When designing a new car is key to think outside the box, but when you are legendary brand or model DNA for your design you need to understand and feel this DNA, so I use various exercises to do this; one of them is modeling 3d versions of cars, which was the case on my salamanco and gt40 projects so I am able to understand the car and DNA better and in some cases I made cool images like the ones you se above just to take this feeling into an actuall image and be able to see it and remember this feeling and in some cases I finish the project a need to do a few renders of my design and the older model just to se them run free thogeter.