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ROB DOYLE – Rob Doyle Design
Tell us what car you drive.
A Nissan X-trail SVE 7 seater to ferry the kids and boats around is needed currently in my life, my wife and I do feel like a taxi service at the moment with three young boys and all the sports they are in to. For getting around solo in a very popular tourist town like Kinsale I jump on my Vespa, with my open front Momo EVO helmet and bugs in my teeth, there is no better way to duck and dive about town and parking it anywhere is a dream. As a Yacht Designer / Naval Architect I do have more of a connection/ passion with watercraft than cars, I have a 6.5m waterjet Rib (currently in bits in a shed waiting for me to rebuild- this comes backs to lack of time!) and for the need for speed quest I have an all carbon fibre A-Class racing catamaran which is just pure magic to sail!
What was your dream car growing up, and have you ever had the chance to drive it?
Growing up it would have been the Porsche 356 Speedster as it is a design icon and with simple engineering package that just works, plus it just never gets old to look at. As an adult it would be the McLaren F1 as it was a major milestone in automotive design mindset, giving a fantastic looking carbon fibre crafted form with cutting edge engineering, allowing it to be amazingly easy to drive that you can drive to the shops every day. Realising the dream of owning one? I’m afraid that has been taken over by point A!
Do you think automotive design influences yacht design, and how does it influence your own work?
There are times when I see a selection of curves in a car that I just love, for the relationship and balance they have. The car might not be that good looking but sometimes a certain area does hold a bit of magic that gets me sketching to see how that combination of curves could work in a yacht design setting.
The automotive industry has been amazing to study design failures and it highlights fashion trends that had a very small window of being contemporary but soon becomes ridicules- and we also see this in the Marine Industry but it happens less often. This is something we need to keep reminding ourselves about when coming up with ‘Real Concepts’. The fantasy/science fiction concepts, that some designers pop out, are just not possible to build or will look silly in a few years as the fashion party moves on. Sometimes in the Superyacht industry, there is a perception that every concept can be built, but maybe 75% of concepts perhaps have never even taken into account basic Naval Architecture principals, Class & Flag regulations or basic yacht/ship operations. The Automotive industry at least knows that a concept is just that, a concept!
Visit: robdoyledesign.com
