Fiat's Smiles Per Hour design competition up and running
Author: Chris Barker
Published: 29 July 2008
Fiat, it has to be said, is good at inventing things. Cars it seems to have got off to a fine art recently, with the new Fiat 500 supermini and Fiat Grande Punto hatchback being perfect illustrations.Now though, the shoe is firmly on the other foot, and the Italian car manufacturer is inviting Joe and Josephine Public, and in particular their small children, Joe and Josephine junior, to invent something that will help wile away long car journeys.Remove the forgotten fun that could be had by engaging in a spot of traditional car-journeying favourite – I-spy – and the bang up to date manner in which to appease those on the back seats – the headrest in-built DVD – and the problems arise.Entries are invited from inventors of all ages, providing their writing is legible and the coffee stained rings don’t obscure the concept's core components. Drawings, brief product descriptions and a min biog of yourself are the only provisos.As long as the concept is ideally safe and doesn’t invalidate your car insurance policy, then anything goes, as Fiat will not criticize those that base their idea on existing machines, gadgets, toys or accessories, just so long as their developed interpretation of it invites fun and his chums fun and fun to the in-car party.Endorsed by TV’s Gadget Show, Presenter Suzi Perry remarked that the competition is, “bound to generate some fantastic prototypes” going on to comment, “we’re famous in this country for our great inventors and I’m sure that today’s budding inventors can match them all the way.”Indeed they might, should they not think quite as laterally as the UK's serial patentee – a one Arthur Paul Pedrick – who had the majority of his brainstorms during the 1960s and 70s. Bursting with random ideas of how to carry things a great distance for the good of man, he seemed obsessed with the slippery transportational product known as water.
For irrigation purposes, he proposed re-directing water from the mouth of the Amazon to the Sahara desert and piping snow balls from Antarctica to the Australian outback – again in a bid to solve world famine – amongst other things.Fiat doesn’t require its budding inventors to be quite as creative in their application, and borderline insanity won’t necessarily help your cause.www.fiat.co.uk/smiles
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