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Test Drive: 2025 Polestar 3

This EV weaves in attributes that are subtle but significant fusions of form and function

Michael Frank

23 September 2024

When Christian Samson, Polestar‘s head of product identity, talks about cars, it’s from the perspective of a serious petrolhead. The all-electric Swedish carmaker—which is amidst a growth spurt, launching both the Polestar 3 SUV and Polestar 4 fastback this year—is a tiny spinoff of Volvo. This has allowed Polestar to push boundaries, even for an EV maker. For instance, it lists the entire cradle-to-grave CO2 footprint of its cars, which Samson describes as the minimum any EV brand should be doing—and Polestar promises to be carbon neutral by 2030, a fast approaching deadline.

Ffor Samson (who came from chassis development at brands like Alfa Romeo), the attraction to Polestar is what he characterizes as an “analogue” way of thinking about EVs, even though they are increasingly more computerized. He says that for the Polestar 3, which we recently drove ahead of delivery to customers, the idea was to push handling to the edge of GT performance but then to back off a bit. The idea is to get to that small, happy place that lives between spirited feel and nervous aggression—and to have the cars drive naturally in a way he describes as “that super simple steel-sprung core.”

This is an interesting philosophical position for the Polestar 3, a roomy crossover that’s hardly inexpensive (the base price of our Launch Edition bled right up to $78,900) and not as huge as rival three-row EVs that are priced in the same general segment. Luckily there’s plenty of performance to like. It’s not just that you’re starting with 489hp and 620 lb. ft. of torque, but that you can spend $6,000 more for a performance pack that bumps this gumption to 517hp/671 lb. ft.. That shaves 0-60mph times from 4.8 seconds to 4.5. This is fine, but all EVs in this segment feel exceptionally fast, and Polestar isn’t trying to out-dual Tesla with acceleration.

The distinction with the Polestar 3 is that the car feels far lighter than something that weighs almost three tons. One reason is that Polestar’s engineers brilliantly apply torque vectoring, which over-drives the outside rear wheel through corners, giving you quicker response and less understeer (the likelihood of a car to steer wide of your intended apex). That’s a huge deal; this is a vehicle based on the same architecture as Volvo’s new three-row EV90 and while it’s just a little smaller it’s still 1.5-feet longer than a Genesis GV60, and a half-foot longer than a Hyundai Ioniq 5, but drives more like a smaller car. It’s closer in size to the target Polestar says they’re chasing: The new electric Porsche Macan, which is very close in price, too, and that means it has to be reasonably sporty as well.

Polestar isn’t trying to be Porsche—or Lucid. Samson explains that the company has been careful not to follow peers chasing extreme range. He says that would be a mistake, and that as you add more batteries you spiral into a heavy car that also has a lot more harmful C02 and industrial impacts. The Polestar 3’s range is pretty good, at 315 miles, and Samson says they targeted real-world driving, for instance a lot of 75mph interstate dashes, not a uniquely European cycle that’s more skewed toward city driving.

Samson shrugs off the potential hazard of being the “EV du jour,” which is where Rivian seems to be in certain zip codes these days, and ticked through a number of attributes of the 3 that are subtle, but significant fusions of form following function. For instance, the door handles fit flush—but approach the crossover with the key card in your pocket and these deploy upward. And they’re scalloped from the underside. He says that any minimal loss in aerodynamics is more than made up for by making the car easier for the driver or passengers to open the door easily, and cited a simple Polestar ethos, noting that too many carmakers add adornment—or take it away—without thinking about the impact to user experience.

Some small design features on the interior of the Polestar 3 are easy to miss because Polestar so heavily stresses minimalism. Higher end versions get an incredibly crisp-sounding, 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins sound system, but while other carmakers might make the speakers more prominent, Polestar hides most of them in the headrests and in concave door sections. Likewise, a 14-inch touchscreen houses most of the car’s controls. This takes a little getting used to, though we’re happy there’s an oversized volume/play/pause central controller between the driver and front passenger, and D-pad style toggles on the steering wheel that switch function depending on various modes.

It’s good that, unlike Tesla, Polestar gives the driver an instrument cluster, which can double up the Google Maps function on the central screen. There are some missing pieces, however, because Polestar relies on Android Automotive OS for its interface. That means no Apple CarPlay. Some apps you might rely on for entertainment on your phone will play through Bluetooth pairing, but that still leaves some functionality out of the equation.

Step out of the Polestar 3 and the tour of subtle design continues. Sideview mirrors are frameless, with the glass integrated directly into the housing (the whole housing moves when you adjust the driver’s view). A front nose wing atop the hood is almost imperceptible, but it’s crucial because it lowers drag, increasing range and keeps the cabin quieter. But there’s another benefit Samson stresses, “You get this initial impression of a prouder hood. You want this upright face on an SUV.” Of course you could solve the aerodynamic conundrum other ways, like with a more sloped windshield, but in turn you’d have to lengthen the cabin to achieve the same roominess.

Another visual cue you might miss are C-shaped finishers at the back fender. These puzzle into a concavity at the trailing edge of the bumper, and they offer a kind of punctuation at the back of the car that’s similar to how designers use dual tailpipes on gas cars. Here they act like scissors, cutting off the vortex of air that otherwise would swirl and create instability at the rear of the Polestar 3. In turn, that would require a much more prominent rear wing, which would be very un-Polestar.

Speaking of the brand’s ethos, Samson directs us back to the front of the car to observe its SmartZone, which supplants a conventional grille. The SmartZone houses cameras—and in 2025, LiDAR that can see people, bikes and other cars up to about 800 feet in the distance. Samson says the challenge was making it blend with the car’s paint, because sensors have to see through this section—and metallic paint would blindfold the sensors. Eventually Polestar’s experimentation led to careful color matching so that the polycarbonate SmartZone blends fluidly with every color option available. It’s a very Polestar win, much like the rest of the 3.

