surfaces covering a phenomenal machine will remain at the heart of everything the company does.