Xavier Liu

Co-Founder & Product Design, Artovelo

Product design lead at Artovelo. Xavier owns the design process from initial chassis study through CAD development, prototype refinement, and the editorial review that ensures every guide aligns with the engineering details on the corresponding product.

What I do at Artovelo

I design the products. The Porsche 911 Tachometer Evolution display, the Nissan Skyline GT-R Deconstructed Frames, the BMW M3 Dashboard Evolution piece: each one starts with weeks of chassis study, reference photo collection, and CAD modeling before any prototype gets cut. The decisions that go into a piece are mostly invisible to the buyer. Which generation should be represented? Which detail of that generation defines it on the wall? What proportion of the layered frame should the engine occupy versus the wheel versus the dashboard?

These decisions cannot be made from a marketing brief. They require sitting with the actual engineering history of each chassis: which intake plenum was the visual signature of the RB26DETT, why the 11,000 rpm tachometer face on a 90s JDM car looks the way it does, what the carbon-fiber hood on a V-Spec II R34 actually looked like next to the standard steel one. My job is to know these details well enough that the product reflects them precisely.

My role in the editorial

I do not write the long-form guides under my byline. Tony does most of the writing and most of the editorial direction. What I do is review every piece for technical accuracy on the chassis details, the design history, and the engineering specifications. If a guide claims that an R34 V-Spec II Nur uses steel-bladed N1 turbochargers, I am the one who has confirmed that detail against original Nissan service documentation before the piece goes live. If a Porsche 911 air-cooled article references the specific dial graphics on a 993 Turbo S tachometer, I have checked the photo references against the actual dial face we used in the corresponding product.

This review process exists because Artovelo is in an unusual position. Most automotive editorial gets fact-checked against secondary sources. Ours gets fact-checked against the physical reference material that goes into the product. If the guide is wrong about a detail, the product is also wrong about that detail, and we cannot ship the product. This is the operational reason our editorial accuracy tends to run ahead of the SEO content average for this segment.

Background

• Co-founder and product design lead at Artovelo since the company's founding
• Background in product design
• Owns the chassis study, CAD development, and prototyping process for every Artovelo display
• Lived and worked outside of mainland China for the duration of Artovelo's operations

Where my work appears

My direct output appears in the products themselves rather than in long-form articles. The Artovelo lineup currently includes deconstructed frames covering the Skyline GT-R R32, R34, and R35; the GT2 RS; the Ferrari F40; the Honda Civic Type R FK2; and the Subaru BRZ Super GT, alongside the Porsche 911 and BMW M3 evolution displays and the JDM Legends Tachometer Collection. Each of those is a piece I designed from first reference to final prototype.

Contact

For technical questions on Artovelo product design, chassis reference details, or product corrections: xavier@artovelo.com