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Test Drive: Lamborghini’s 1,001-Horsepower Hybrid Revuelto

The automaker’s next generation supercar

Michael Frank

2 August 2024

Lamborghini now has two hybrids. Confusingly, the first of the duo, the two-seat Revuelto hypercar with 1,001 horsepower, debuted last year—but customers are only now receiving cars in North America, and that means journalists are only now getting seat time in the car. The second, and likely bigger seller, is Lamborghini’s 789-horsepower Urus SE PHEV, a crossover that can travel up to 37 miles on EV power alone. That car has a years-long waiting list, as does the Revuelto, and the Urus SE won’t get to its first hand-raisers for at least several months.

Despite nose-bleeding prices (a quarter million will get you an Urus SE and your Revuelto starts at $600,000) the hybridization of extreme cars like these refutes the belief that electrification cannot work in the lusty world of exceptional performance. We’ve just driven the Revuelto and if anything, it’s a superior hypercar to anything Lamborghini’s done before, precisely because of the way the company has created the powertrain. 

First, this is an all-wheel-drive machine, with a mid-mounted V-12 (just ahead of the rear axle), a rear electric motor and dual electric motors in front. The smallish battery pack fits in the “transmission” tunnel, and the actual transmission is mounted aft of the engine, at the back of the car. All of this means that even though it’s relatively long—four inches longer than the outgoing Aventador flagship and a full foot longer than a 2025 Corvette—the Revuelto’s superior weight distribution and ultrastiff, mostly carbon-fiber body gives it much better twitch. The car feels tighter and lighter. Partially that’s down to perception: Lamborghini’s own data only shows a slight edge to front weight distribution versus the Aventador, and the Revuelto is nearly 500 pounds heavier. But it wears that weight far more comfortably than the older Aventador, a car that always had to be wrung hard to really feel its power. The revelatory Revuelto is just way more fun, even when you’re not flying at surefire, getting-arrested speeds.

There’s another reason for this, beyond the way the powertrain is packaged, which is that electrification is more sophisticated than turbocharging. Forcing air into an engine will eventually lead to speed; electric boost is instantaneous. So while a stat like 0-60 in 2.2 seconds should impress you, the combined nearly 800 ft. lbs. of torque from that massive V-12 behind your head and all three electric motors screaming forward has a brain-melting immediacy Lamborghini couldn’t achieve from forced aspiration. While other carmakers use regenerative braking to recharge EV batteries, Lamborghini didn’t want to interfere with the Revuelto’s natural brake pedal feel. Instead they’re using the deceleration caused by engine braking to fuel the battery, and this was also very purposeful: The engineers didn’t ever want that battery to be fully drained, because it’s critical to the response of the powertrain and how quick the car feels.

Matteo Ortenzi, Lamborghini’s product line director was blunt about several aspects of the car’s development and how and why hybridization and eventual electrification are crucial to get right. He said that facing more stringent emissions standards, especially in Europe and China, are only part of the picture. 

“Nobody ‘needs’ a Revuelto,” he said during an interview after our test drive. “So we have to offer great things and especially new things, new experiences.” Partly, he explained, that’s why Lamborghini is experimenting with a unique soundtrack to the Revuelto when it’s in certain modes, including EV-only, which the driver can use for about five miles of travel. We tested this out and there’s a low whine that builds toward a crescendo that’s heart-racing. 

Ortenzi says they wanted to be sure the driver could hear the car as well as feel it, and that the emotion associated with sound is critical to the impression the driver has of a Lamborghini. 

“But this is for us a first phase. We are really now taking care of what to do in the future for full electric cars. We think this will be one of the major points to transmit emotions when driving electric vehicles,” he says. Ortenzi thinks of the Revuelto and Urus SE as “bridge” cars, and he said the company is in the midst of a deep exploration of emotion and sound—and measuring human response to every aspect of a car’s performance. In an earlier interview with Lamborghini chief technology officer, Rouven Mohr, he broke this down both on a basic level and much more high-brow one. “Our positioning element is always that in every segment to offer the car with the maximum driving fun that you can have,” he said. He added that while a lot of carmakers would execute a Revuelto to deliver the best track times, Lamborghini is on a mission to deliver peak emotion, and they’re currently researching human response to inputs, from pulse rates to dilated pupils to other “non-verbal” responses, such as respiratory rate. 

Some buyers are going to be thrilled by the vehicle even before it’s in motion. Scissoring doors mean you’ll always make an entrance. Inside, there’s chunky metallic “jewelry” the driver gets to toggle—even if that’s likely a stimulant that’s going to wear off. A few rotary switches reside on the steering wheel to soften the suspension dampening or firm it up; to switch up modes from Strada (road) to Corsa (track); and to raise and lower the nose of the car if you’re pulling into a steep driveway. Lamborghini also brackets the ignition beneath a hinged metallic arm, a now seemingly de rigueur element pinched from footage of heroes (and villains) in spy thrillers.   

The Revuelto and subsequent EVs to come at the top of the automotive food chain matter because they’re going to change what we lust after. If Lamborghini cracks the emotional formula with hybrids and EVs next, just as clearly Rivian seems to be doing with its coming R3X, then there’s a bright, interesting and fresh automotive design horizon to look forward to, regardless of the means of propulsion.

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New Cars We Love

Our periodic impressions of what’s hot, distinct, retro (for the better) and future-forward

Michael Frank

27 June 2024

We’re going to start giving you something a little different from time to time starting now, with periodic sound-bite impressions of the cars we’ve been testing lately. We’ll ping designers with questions about the cars they’re creating, as we always do, but we’re also going to nail what we think are overlooked highs, not just on design, but on overall usage and the hidden joys of certain vehicles. Here’s a look at some of what we’ve driven over the past few months.

Acura Integra Type S

The pro tip of the Acura Integra Type S runs something like this: It has a manual six-speed; they don’t even offer it in an automatic! This is true, and the gearbox is superb. In many ways it’s the equal of paddle shift gearboxes, no matter how much more precise they are for track use, because a third pedal allows a driver to mitigate power uptake, and paddles cannot do that. It’s why we love Miatas—and Alfa Romeo 124s from the late 1960s before that. It’s also light, so even if the BMW M2 is a full second faster to 60mph it’s also 600 pounds heavier. Sure the BMW is also a blast, but only at higher speeds, where the Integra Type S is big-goofy-grin fun around town.

