The Ford P1 is here as the company’s first virtual car designed by gamers. Sort of.
For the past few months, Ford has been partnering with gamers to help design their first virtual car. “Virtual” in the sense that it will never exist except as a cool concept car in video games, which is quite the departure for the car manufacturer. Usually, they make the crazy concept car in real life before turning it into an unlockable in-game vehicle. This time they’ve just skipped the middle steps.
On top of that, they also got help from gamers courtesy of Twitter. In designing their virtual concept, Ford hosted a series of Twitter polls starting in March for every design aspect of the car--from the engine to cockpit to headlights to overall exterior aesthetic.
Then, Ford designers came up with a bunch of artistic concepts that those amateur Twitter car designers got to vote on. So, in a sense, you could argue that the Ford P1 is not only the Blue Oval’s first virtual car but also its first democratic car too.
After more than 250,000 votes were cast, Ford finally unveiled the P1 at Gamescom last night. And uh... well, it's certainly out there.
The overall design aesthetic was inspired by the Ford GT, Ford's million-dollar hypercar. You can get a sense of the GT in the cockpit and massive wheel arches. But when you get to the rear of the P1 it loses all semblance of being a car and starts to look like an X-Wing from Star Wars.
Now that the design process is finished, the last step remaining is to insert the P1 into a racing game. We’re not sure if the P1 is too new to make it into the upcoming Forza Motorsport 8, but it could certainly arrive as a DLC car after release.
Ford's presence at Gamescom continues into the second day with the Fordzilla Cup, which is an online tournament hosted in Forza Motorsport 7. Check out the latest highlights in the video below.