New cars still start life the old-fashioned way.(NEWS)

Byline: ROGER HART

If you spend any time at all with a car designer, chances are that at some pointmaybe after the third or fourth glass of winea pencil will come out of a pocket and a sketch will be done on the spot to illustrate a point. The sketch could be on the back of a business card, a menu or a cocktail napkin.

Tales abound about the (insert the name of your favorite car here) that began life with a vice president drawing his vision on a paper napkin and handing it over to the chief designer.

But with the advent of computer drawing technology, specifically the tablet computer and stylus, is the art of the sketchin pen or pencil on paperstill alive?

We asked someone known for, among other things, impromptu napkin sketches: Peter Horbury, former head of Lincoln design at Ford and now the head of Volvo design in Sweden.

"These napkin things often come back to haunt me, Horbury said. ""Oh, do you remember this?' They pull out this scrappy drawing on a napkin. Now they'd sell it on eBay.

But Horbury said that drawing, the old-fashioned way, is not a lost art for the car designer.