The Acura has five more inches of rear-seat knee room than the BMW M2, as well as five more inches of hip room. Four adults fit. There’s nearly double the cargo capacity, too, thanks to a hatchback design. And there was clearly a driver-specific rethink to the car’s secondary controls. That means radio dial knobs for climate, and buttons for climate modes (rather than burying these in the display). The display itself has a very obvious logic, too. There’s just nada to gripe about, and considering Acura’s legendary quality, and the fact that this car is just a wee bit more refined than its Honda twin, the Civic Type R (and looks more grown up), we’ll vote Acura FTW. 

Hyundai Santa Fe

Senior designer Brad Arnold gave us a walkaround of the retooled Hyundai Santa Fe during the New York Auto Show—and we drove the car shortly after. Arnold stressed that the more chiseled exterior was created by the company’s Korean team, not the American one, but “the Korean design studio, they captured what the US customer is looking for.” The sharper angles aren’t the only change: Arnold stressed pragmatic aspects to the rebooted Santa Fe, including a wider hatch area that’s specifically focused on tailgating (but would benefit any driver), “like you’re pulling a stroller out of the back, because the focus was how can we widen the hatch width and widen the opening better than any Hyundai or any other vehicle in the market?” Arnold said that led to the decision to lower the taillamps, which are now patterned in the form of a wide letter “H,” that are artfully blocky, reflecting the overall brick-like form of the six-passenger family rig. 

Arnold is also proud of a hidden, recessed panel on the C-pillar that pops into the frame. This pocket folds in to create a grab handle so the owner can stand on the rear tire and hoist themselves up. “It’s so silly. We ended up in a lot of heated discussions about whether this was really that important and the answer was ‘yes.’ All these features are that important to creating an improved experience for families and anybody else that has this vehicle.” Stepping back, Arnold explained that Hyundai as a brand is confident that they can make a rugged, more off-road worthy Santa Fe and have it “boxier and robust, and then we can have things that are a lot sportier, and it doesn’t make sense to do a uniform design language or uniform architecture. For each product our customers are looking for something different.”

2024 AMG GLA 35 SUV

The GLA is an overlooked Mercedes-Benz that shouldn’t be. We’ve just driven the AMG version and it’s the “hot-hatch” nobody chatters about—but definitely should. Compared to a Hyundai Veloster N, Toyota GR Corolla, Honda Civic Si and even a Golf GTI, it’s the stealth option in a room full of braggarts. This isn’t to say the others don’t have fine attributes (hat tip to the Acura Integra Type S mentioned in this thread), because they do, and in a race, it’s probably the Toyota that spanks the Benz. But the cost is cars that are uncomfortable with their muscles and arrive with cabins that are way less refined. The Benz is a car you can live with. It’s funky if not gorgeous; it isn’t festooned with fins and downforce effects and is not painted in faux rally racing livery. It’s stable on the highway and practical in all the right ways, with a big hatch that’ll swallow weekender luggage or stow goodies after a trip to the garden center, hauling back bags of mulch and a few plants parked on the backseats. 

Then, it envelopes you completely on curvy, swerve-y two-laners, where its AMG joys (like a quick-shifting paddle arrangement and 295hp) zap to life. Mercedes gets all the ingredients right. The cost, however, isn’t cheap: $56K and change pushes way above the other “adult” option: the Golf GTI, can be had for $20,000 less. Even if you’d argue that the proper competition is the AWD Golf R, that’s still ten grand less. So the Benz is a reach. But since when did anyone tout greatness, Mercedes and bargain basement in the same sentence? 

Lexus TX550h PHEV

Lexus and its parent company, Toyota, have been telling the world that plug-in hybrids are where it’s at. We were at the Japan Mobility Show this past October, where Toyota officials were not only happy to show off concept EVs by the fistful but were also saying that the number one carmaker on earth (depending on how you count) would be a major player in EVs with groundbreaking product by about 2026. Back here in 2024, the TX550h is a plug-in hybrid, and as a group, no carmaker does this better. This seven-passenger beast is a good example. It offers a low step-in height and an incredibly serene ride—while being cosseted and deluxe but not showy inside.

You can drive the TX 39 miles in EV-only mode, which, if you plug it in nightly, might mean you never drive with gas. But at $76,700 it’s bumping up against EVs, and in particular KIA’s excellent EV9—see below—which can be had for a lot less money, also has three rows of seats and even though it has a big, heavy battery, weighs less than the hybrid Lexus.  

KIA EV9 

Let’s take a moment to compare the looks of the KIA EV9, which are very polarizing, to those of the aforementioned Lexus. If you know recent car design history you know that the once controversial Lexus visage has calmed down substantially. We think the EV9 design is fascinating; as for taking on the PHEV Lexus TX, the $69,900 Land version of the EV9 we tested was pretty loaded, with first and second-row heated and cooled seats. 

All EV9s also get a lovely, futuristic flat-panel display that stretches seamlessly from the dash center through the driver’s gauges and includes configurable tiles, but is also aided via haptic mode switches and actual buttons for climate control. As for EV-ness, the AWD Land can go 280 miles between charges. Spend less ($59,200) on the Light Long Range and it’ll hit 304 miles. The rub, if there’s one, is that the third row of the EV9 is tight—between 29.9 and 32 inches, depending on spec. The Lexus musters 33.5 inches—and it bests the EV9 for maximum cargo, too. But drive both back to back and you feel the KIA’s relatively lighter 5,795 lbs versus the Lexus’s 6,540, and the dual electric powertrain’s instant torque. Plus, all of the KIA’s heft sits in the floor, so it corners better, too—and it’s quieter than the Lexus, too. We’d still understand buying the TX; it’s excellent, and massively spacious. But to us, the EV9 edges it out. 

