From the Archive: Designio's Grand Prix Concept and the Case for the Delta-Wing Widebody
By Douglas Topott·
Every production kit that leaves KAHN® Group carries a history of ideas that never made it past the studio floor. As Designio, the group's dedicated electric and modern styling division, continues to develop, it seems like the right moment to open the archive. Two concepts were developed in 2022 during the early design phase of the Fiat 500e programme. One shaped the Designio kit as it exists today. The other has sat in storage ever since.
Designio: Electric, Elevated
Designio was established with a clear position. Electric, elevated. The programme was built to offer contemporary bespoke vehicles led by traditional automotive craftsmanship and design principles, combining two decades of experience with the latest technology to push the limits for clients working with modern platforms.
Designio's styling draws on an Anglo-Italian sensibility, balancing diverse influences into something decidedly contemporary. The front and rear of the Fiat 500e are refreshed sensitively enough that its DNA remains intact, while the car gains a more aggressive, modern feel. The Grand Prix concept was the first serious attempt at defining that language. Much of what it got wrong proved just as useful as what it got right.
The Grand Prix Concept, 2022
The Full-Width Grille Overlay
The earliest version of the Grand Prix kit proposed a full front grille overlay, a graphical treatment designed to give the impression of a large air intake mirroring the factory intake below it. On paper, the idea had merit. Applied to an all-electric car, it created an immediate conflict. The 500e does not need the volume of cooling a grille of that scale implies, and leaning into that combustion-era visual language sat awkwardly against a car built entirely around the opposite principle.
From Tier 1 Splitter to GT3 Mouth
The Grand Prix kit's splitter told a similar story. Early sketches took their cue from the Tier 1 performance splitters seen on OEM performance cars of the period, a single clean line tucking in toward the edge of the front bumper. Refined against the 500e's proportions, however, the design read as too delicate, disjointed against a car with far more compact, upright proportions than the platforms that inspired it.
Rather than dropping the idea, the brief shifted toward GT3-spec performance cars instead, where intake graphics scale closer to the size of the car itself. That direction survived. It became the chunky GT3-style splitter seen on the production Designio kit today, giving the car a wider, more assertive mouth built directly around the shape of the factory grille beneath it.
The Aero Arch Kit
The final piece of the Grand Prix concept, and the most distinctive, was its aero arch kit. It was designed to draw the bodywork out to meet a proposed lower offset rear wheel and shift the visual weight of the car rearward. Approached as a purely graphical solution rather than a genuine volume change, the arch ultimately lacked the depth needed to convince, reading as shrink-wrapped rather than muscular. The problem it was trying to solve was correct. The solution was not, and the arch was never taken further.
What Reached Production: The Designio Fiat 500e Kit
Looking back, that was the right call. The production Designio kit that followed achieved everything Grand Prix had set out to do without the same compromises. It was built around a flush grille with debossed graphics echoing the factory piece below, the GT3 splitter, a bonnet mask carried over directly from Grand Prix, and a boxy GT3-inspired rear diffuser. Coupe models were finished with a large ducktail spoiler to complete the silhouette.
Grand Prix pointed the way. It was right that it never reached production in its original form.
Delta-Wing: The Widebody That Never Launched
The wide arch problem, however, never fully went away. That is where the Delta-Wing widebody kit comes in.
Developed as the intended solution to the volume issue Grand Prix's arch kit could never solve, Delta-Wing took its inspiration from the Fiat Coupe 175, translating the angular cutaway surfacing of that car's rear haunches into a genuine wide arch package rather than a graphical overlay. A matching front arch kit followed, carrying the same language forward subtly to unify the design front to rear.
The kit was developed with the Fiat 500e specifically in mind, but its progress was paused deliberately to see how the market received the Abarth 500e once that car launched. Following that, the decision was made to hold the kit back. It has remained in storage ever since.
The Case for Bringing Delta-Wing Out of Storage
With a new hybrid variant now landing in the UK and further afield, it may be time to reconsider that decision. The Delta-Wing kit represents a genuinely different direction for Designio, a more aggressive, wide-bodied proposition than anything currently in the range, and one built around solving a problem the studio identified correctly back in 2022 but never quite finished addressing.
Afzal Kahn on the Archive Review
Commenting on the archive review, Afzal Kahn said: "Grand Prix taught us more about what Designio should be than almost anything else we've worked on. Every part of it that didn't work told us something useful, and every part that did survive is still on the car today. Delta-Wing was always the better answer to that arch problem; we just weren't sure the timing was right. With the hybrid arriving, maybe we should change that."
Whether Delta-Wing returns from storage remains an open question. For the first time since it was shelved, the case for releasing it is stronger than it has been.