BMW GINA Light Visionary Model, Metallic Red

The GINA keeps its features out of sight until they are needed. At rest the headlamps sit beneath the fabric; switch them on and small motors draw the skin back from slits in the nose, so the lamps open like eyelids and the whole contour of the front end changes. The engine is reached the same way. There is no conventional bonnet: for maintenance, the skin parts along a seam down the centre, in a mechanism BMW compared to the rail-and-clip closure of a doctor's traditional medical bag, exposing the V8 beneath before closing back into an unbroken surface.

This piece is painted a deep, glossy red metallic over a white and light grey cabin, the pale interior reading bright through the divided windscreen. The headlamps are modelled open, slim and narrowing at their outer edges either side of the twin kidney grilles, and a crease runs down the middle of the bonnet along the line where the full-size car's skin opens. Inside, the white-rimmed wheel carries the BMW roundel, and a stack of three dials, the speedometer marked in km/h, sits in the centre console. The plaque on its stitched grey base marks it as one of 7. Built at 1:18.