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Designing Indian Motorcycles’ 2025 Scout

Insight from Ola Stenegard, the brand’s director of design

Michael Frank

13 June 2024

Unlike a lot of motorcycle designers, Ola Stenegard, a Swede, began his career in automotive—at Saab. And even though today he’s the director of design for legendary Indian Motorcycles, Stenegard spent over a decade designing bikes at BMW Motorcycles. If you think of BMW as one pole—a brand very much known for a kind of stalwart conservatism—Indian is the opposite. Indian was once the world’s largest maker of bikes and in many ways a touchstone American brand, lauded for speed and also bombast. They were Harley-Davidson, before Harley took that mantle and Indian went bankrupt.

That history informs the Indian of present day, because the motorcycle maker has been reborn under corporate owner Polaris and again competes with Harley-Davidson making unfaired (“naked”) models like the Scout, which was recently rebooted for 2025. Interestingly, Stenegard explained to us during a recent interview, there’s a cleaner line than at Harley to trace back to the Scout of old to the present bike, since Indian ceased to exist for about five decades. As a designer that let Stenegard and his team go back to basics with the new bike, and we talked a lot about that inspiration—while still modernizing a hallmark bike for the 21st century. 

The Scout began over a century ago, but you can’t design a 100-year-old motorcycle. How did you take the soul of that and bring it to today?

Indian reintroduced the Scout 10 years ago. I wasn’t with the company. My team did that first Scout and this one, too. That most recent one worked really well—they sold 100,000 of them so it was obviously proven; they found a recipe that worked. But then we talked to a lot of customers and we saw things that were good with the first platform—but we thought you know, we can actually improve it and one thing I learned from Michael Mauer [head of design at the VW Group and formerly at Mercedes and Saab] was trying to reduce the design to just two, three lines.

This is even more critical on a bike, right, because the rider sees the bike differently, with an engine and everything visible from the exterior?  

Yes, it starts with the V-motor. That’s the heart. And then it’s two lines that are really essential to both the Scout and also to Indian Motorcycles. The first connects at the neck, basically the handlebars, then over the tank and because we have a very special shock configuration that is totally in line with the frame we picked up on that and let that line shoot all the way down and right to the rear axle. That gives us this hugely long, very powerful curve. And that curve really connects every Scout in the brand’s history. A lot of customers can’t explain it—they don’t have to. But that’s one of those super, super important lines that connects the Scout through the years all the way back to the beginning. The second one starts at the neck and shoots down below the motor. I call it the S line. You see it when you look at a bike from 100 yards away. That line takes you all the way back to the very first bikes from old black-and-white photos from Indian. If you black out the rest of the bike you see the top curve and you see that S line like no other bike has.  

Too many motorcycle brands seem very conservative with colors. Getting this right is probably a lot harder than consumers would guess.

You’re right; you usually don’t have a lot of color choice. For an American cruiser though you’ve got to have a palette that looks good in the showroom. And, again, it can’t be a detractor but you also have to find colorways to speak to everyone; it’s going to be a colorway that people fall in love with. Then you have all the feedback, like how colors are styled and what’s on trend. You put that on the table; but then as designers we just have a feeling, too, and when we’re designing and you add color it changes everything and it’s actually a very complicated process. It’s really, really tricky. 

There’s a physicality of riding a motorcycle; you sit on a bike, not in it. And you’re far more prone to work on it than you would a modern car, so there’s a tactile quality that’s important, too. Can you explain how that mattered with the design process of the Scout? 

You’re hitting one of the keys for Indian because even in the design world there’s always this talk about virtual, you know, computer power and you can do a whole car in virtual now—you don’t have to do clay and it goes faster if you don’t do clay. Don’t get me wrong: computers are really important. There’s always a time and place for virtual and computers. But when it comes to the creative part, and I’ve done this a long time, and I’ve tried it every damn way, a motorcycle requires your hands shaping it, because exactly what you say. The customer is going to sit on it; they’re interacting with it. So we need to interact with the shape, and you just can’t do that in any kind of virtual space. You can’t virtually feel a bike with your knees, put your hands on the tank. It’s that feeling when you park the bike, step off, and it sits there and it’s got to look damn good as you walk away. We have done that on models, too. Just to get that feel. It sounds so nerdy but it’s so important. You just can’t feel the weight of the bike. You just can’t. Nothing beats reality. That’s it. Nothing is better and nothing is better for a designer especially. 

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Gozney’s New Arc Oven Enables Easy Backyard Pizza-Making

It’s a friendly, high-temperature grill replacement

Michael Frank

4 June 2024

We have been pizza and bread obsessed since before home pizza grills boomed during the early days of the pandemic. Bread-baking is pretty therapeutic. Kneading dough alone is a great way to deal with existential angst. And then there’s the fact that a bit of fermentation from overnight proofing happens to be more friendly to most guts than any store-bought dough, not to mention, homemade bread of any kind (including gluten-free, which we’ve also experimented with) just tastes fantastic, especially when it’s piping hot from a 900-degree oven.

In the past several years we’ve tested a bunch of pizza ovens, including Gozney’s larger Dome, which these days retails for $1,799. But the new Arc and Arc XL start at $699, and that lower price is very appealing. You’d wisely ask, then: what you’re losing out on? The short answer is some utility. The Dome can burn both wood and propane or natural gas. The Arcs only work on gas. Also, the size of the opening is a little smaller with the Arc, and that can matter for cooking some other kinds of breads. There are distinct advantages, as well. At 47 pounds the Arc that we tested could be lifted pretty easily off its stand or a table and put away in winter or just when you want it out of the way; At 128 pounds the Dome is too burley for that.

There’s one reason why making pizza in your standard kitchen oven fails: it cannot get hot enough. A 500-degree oven is indeed very hot for making most food, but pizza (and other flatbreads) are best when the outside gets a nice char and the stone you slide that onto is at a darn-near metal-melting level. That’s what you need to ensure that the layers of dough are cooked through, and some elevation is created in the dough as well, so there’s an airiness to it. The Arc gets to 800 to 900 degrees in about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the ambient temperature. This spring, on cold nights, it took a bit longer.

