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Designing cars is serious business. After all, it needs to be fired by customers when hundreds of millions of Swiss francs are spent on the development of a new model. However, some car designers enjoy hiding sarcastic details in their designs. “Eastereggs” – Easter eggs – they call such surprises, and some turn it into mass production. And car owners often have no idea.
In Opel, for example, there is now a shark hidden somewhere in the interior as a working spigot on almost every model. “The story goes back almost 20 years now,” says current Opel interior design boss Karim Giordimaina. He begins with a smile: “In 2004, Dietmar Finger had to pull stabilizer strips out of the glove box for a new Opel Corsa.” She sat at her home at the drawing table on Sunday afternoon and stroked it. Then his son came, looked at the picture and asked: “Daddy, why don’t you just draw a shark?” Dad developed the idea, suggested it to his boss, and gave it the green light. The shark in the Corsa glove box went into mass production, and the history of Opel sharks began.
Opel’s shark is now a cult
“In the meantime, a real cult has arisen inside,” explains Karim Giordimaina. “Everyone responsible for the interior at Opel ensures that at the end of the development process of the model lineup, at least one shark is housed somewhere in the cabin. He alone decides where it will be and does not tell his bosses. As a rule, sharks remain undiscovered until the new model is presented.» While discreetly hiding in the glove compartment of the last Opel Corsa or Grandland X, the predatory fish now directly enters the field of view of Opel residents and grins arrogantly from the shelf, for example in the new Corsa or Mokka, on the pillar of the center console.
But for Giordimaina, the fun also has a serious side: “The cult surrounding our sharks shows just how friendly our brand is. And apart from that, all the professionalism we show shows our clients that we also work with a sense of humor.”
Creators at Jeep too
But it’s not just Opel designers who do this. Their US counterparts at Jeep are also familiar with the hidden Easter eggs. On almost every new Jeep model, you can find the silhouette of the original Willys Jeep in one way or another – well hidden in the sticky rim of the windshield, for example. The typical front radiator with sparkling headlights and seven vertical bars also appears again and again in new Jeep models. For example, as a pattern on the back upholstery of the seats or on the taillights. Another Jeep idea is to have a topographic map of the Mojave Desert printed on the middle shelf’s non-slip rubber mat. Meanwhile, the attention to detail by Jeep designers has already set a precedent in the Stellantis Group. If you take a closer look at the new Fiat 500, you will discover not only the silhouette of the Cinquecento ancestor on the doors, but also the silhouette of his hometown of Turin in the charging dock of your mobile phone.
The story can be continued at any time. Similar to the Jeep, a Jaguar mother and her toddler sneak through the windshield of Jaguar’s compact SUV, the E-Pace. And the pattern of the cover of a console is based on the fur of the big cat. On some Volvo models, you can discover a small Swedish flag in the driver’s seat, stitched similarly to the washing instructions on the clothes – and the XC90 even has a carved cobweb under the lid of a storage compartment. The XC40’s instrument cluster features a city map of his hometown of Gothenburg (S). By contrast, the fingerprint on the rear door handle of a Renault interior designer’s electric Zoe looks downright concise.
Elon Musk loves these jokes too
Tesla boss Elon Musk (51) is known to be a big fan of hidden tricks on his cars. On Tesla these are not fixed to sheet metal or fabrics, but can be installed via regular updates. Fortunately this is how we only remember the optionally selectable fart turn signal sound. Or the Santa sleigh that keeps sliding on the speedometer screen during the Christmas season.
Source: Blick
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
