Scout Motors design boss: production cars will look “very close” to concepts

Good News for those of you who liked the look of the two Scout Motors concepts unveiled back in October last year. “The production cars will look very close to the models we showed at CES,” design boss Chris Benjamin said about the Traveler SUV and the Terra Truck that’ll eventually arrive in 2027.

“I know what the differences are,” Benjamin told TG. “I think they'll be pretty imperceptible to most people.”

This is excellent news. Both the SUV and pickup are rugged-looking body-on-frame EVs (with a range-extending petrol engine available) and combine modern LED lighting with boxy shapes and proper old-school door handles.

“There's something exciting about having a heritage and a history to pull from,” said Benjamin, who joined Scout in May 2023 having previously led the interior design team at Stellantis in North America. 

“You've definitely seen some examples of that being done the wrong way, where the cars are just exact retro copies of the old thing. We certainly didn't want to do that, but it did give us a very clear runway of things to be inspired by. And as creative people, we revel in that. You get to see and understand the brand from a historical perspective, and then you find all of these surprises and delights in the history of the vehicles.”

So, what exactly have the reborn Scouts pulled from the International Harvester vehicles of the 1960s and 70s?

“The biggest thing we always start with are the iconic proportions,” says Benjamin. “If you look at a Scout II, for example, all of the volume is sort of shifted onto the rear wheels. There’s a super short front overhang, a good distance on the dash-to-axle, and then that DLO [daylight opening, essentially the window line viewed from the side] is very distinctive where it has that kick up at the rear. We captured that on the Traveller SUV.

“The Scout 80 was very soft and round. It had round wheel arches, and so we captured that as well. In fact, if you look at the Traveller, there's only one single line on the side of the vehicle. On the Terra Truck we have this little flick on the bed, and actually at the reveal when I mentioned that the OGs in the crowd went wild for it, because it’s from the 80.

“The big hot topic is always ‘it should have had round lights on it’. Obviously, we disagree. The reason is, back in the 1960s that was your only choice, and so by default that eliminates it from the inspiration category, because if every vehicle looked the same with the same headlights and then we just repeated the same thing, it wouldn’t feel right.”

And what of the interiors? Well, Scout has already shown them off with big screens sitting above a long row of physical buttons and dials. 

“We wanted to organise the interior in a way that makes it fun to use and easy to access,” said Benjamin. “People don't want to get lost in their screen menus. They just don't want to. They also don't want to swipe something for their temperature control. Nobody wants to do that.  

“Back before Apple invented the iPhone, no one wanted a phone without buttons, and once it came out, everyone thought ‘man, this is amazing, let's put it on everything’. And so, I think the automotive industry as a whole over-indexed.

“Also, I think one of the failures there is that driving a vehicle is different from walking around or laying on your couch. While driving the cognitive load is too high to find something in a menu, versus the muscle memory you’ve created where you just reach over and flick a switch or turn a dial.”

This is good news for all of us who prefer proper buttons over full touchscreen setups. And, given the Terra Truck will go up against the Tesla Cybertruck, TopGear.com couldn’t help but ask Benjamin what he thought about the pointy stainless-steel wedge.

“I try not to think about it very often,” said Benjamin. “No, it’s interesting. I mean it’s a disruptive product and obviously it’s very different to what we’re doing. We wanted to create something that is neighbourly and approachable. They clearly did the opposite.”