We’ll add that we cooked more than pizza in the Arc, and for that, when you want a lower temperature (like for grilled veggies, or roasting chicken thighs), the Arc can be tough to keep at a cooler temperature. We learned that starting with the temperature dial at only about a third of its maximum and being patient with letting the heat come up was the best approach.

For the Arc, Gozney evolved their flue design. There’s no chimney, and that’s a good thing, because it limits ash buildup. Also, the flame climbs the ceiling of the Arc from left to right and that source of heat is recessed, maximizing the ceramic floor space of the oven. The difference between the Arc and Arc XL is that the latter is two inches deeper, able to accommodate a 16-inch pizza versus the 14 inch maximum for the standard Arc.

A stainless-steel lip at the mouth of the oven both protects the stone (because you might scrape it with a pizza peel or when sliding in a cast-iron pot or pan) and creates a precise release point for flicking a pizza dough into the mouth of the Arc. If you use one of Gozney’s turning peels (basically a downsized peel but one with a longer arm than a spatula, so you’re safely back from the heat), that metal rim gives you an ideal balancing point for the arm of the peel. Pull the front quarter of the pizza out to the mouth, use the leverage of the peel and rotate the pie in quarter turns. 

While these details might feel like overkill, they’re decidedly not. If you’re a novice at making pizza at home, you’ll appreciate a flatter learning curve, and since we’ve been doing this for a while and experimenting with different doughs and methods, we immediately felt the ease of using the Arc.

If there’s one setback to the Arc, it’s that the opening size at the front will limit what you can cook. We’ve found that a spatchcocked chicken (with a foil dome in a flat cast-iron pan) works great, but that mail-slot mouth means you may have to get creative with your cookware arsenal, because some pots and pans either won’t fit or cannot handle the higher heat of a pizza oven. With some discipline and care, and paying attention to results, pizza, a quick-bread we’ve made for a while, a naan, not to mention steak, chicken, and ton of sautéed and grilled veggies, from mushrooms to peppers, grilled asparagus and onions have all come out beautifully. 

We do miss the wood option, because cooking with wood produces a flavor profile that is very difficult to match. However, cooking with wood isn’t great environmentally—and your neighbors may not love all that smoke wafting by, either. The smaller scale of the Arc and its cleaner fuel are a worthy fit for a lot of people. Not to mention, because the Arc is light, you could also do a backyard takeover at a friend’s—put it in a car trunk, drive over and change their pizza perspective.

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Scribner’s Lodge, a Catskills Retreat, Gets Further Elevated

11 round cabins add to the uniqueness of the upstate experience

Michael Frank

30 May 2024

Interior design house (and longtime COOL HUNTING favorite) Post Company has crafted the interiors of restaurants and hotels from Barcelona to San Diego to Kuala Lumpur, and even designs furniture. But to get a clear sense of their raison d’être, you could do worse than to book a stay at the Rounds. This is a new enclave of eleven circular cabins perched above the 38-room Scribner’s Catskill Lodge (which we attended the 2016 opening of), in the shadow of Hunter Mountain, about 2.5 hours north of NYC. 

Half a century ago, Scribner’s was a drive-through motor lodge. It was entirely revamped by Post Company, with some kitsch preserved. Some, but really just enough of that veneer to feel fun and funky—but with a very “now” sense of polish. That was of absolute necessity since Hunter is no longer sleepy; it’s a Vail-owned resort in the heart of a region that’s positively exploding with tourism.

For that reason it was wise for the property to keep pace with a new offering. And Leigh Salem, a founding partner at Post Company, was thrilled to get the remit to design the 11 cabins for Scribner’s. The Rounds opened a few months ago and we got an early experience staying there, before interviewing Salem about the project. 

You have a long history with Scribner’s. Let’s first talk about the vibe of what was there before to understand how you integrated the Rounds with the hotel. 

Scribner’s Lodge was a pretty interesting building. It was an inverted lodge that you drove through the center of, and it had a really sort of whimsical and unique point of view. Every year the original owner of the lodge built each room in a different theme. There was a “future” room, an “Edelweiss” room…it was out of control. A lot of detailing still stayed in there, sort of fossilized, but with interjection with the brand into a cohesive idea. We preserved the spirit of it,  because the property had this adventurous, irreverent spirit to it that when we started looking at what it means we wanted to have that same sort of soul to the property.

The Rounds, unlike Scribner’s, are tucked up into the woods behind the hotel and they’re oriented so the windows and doors don’t face another Round. It feels very private. Can you describe how you managed that?

We started with a plan level. We’re moving boxes around and looking at viewsheds, but we always thought that the real benefit of what we’re trying to highlight is the views of the mountains but also the tranquil woods. And looking into the woods can be quieter and feel more restful. But what was interesting is when we started drawing the viewsheds, we realized that if the cabins were rectangular you just have two sides. But when you play with a new typology it allows for intimacy; you spin each slightly so you feel very private. But come outside and if your friends stay next door, they’re right there. So the shape enabled this dynamic of a perceived privacy rather than a sense of isolation. 

The round interiors also enabled you to play more. There are all these nooks and built-in sitting areas; there’s a “conversation” where that intimacy crosses over within the communal space, too.

I’m not going to pretend that we knew exactly how it would all cohere, and we really were looking at a lot of different influences. The walls are painted white, and it’s curved and soft and then everything else is pine. And that’s really the two building materials and everything else in terms of bringing color or layering or objects is all through installation. We are borrowing from some Nordic traditions of building for very cold environments, but also we were looking at structures that felt very airy and light. But then there’s a central circular seating area underneath a central skylight, and that composition is more like a ceremonial space. It’s a super-old concept going back to the beginning of architecture, and the light from above brings in a closer sense of the time sequence of nature—a sort of reading of the sky, and in summer when you’re getting that amount of greenery coming through it’s an incredible, vibrant experience.

You’ve designed furniture at Post Company—but there’s practically none here that’s not built in. Even the bed is a giant platform built directly into the wall.

