What are Auto Express exclusive images? Why and how we create our digital car renders

Here at Auto Express, we have one of the most experienced and talented teams of automotive journalists anywhere in the world. We get unrivalled opportunities to test all the latest cars, both in the UK and internationally, and have long-established relationships with the industry’s biggest brands, and its most influential executives.

This level of access means we’re able to create content with a level of depth and insight unavailable elsewhere. Being in the right rooms with the right people allows us to ask the right questions, and helps us bring you exclusive stories on the most important new cars before anyone else.

The answers to those questions inform the new car models we cover and the articles we write. But we also have the ability to illustrate those pages and show you what we’ve learned about how these new cars will look before any official images are available. These digital renders are the famous Auto Express exclusive images.  

How do we create Auto Express’s exclusive images?

It’s not as simple as asking ChatGPT or Google Gemini to imagine a brand-new lightweight sports car following a single throwaway line from a junior engineer. 

We build a case, using our unique insight and sources to piece together key information on a car’s size, positioning and style, before employing our expert designers (note: never an AI bot!) to create an accurate representation of the future supermini, saloon or SUV.

Often, our intelligence will be bolstered by spy images of camouflaged cars caught testing on roads near to manufacturer engineering bases, or race tracks like the Nurburgring Nordschleife in Germany. Many brands will push their cars to extremes with hot and cold-weather evaluation, too - ensuring they’re more than equipped to cope with stop-start city traffic and long, high-speed motorway runs. Our spy photographers are often lying in wait. 

These pictures can be very revealing, but sometimes require an expert eye to peel back the body cladding and distracting wraps. Using information gathered on our travels, probing conversations with industry contacts and years of experience analysing everything from sketches to concept cars, we can create photo-realistic renders that bring that extra visual element to our stories. 

There are occasions when we’ll gaze further into the future. With no prototypes on which to base our images, these cars can present a bigger challenge. With the help of our professional designers, many of whom have worked for major car manufacturers, we use styling cues from existing models and concepts, plus known quantities like platform proportions, hardpoints and key dimensions. We’ll often use wheels from current cars, as well as subtle brand specific design features such as body creases or window lines to give the vehicles the family look we know they are likely to inherit.

Why do we create exclusive images?

We touched on it just now, but the main reason we draw up our Auto Express exclusive images is to give readers a way of visualising these all-important future models. 

We could dump the intelligence we’ve gathered and what we can deduce from our expertise on a page in text form without illustrating the product in question but the images bring the story to life, and we know our readers value them. 

The exclusive image itself is never the story for us, it’s a means of illustrating the information we’ve gathered on a new car. And we’re always clear with watermarks and information in the copy, when we have created the images we use and how we’ve reached the conclusions on the car’s design.  

14

The best Auto Express exclusive images…

More often than not, our exclusive images are very accurate, even if we do say so ourselves. We’ve countless examples of exclusive images that are indistinguishable from the final product – often produced months if not years ahead of time. We’ve had plenty of wins over the years. Our experienced designers have nailed future products from near enough every mainstream maker – from Audi to Volvo, and everything in between. 

Highlights over the years have included the MG4, which save for a few intricate details around the bumper and sills, was absolutely bob on. In 2022 we rendered the next-generation Toyota C-HR, which again – even down to the two-tone paintwork – couldn’t have been much closer to production reality. Successes with the latest Hyundai Kona and Nissan Qashqai are worth a mention, too.

More recently, we’ve had wins with the fifth-generation Toyota RAV4, and even our Renault Clio render wasn’t far off what’ll come to market early in 2027. 

We don’t only look at exterior design either. Our very early scoop on the forthcoming Peugeot 208 centred around a new type of steering wheel dubbed Hypersquare. This was recently confirmed for the production car due in 2027, proving our early render right. 

… and some that we’re not so great.

We’ll stick our hands up and acknowledge that sometimes, we miss the mark. We are rarely ill-informed but there have been occasions when a given manufacturer’s plans change – due to customer demand, moving legislation, or financial restrictions. There are also examples of models we were told would come being axed before they even leave the drawing board. The designs of others might change over time, cars morphing from coupe to crossover, or even from ICE to electric before launch.

Examples of when things haven’t quite transpired as we thought include a cover spread for the print magazine titled ‘New Peugeot 3008’ where we detailed a car that ended up revealing itself as the 408 crossover. Our vision of a future Fiat Panda SUV rendered in 2022 – well before the current Panda broke cover – doesn’t look quite as it should, while the baby Tesla continues to elude us, no matter how much CEO Elon Musk moots the idea of a more affordable take on the Model 3.

So there you have it: the how, what and why we create our exclusive images. Auto Express wouldn’t be the go-to place for new-car news and reviews without them.