LIKE most lads, Sibiya Lunga (21) from Kwapata, near Edendale, has
been into cars as long as he can remember.
 |
| Sibiya Lunga (21) with his best teachers in DIY car design, plaster-of-Paris and wire cars. |
What sets this young man apart from other petrolheads is that he
doesn’t just dream about driving fast cars.
On the steep hills of KwaZulu-Natal,
Lunga has sketched out a vision to make the world’s transport greener, faster,
and above all, pretty.
“I want to design a
vehicle that will change not only the way we drive, but also how we fly,” he
told Weekend Witness. “I am always thinking about ways to make
better trains, cars and taxis.”
“Look at this train, for example,” He moved aside a detailed wire
car and thumbs through a portfolio containing some 170 sketches. “My train uses
vacuum tunnels. Because if you reduce the exponential force of drag, you can use
much less force to move much faster.” Asked why his train sports such a sleek
bullet nose in a vacuum, where there is no need for aerodynamics, he laughed:
“In my designs, I am always concerned about the carbon footprint, but I also
like my vehicles to look pretty.”
Small wonder then that his role models aren’t soccer players, but
car designers, like Chris Bangle, who caused a storm at BMW with daring lines,
and pioneering Swedish designer Bo Zilland, who turns his photorealistic
car-art into desirable wheels, like the fantastic E-type remake, which Zilland
named the “Growler”.
Lugan said his passion for all things transport just deepened as he
“muddled his way through in the middle of the class” at Umdibamiso Comprehensive
High School, where he made models from papier-mâché and plaster of Paris. At
uMgungundlovu Further Education and Training (FET) College, he is enrolled for
an N6, and has learned the mechanical engineering crafts to structure his
visions into neat technical drawings.
Pointing to his teenage dream car, — a full-colour ink sketch of a
pimped-out Mustang — he said: “Making models and technical drawings taught me
that there is a world of difference between sketching something pretty like
this, and translating that into 3D.” He opened and closed a few flaps and doors
on the wire car, and added: “These wire cars were especially good teachers of
this 1D-to-3D lesson.”
It turns out that the years he spent sketching were not wasted.
“I dream of taking my
design training a lot further. If I get lucky, I want to enroll at the
University of Coventry in England. I think the stuff they do there is at the
cutting edge of design, like the Bugatti Aerolithe concept car, which graduate
Douglas Hogg conceived.
“The lecturers there wanted to see my hand-drawn portfolio,” he
said, but added: “I may not get a bursary, in which case I’m still job hunting.
I’ve got my mother and grandmother to support.” And if he can design any car?
“It will be hydrogen. It is [up to] 300% more powerful than oil-based fuel, and
hydrogen engines just make water.”
He pages through the portfolio, and shyly points to a sleek car
with four stubby wings. “And I’d like to build this — its got electric motors
driving airvents to generate ground-effect [a thin air cushion that builds up
between surface and a low-moving vehicles to reduce drag and create lift]. But
cars won’t change that much in the near future. Our addiction to gasoline is
still too strong.”