The bed became this idea. We wanted that to feel more part of the architecture, similar to the gathering space where it had a solidity to it, where it didn’t move. That seemed more gracious—and it allowed us to take over more of the real estate within this space and there’s more opportunity for utility so each of those rooms all hold a trundle bed right underneath it, which for a family allowed us to make these available for more parties to stay in and have that sort of flexibility. 

Does the built-in structure and the spareness make the Rounds endure—or will there be an itch to start over at the normal pace of the hospitality business?

For us as a studio and designers, there’s that impulse. But it’s a very sad idea from a sustainability perspective and also a design idea that you can only design for seven years out. We have higher ambition. We’d like to believe that we can design something that is going to endure, and the material is going to be a special quality that can patina and age gracefully. But also that we’re building something that offers an experience and quality beyond an aesthetic rendering. We certainly have conversations about coming up on 10 years of working on Scribner’s and we’ve been making updates—but it’s small tweaks, right? For the Rounds, we were really thinking about creating them with ‘good bones.’ And with the basis of how they’re positioned, how they’re interacting with each other, and how their meditative quality continues to feel elevated and more luxurious over time.

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Design Brief: The All-New Ford Ranger

Three Australian designers create an all-American truck

Michael Frank

20 May 2024

A team of Australian designers created the new Ford Ranger and Raptor Ranger. That might surprise most American buyers, but Max Tran, Ranger Chief Designer, Leigh Cosentino, Ranger Exterior Design Manager, and Nick Eterovic, Interior Design Manager, have all had stints working on Ford’s Mustang and Bronco, too. During a recent design brief from Melbourne, they explained that Aussies view trucks in a very “American” way. Some of their perspective on truck utility—and making that utility visually accessible to Ford customers—struck us as very universal and not a uniquely American way of thinking. What’s been articulated with the new Ranger series is decidedly more rugged, bolder and more graphically clean and clear than the outgoing Ranger. Call it an American truck if you like, but what matters visually is that it’s just a successful design. 

What’s the Australian view of pickups?

Max Tran: Trucks have pretty much become our number one products. And in terms of exposure to global product development, we’ve worked on a lot of different things. I’ve worked on Bronco, Mustang, so in terms of understanding global markets we get exposed a lot. It’s also important to know that multiple global Ford design directors have come through the Ford design studio in Australia.  

It also seems like pickups would be somehow baked into Aussie DNA as much as American DNA, right?

Tran: That’s right. We were primarily a sedan market, but if you come to Australia it’s kind of pickups everywhere. We use them to haul anything—for work, family, for adventure stuff. And now with the Raptor Ranger, it’s really the off-road sports car. 

Leigh Cosentino: And the SUV is an Australian invention. So you know, we’ve got a lot of history with the idea of a cargo-capable vehicle. 

Speaking of that, the new Ranger and Raptor Ranger now seem to wear that ruggedness and utility more obviously.

Tran: Well, in terms of overall volume it’s getting bigger, and from a styling point of view, it’s getting more rugged, more tough, more upright—more “truckee” for lack of a better word. I think even back to your question around Australia, why are we designing an American Truck? From an aesthetic point of view the kind of American heritage global truck family is kind of seeping in globally, and if you look at the development of Ranger from 2012 forward, they’ve got tougher progressively as they went along. And now it felt like the right time to bring that F-series love that we know North Americans have, into this product to really make Ranger fit within the Ford family of trucks.  

What’s happening visually then, where we “see” F-150 in the Ranger?

Nick Eterovic: Ford has a really clear identity visually, especially the trucks, and the DNA elements are going to be critical. Tthe way we treat the grille, the headlamps, we’ve got the C-clamp LED interacting with the grille, and we really emphasize those two elements looking like they interlock. That’s really critical because this is a very usable product and we wanted it to look very “tool-like” graphically.

Tran: In all our trucks we emphasize round wheel arch openings. But they’re concentric—they’re almost round, but not perfectly round. Ford trucks always have a fender feature which gets more pronounced with Raptor. Then in the box you see a more muscular kind of shoulder. We have this very straight line in the shoulder with quite an aggressive hook down at the front, and that creates a really square shape that emphasizes the wider track of the vehicle. 

You’d mentioned performance in Raptor before. Can you say how we “see” that?

Tran: We targeted something that was about precision. Performance speaks to precision, handling, all that stuff. We actually manifest that in the way we treat really tight lines and sections where you really see a kind of tautness to the shapes and an angularity. We looked for a visible aspect where these look built for tasks. This is also to reinforce Ranger, too. It’s not a shrunken down F-series, which presents a balancing act between providing a look for the family, but also being respectful of the Ranger nameplate because it has its own following. 

Cosentino: That’s really important. We’ve been focused a lot on agility. This is a mid size pickup truck. It needed to be something that was a little bit more muscular but also a bit more agile. In our launch document and part of our initial framing we went into an exercise where you frame what the product is versus what it is not. One that we used was a rugby player. Someone that was quite beefy and burly but at the same time that was very nimble. We needed to show that off through the form and the muscularity, where the fenders or the “shoulders” showed that the Ranger was not something that only went in a straight line—it has to look visibly nimble.

Speaking of that, the interior is very utile, and on the Raptor especially it has a cockpit quality that is nearly shocking for a pickup. It’s very much a sports car appearance.

Eterovic: You’ve observed something that we did deliberately go after. Usually in a sports car, it’s all about lateral movement, because a sports car goes around corners quickly and we concluded that this was as much about up and down as you go over a jump in a truck. But for a smaller truck we also needed something indicative of a more complex left, right, up, down kind of movement, so the designer started sketching ejector seats, you know, out of a fighter jet, and that’s why you can see that there’s a deliberate rise in the shoulders, because it’s really trying to evoke that sense of supporting the spine, as well as the grip of the body. 

