How do you design a fake manufacturer with multiple cars for a videogame?

Imagine for a moment you’re a hotshot young vehicle designer. You’ve interned at Bertone, Renault, Alpine and BMW, picked up a Car Design Award for your concepting work, and spent a few years at W Motors in Dubai. What’s the next step?

The games industry, obviously.

At least, that’s how Jérémy Sachot saw it. Now senior vehicle designer at The Crew Motorfest’s Ubisoft Ivory Tower, he tells us the lateral move from automotive to interactive was always the plan: “ Actually, I always wanted to work for video games. It's how I fell in love with cars, you know, playing Gran Turismo in 1997. So it’s a good match.”

Now Sachot’s job is perhaps even more enviable than when he was dreaming up concepts like the autonomous MUSE for W Motors: he’s now in charge of bringing new vehicles into Motorfest under the game’s own Ivory Tower brand. No crumple zones, EU safety regulations or aerodynamic efficiencies to worry about. Just beautiful lines.

And here’s the thing: his team’s created an utterly convincing car brand within the game. There’s a consistent and striking design language in their exteriors and interiors. They look daring and distinctive. Usually the fictional cars in racing games feel like supermarket own-brand alternatives, but not here. And that’s despite the fact that Ivory Tower cars were originally devised just to plug some gaps where real vehicle licenses weren’t available.

“At one time, we wanted to sign an official side-by-side vehicle, but no agreement was found. So that’s how I was asked to do the first Ivory Tower vehicle.

“So we started with the SSV, but the potential lineup of vehicles we can do for this brand is very wide. That’s the strength of being a brand from [within] a videogame – nothing is impossible.”

That IVT brand’s grown in scope to a degree that would indeed probably be impossible for a real manufacturer. There’s an open-wheeler Alpha GP vehicle to keep Red Bull’s F1 cars company, alongside a muscle car, a hypercar and an off-roader. That would be a heck of a manufacturing operation. 

It also lets Sachot and his team pass on some of that freedom they enjoy as designers to the player, through customisation options.

“ When we work with manufacturers, we never know what the response will be when you customise their car too much. We can’t go crazy on it. And we know the players love customising their cars. So that's an important pillar for the IVT brand.”

That means when you buy an IVT vehicle in Motorfest, you get copious spoilers, bonnets, headlamp options and other visual mods, none of which had to be prized out of a reluctant IP lawyer’s death grip.

As for deciding what the other aspects of the brand’s identity should be, Sachot says it’s a little different to build an in-game manufacturer in comparison to how it usually works in automotive.

“Usually they start with their [most well known] cars. So for example with Aston Martin, the V8 Vantage. Then this DNA that has defined those models is spreading across the lineup and the more focused the vehicle gets, the less you see that DNA. So on the back [of the SUV] you start losing the DNA because you have a lot of engineering inputs on this car, and then in Formula 1 you don’t have any links between the road car and Formula – other than the colour.”

That’s the advantage of making cars that will only ever be driven in a game: they don’t have any air to displace. No fuel to run on. No engineering inputs to make them viable. But as any creative knows, that absolute lack of constraints can be as crippling as it is freeing.

“ We started actually with the SSV and the Formula One car, so it was quite challenging to create a true brand DNA, a visual DNA from these first vehicles.”

The solution was to look to the brand logo for cues: an X-shape. Sachot built a cohesive visual language across off-road vehicles, hypercars, muscle cars and an open-wheeler by looking for places to use that x-shape motif. That evolved into a style that also included a lot of layering, and “a contrast between clear materials and a lot of carbon fibre".

You see that not just in the exterior designs of Sachot’s Ivory Tower vehicles, but in the intricately designed, wonderfully considered interiors. These could have just been gap-filler vehicles, utility over form, that gave the player an extra option in each category of racing in Motorfest. Instead, what Sachot and his team created is a bold counterargument to the compromises and practicalities of the licensed vehicles they line up next to on the starting grid.

The Ivory Tower vehicle lineup now includes the Aezus hypercar and Ogmios muscle car, alongside the AGP open-wheeler and Falcon SSV that launched the brand. Head into the customisation menus for any of them, and you’ll find a cornucopia of options that let you unleash your inner Liberty Walk, but just know this: just as the real manufacturers get precious about their vehicles being overly modded, Sachot’s precious about seeing his creations being messed with too.

“ When I was in car design, we used to say that what the tuners do to the cars is basically destroying your work. We didn't really like tuning back in those days. Now I’m the guy doing the tuning, too.

“I try to push myself as much as I can. We start with very small modifications with only materials, then by the fifth or sixth bumper you have the biggest modifications. So when you go full on with [the Aezus] it looks very customised.”

The Crew Motorfest recently launched season six of its content updates, featuring the Red Bull RB20, among many other additions themed around the Austrian taurine peddlers – but Sachot’s Ivory Tower AGP still keeps the Newey-designed vehicles honest.