The SPE Central Europe 9th Automotive Division Awards 2004 for automotive developments are widely regarded as the ‘Plastics Oscars’ of the automotive industry. The awards are presented every 18 months by the European Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers recognize innovations in four areas: external applications, internal applications, power train and management. At the ninth Award Night on October 18, 2004, in Düsseldorf, automotive manufacturers and direct suppliers were honoured for a total of five developments manufactured using products from Bayer MaterialScience; two out of these five prizes were for raw material developments.
First prize in the ‘Body Interior’ category this year went to the BMW Group for a particularly high-quality Rolls Royce leather interior. The innovation is an invisible passenger airbag design. There is no visible cover or tear seam, and it has a particularly impressive, high-quality look and feel thanks to its small radius. The luxury leather cover also conceals high-tech materials from Bayer MaterialScience, namely a polyurethane cut foam, which offers impressive results with minimum emission values at high temperatures and ensures an excellent feel and high levels of safety, and a dashboard support made of continuous-glass-strand-reinforced Baydur STR. This component also offers impressive levels of dimensional stability and high heat resistance.
