Onyx Automotive Group
I’ve been known to write a brand manifesto or two.
So when a local design firm was tasked with creating a new brand identity for a rechristened luxury automotive group in the area, they contacted me to deliver a brand manifesto. Given that I am, as you hopefully noticed, a writer, and they were a bunch of designers. The client wanted the typical luxury auto trappings – feelings of accomplishment and privilege, unparalleled service, attention to detail, etc. Which I didn’t argue with. But, being a gearhead myself, I knew it needed more. It needed to celebrate both the vehicles and the people who choose to buy (or lease) them. To make said people feel savvy for selecting a vehicle that offered style and performance first and status forty-third. Even if that wasn’t, let’s be honest, necessarily true. In the end, the client liked the manifesto so much that they turned it into a video. A video that still plays in the lobbies of each of their dealerships.
Sadly, I was not paid with a Range Rover Sport.
It speaks to the physical,
The tactile and tangible.
Of modern interpretations of mechanized art.
Of cockpits laced with leather and carbon and chrome,
Captivating the mind while comforting the body.
It beats inside the seductive dance created by
Eye and palm and ankle,
Set to the symphonic syncopation of a
32-valve 8-cyclinder orchestra.
Or the lyrical stylings of a turbocharged quartet.
Or the sweet solo whispers of electrons at play.
Where personalities flip at the blip of a switch –
And Jekyll becomes Hyde
But everyone smiles.
Because one soul has been stirred
And another discovered.
It conjures an undefinable magic –
Instantly knowable, yet forever intangible.
Where an elevated atmosphere
Transforms service from mere department
To a mindset,
A disposition,
An unwavering dedication to ensuring that less is more and
More is meaningful.
Where nothing is assumed but
Everything is taken care of
With a knowing nod and appreciative word.
And it doesn’t end with the passing of the key.
It exists at a very particular place,
Where the tangible becomes transcendent
And the intangible becomes inescapable.
Where it – the very ideal of motorized luxury – becomes
Crystalized,
Codified,
Personalized,
Personified,
And exceptionally, exquisitely defined in a
Confluence of machine, meaning, and emotion.
The where is here.
The when is now.
The who is most assuredly us.
Welcome to Onyx.
