Start

Wellcome to my new blog about Car Design.

My Name is David Tourón. I came from Spain and I’m trying to become a Car Designer. In some ways I can say I’m a Car Designer now. Only the "detail" that I'm still looking for a position.
This first post will be about my personal story, about my fight to be Car Designer and why I want to be one.

When I was two years old, some of my first memories are about cars. I remember be in love with my kindergarden teacher’s red Mini, the original, the british. I can remember a Renault Dauphine in a travel when I was only three years, and my first design at preschool, with only 5 years. I have to search for it because I think I still got somewhere.
This design gets a matter between the front and the cab to protect the occupants in a crash, retractable wheels (because can moves as an hovercraft over water), a back propeller and was surrounded by rubber in the lower side area. It was some kind of a cross section.  Not bad for a 5 years old boy. It was 1978.
But was in 1984 when I discover this as a profession. The first magazine I ever buy gets an article about the New Ferrari Testarrosa and was no photos, only wonderful draws. By this time, my favorite toy was my orange Matchbox Monteverdi and I was thinking about to be Car Mechanical when I grow up. But This draws changed my life. I can´t stop admire it. By the day and by the night. It was so much my obsession that my mother gets too much and kidnapped my magazine. Of course this night I made a raid and find it but I was caught so the magazine was direct to the garbage and I really really angry to the bed.
Too late. I had discovered the Car Design. The name Pininfarina was in my vocabulary now and I started to ask how I could be Car Designer.
But the educational system of Spain was no ready for me. It was considered that you had no vocation until you have seventeen years old and I was only eleven. It was the start of a long, long journey to the desesperation. I didn´t put attention on Latin and others because I will be Car Designer. I needed to draw, no to learn dead languajes. A bunch of materials I considered to make loose my time, and in draw classes more deceptions: All the courses the same, only technical draw, never artistic. All the courses repeating the same way to draw a pentagon with a compass…
Only my aunt (teacher in Puerto Rico) believe in me. She gift me my first technical pencil and my first A4 paper package. I understood the important of the drawing tools so I start to search on the technical shops of my city, more used to the architects. My grandfather was a draftsman and usually designed furniture for the constructions he was working in. So he was one of the first Designers on Spain.
With this two strongpoints, finally all my family understood my fight and at seventeen years go with my mother to the Educational Ministry to ask what I have to do. The civil servant said to me:
“It’s and it will be impossible forever you can study this in Spain. It´s is as difficult as for a Spanish be an Astronaut, perhaps if you study Aeronautic Engineer”.
This is why I'm follower of Lopez Alegria and Pedro Duque astronaut career. They did it.
Absolutely impossible for my parents to send me to study in other country. I have to wait for Spain was ready  and surely I needed to finish my secondary and a Job in the mean time.
A ray of light:
Searching on a guide, “All the studies and careers” I find a line, only a line who talks about industrial design studies. It said that in a near future will be possible to get this title in Spain and the most important, with this you can be Car Designer!!
I will get only three previous studies possibilities to entry, Draftsman (At this time all the people thinks that will be unemployed due the Autocad), car mechanic (family opposition) and Industrial Electronics. So I take Industrial Electronics.
At the end of all this turns of my life, I was a little bit old to keep on studying so I started to work, but I was still with my obsession. Drawing cars in all the papers. I used my new earned money to pay for Autocad Classes. I used my holidays to go to Valencia to see the Design School, I was driving a lot of different cars and vans in the work so I was trying to understood how they was made.
I find out there will be a design school in a city near mine and they will made a conference in my city. I was there, of course. And on January ten of the year 2000, due a horrible traffic accident where I could be dead, I made the decision. (Industrial rent car without brakes plus a donwhill, very funny).
I worked three years more to get money and prepare me to the admission and there I go. With my laptop, my little car (Italian, Bertone designed, of course) and without study Maths for eleven years, to study an engineer grade (supposedly three years) in a city famous for the impossibility of their engineers studies. Usually an engineer student on Ferrol took between eight and twelve years into finish a career tagged as “four years”. Thanks god today it is changing.

I taked my time to learn as maximum as possible. I worked in everything I found to pay my studies, I strained in all the conferences possible, all the presentations I could, and finally I was able to finish. I made a project to Volkswagen/ Seat. I designed a car in Spain. I made the impossible, I broke my sky. But Spain (always the same) is in a very deep crisis. 25% of unemployment, 35% in some areas. The corruption is absolute.

I will not keep waiting for my country again. The time goes and it is always the same. My cousin from USA offers me a Job in her amusement company. Of course not as Designer, not as Engineer, but a job. To keep my money, to start my life again, to raised up my English level and to learn about the USA and send applications. Who knows. Perhaps my future is in this great country. I´m bored of mine. It’s always kicking my butt and I like the States and their people but it’s very difficult to be legal.
And this is me. This is my story and part of my fight on the life.

In this blog you will find my vision about the design. Especially the External Car Design. I get on mind some criticals about some models I want to analize. You could find some of my designs too.
Thank you.

David Touron