Read Tech

Testing the Marantz STEREO 70s Two Channel Receiver

An excellent, affordable amplifier that’s far friendlier for non-audiophiles while still cranking out the brand’s powerful, warm signature sound

Michael Frank

30 November 2023

The STEREO 70s integrated receiver/amplifier isn’t celebrating the 1970s. Instead it’s a commemoration of 70 years of making amplifiers; in 1953, Saul Marantz founded the company in New York City. The Marantz brand is, today, quite different; the company’s wares are largely Japanese, manufactured in its Shirakawa facility that’s been there for the past 22 years. That transition from NYC to Japan happened over decades, thanks to devoted audiophiles in that country and manufacturing capacity that was growing in the 1960s and ’70s, while it was shrinking in the US.

You should care about the STEREO 70s because it’s affordable for an item from a brand with a fairly legendary audiophile pedigree, and it’s dead-simple and un-intimidating to use. “Unfortunately,” Gary Dayton, Senior Product Planner at Marantz says about the reputation of better audio components, “there’s been an impermeable intimidation wall regardless of whether you can afford better audio products. Consumers have just been taught it’s a pain in the ass.” 

In response to that perception, Marantz designed the STEREO 70s with paper instructions that were simple to follow. Unbox the unit and it tells you what to plug in where. As soon as you’ve strung an HDMI cord from your TV to the clearly labeled HDMI port you’re able to follow on-screen instructions, and getting the unit to work with a pair of speakers (or a soundbar), turntable and/or CD player is all super-simple. In fact it’s almost breathtakingly antithetical to the rest of the electronics world. Once setup was complete, it was also simple to add the Marantz to a home network and then enable AirPlay (so you can send whatever’s playing on your phone to the receiver). Further, if you use a higher bitrate streaming service, such as Roon (which we like, because it enables control of our own library as well as higher-fidelity streaming) the Marantz will auto-populate it as an output. 

Plus, an app called HEOS (for Android and iPhone) is integrated with the STEREO 70s. It lets you communicate with the receiver from your phone and stream from sources like Spotify, Tidal, SiriusXM, SoundCloud and about 10 more services, as well as from tracks natively stored on your phone. Your phone becomes your remote, too, since you can choose from all the amp’s wired sources like phono or CD, as well as video sources, such as an Apple TV. The included remote is far less necessary with HEOS. 

Dayton explains two decisions about this one-stop app solution. “First, we’re not making judgment calls for customers,” where, without naming names, other more hidebound brands might want to curate what you can stream. “I download a lot of stuff from Bandcamp or just self-published or otherwise under-available on streaming services sources. I can play that just as easily through my Marantz equipment as I can a Spotify playlist that my daughter sends me.” 

As for making playback easier, that was critical to Marantz’s thinking, especially for video integration. “Historically there has been a pretty high degree of inconvenience; you couldn’t just turn on the TV and have it automatically switch to your amplifier. Now it automatically switches.” This is regardless of whether you were just playing music through a streaming service or the amplifier was off. Likewise, switch off your TV and the whole system powers down. “This restores the expectation of convenience that we’ve had with sound bars or with the TV without sacrificing any sound quality.” 

Not that any of that would matter if the sound was garbled—but just the opposite is true. During testing, whether listening to Joe Cocker’s amazing 1970 live cover of “The Letter,” a lossless recording on Apple Music, or Hank Mobley’s version of “Dance of the Infidels” on a Blue Note LP we picked up on vinyl in Tokyo, the sound staging and reproduction were superb. Dayton attributes the clarity and warmth to a bit of in-house technical wizardry, noting that over time Marantz, like most other larger-scale producers, switched from “analog” amplification to chip-based circuitry—but that introduced its own headaches. 

“Ideally amplifiers would just use a power supply to make a facsimile of the incoming audio signal but bigger, right?” Dayton asks rhetorically. “Unfortunately with chip-based amplifiers there are problems. One, they’re usually unable to respond to voltage changes very quickly, and that introduces distortion.” There are other issues, but Dayton explains this led to Marantz’s decision to build their own custom Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Modules (HDAMs). These are custom tuned by Marantz engineers, are comprised of individual resistors, capacitors, and inductors, and allow Marantz to continue with its signature “warmer” sound, without losing accuracy. 

“People think that there are competing objectives; that you can’t have crispness without a kind of cooler temperature. But it’s not true. We want you to hear that inherent warm character in recorded music without overdoing it so it’s dripping with syrup, which is not fun.”

The final piece of the puzzle is simple design. Going all the way back to 1960, when Marantz came out with the Model 9 amplifier, a chunky block of metal that collectors still chase, the company has used a signature, center “porthole” on the face of their amps that’s like a cyclops eye. Dayton says that on the STEREO 70s, as with past units, it’s meant to convey information simply (such as showing you that you’re streaming over AirPlay), rather than to introduce distraction with dancing lights. This is especially true if you want to use the unit with a minimal soundbar in front of a TV, where moving meters would be a visual bother. This is also why the unit is slim—only 4.1 inches tall—so it can fit into your life rather than dominate a bookshelf.

There are some subtle but lovely design elements to the piece, however. Smoothly surfaced dials for treble and bass, as well volume, balance, speakers and input source grace the facade face plate, while that sits against a slightly concave, Fibonacci patterned, dimpled metallic surface. “That’s meant to suggest some order in our universe,” Dayton explains. “Think of concentric circles formed from rain on a pond.” But, he adds, the idea is meant more to convey timelessly classic minimalism. “At its fundamental level this is not a scientific instrument. It’s there to help communicate art.” 

The Marantz STEREO 70s is $1000 direct from the brand or at select retailers.

Read Design

Infiniti Vision Qe Concept

Three questions about the brand’s stunning new electric car future with Head of Design, Alfonso Albaisa

Michael Frank

24 October 2023

What you cannot fully appreciate from photos of Infiniti’s gorgeous new Vision Qe concept sedan is that it’s larger than you’d guess—roughly the size of an E-Class Mercedes at the very least. And when the EV concept debuted last night to a scrum of international media just ahead of the Tokyo Mobility Show, Nissan-Infiniti’s global head of design, Alfonso Albaisa said that in some ways it harkens all the way back to the Q45 flagship sedan from the 1990s, when Infiniti was fresh on the scene. Partly, this is down to scale and presence—and partly down to the essence of pure design, he explained. While Infiniti has already announced they’ll build their EVs in Canton, Mississippi, where Nissan has manufacturing, there’s a lot we don’t know, like anything about powertrain, or timing for when this, Infiniti’s first EV (or the promised crossover version) will arrive. Still, Nissan and Infiniti have a habit of showing concepts that are much closer to reality than other carmakers dare. And even though we only had a few minutes with Albaisa amidst the excitement of the reveal, he answered the following three important questions.

The LEDs are clearly doing a lot of work with this concept. But there’s a distinction to the coloring of the “digital piano key” lattice effect on the hood and trunk that’s new, especially the gold hue these can turn to, right?

In the beginning when we started working on Qe there was a goal to work with the blue and dark body paint and the gold fleck that’s in that surface. And then we found a little bit like a normal LED signature. But we know LEDs usually are a bit cold. And so the team started playing with that warmth. But you know there was the risk that in some ways it’s mimicking an incandescent bulb. Still at the end of the day what we have is very warm. We played with just reliefs to capture the shape of the car, its rhythms. The rhythm of the front tends to be sharp. But the body has this sensuality and that will be repeated on the interior with a little bit of human shape.

You mentioned one danger, of echoing the past with an incandescent vibe to the lighting. What’s another risk with this newly fluid signature shape for Infiniti?

There’s a desire as a designer for a sense of minimalism. We do want to avoid a lot of pieces. And a lot of structure. But at the same time, we can take away too much, and then you don’t have a lot of character. And so we still wanted the sense of the fingerprint of the artists that this has. The shape is of a sculpture but it’s thin; normally on these kinds of shapes it gets heavy. Here we’re playing with the edges, the wings, so it doesn’t look heavy.

Why a sedan now—when so many buyers are going for crossovers? And especially at this sort of scale?

Well, you know, the portfolio today of our sedan is a little bit aged. So it’s natural for us in our cadence to really nail down the DNA of our sedans. And Infiniti has been known for sedans and we think it’s just a beautiful genre. We obviously believe deeply in it. That’s why we show it consciously. As a sedan brand, we’re going to have a little bias here. But we’re about to do a complete portfolio renovation and you’re going to see we’re not moving away from crossovers.

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An Ideal Destination for Fall Leaf Peeping, Huttopia Adirondacks

We speak with the North American brand director of the burgeoning chain

Michael Frank

21 September 2023

The kind of camping idealized by Huttopia—a new chain to North America, but one that has dozens of outposts across Europe and strong growth in China—is fairly minimalist, but not exactly roughing it, either. Founders Philippe and Celine Bossanne, according to their daughter, Margaux Bossanne, got the camping bug while traveling across Canada in the late 1990s. Margaux is now the North American brand director for Huttopia, and she explains that the very particular American-French flavor of what her parents have evolved combines the joys of being in the outdoors (including campfires and the ability to cook outside), but eliminates some of the pain, like setting up a tent or sleeping on the ground. 

To learn more we visited Huttopia’s brand-new Adirondacks location outside Lake George earlier this summer. But Margaux says that the fall is the best season for a stay, with fewer insects, lower humidity and gorgeous autumnal hues.

What’s the melting point between Huttopia’s French-ness and American-ness? 

In France, especially 25 years ago, camping had this reputation that wasn’t very nice. With Huttopia they wanted to bring what they saw in America back to France, where now what we’ve made is more back to nature and very family-oriented, which is actually a very French thing. They realized that people want to get out of cities and need nature, but in a comfortable way.  

This partly explains the tent structures, which dot the sites and are far enough apart not to hear other campers. They’re sort of more like tree houses with wooden platforms and canvas walls. Why this design?

Well my parents had this 19th-century camp idea that you see in old photographs of these spacious tents that you can stand up inside and be very comfortable. But the goal is not luxury. We say it’s “camping ready,” because you have everything you need: a bathroom with a shower and toilet, and then in the kitchenette a sink, dishes, a fridge. Some have a wood stove, and electricity for lighting. But it’s meant to be cozy so that you’re reminded to go outside and be out in nature. I always bring it back to being a kid, because we have a lot of families, and to create memories it has to feel like camping, to actually be living differently. I’s all those little things.

One brilliant part of the layout is that there aren’t cars near the sites. These all park out of the way, so you don’t have any intrusion. 

That’s totally something that’s on purpose. This way it’s safer to be out on the grounds, for kids to run around and go see their friends, and we do have activities for kids, too, to give parents a break, but the layout without cars near where you’re staying is all to emphasize that this is a natural place.  

Speaking of that, and the experience of really camping, it’s nice that the site in the Adirondacks has grills to cook outside. I wonder about this; it’s perfectly normal for Americans, but how French is it?

You can’t camp without cooking. This is kind of universal. But we also have to adapt every site differently. For instance in the Adirondacks because we’re on a steep hill, we have these nice, wide porches with a grill and a lounge area. But in places where it’s flatter we can just have the flat ground with chairs and so on. We kind of like that every Huttopia is a little bit different, and that’s also like wilderness—you don’t want everywhere to be identical. But as for cooking, this is also how camping is social: We want guests to bring food to make, and yes we have a restaurant at a central lodge, but it’s not that we expect you to eat every meal there. 

Yes, but the lodge is nice, with what Americans and Canadians would probably identify as the design ethos of national parks. And I understand that most Huttopias also have pools. Can you explain these elements? 

Well, the French way is to have a pool and restaurant. It’s just more comfortable. When parents arrive in France at a Huttopia they’re thinking “Ah, we have a pool! We’re going to have a nice vacation.” And the lodge is a community space. It’s funny because the actual name that we have for it in France, it means “center of life” but unfortunately it doesn’t really work in English. But the goal with this and with the pool is to be where kids make friends with other kids, where they then go off and play, and where people grab a coffee and chat. People can meet, socialize, play, do all these things, and then go back out to their own accommodation. At Huttopia we say you’re not camping on your own, but with your neighbors. We want people to feel like there’s a community, like you’re all on an island somewhere.