car design thread

There's another one I've never seen!
For its time it looks pretty 'contempo', clean design.
The big 3 American companies suddenly discovered fins &nchrome, and we all know how some of those abominations turned out

 

Not denigrating your enthusiasm or, especially, your desire to try understanding design.

You need to step away from the idea that the pure side view is the determination of similarity. Hang out with auto designers and you get a lot hand gestures as 3 dimensional form development and transitional areas don't do well to regular words. All this is because the design realization is in cross sections and plan views. You are looking at things as if they are tape drawings.

Take the Testudo upper and its relationship to your Erickson is about zero. The Testudo has extreme wrap around in plan view with lots of curvature in cross section and a soft transition from the windshield to the roof surface.

The rear end of the Testudo is another study in rounded forms that your car does not exhibit.

At given times designers are all seeing the same things. Sometime they are very conscious influences coming from show cars, production cars, or the published development articles that show other proposals. Then there is just the non-specific stuff that the community "just knows". There can be paths that everyone is heading in the direction of. One sees stuff, one hears of stuff. I remember a story from Art Center about a particular surface treatment that had been rattling around for a while amongst the students. It showed up later on a Dodge.

Show cars can have short lead times but American production cars at the time could be 5+ years from program start to showroom. So in 1961 people are already thinking 1965 or so forms. If Erickson was in this environment, even as a student, he was part of this mentality.

When looking at you car what I see is a form that didn't quite get there. I can describe it as the difference of a student versus having a highly competent clay modeler to refine the surfaces.

I suspect that this sounds meandering. But I am trying to provide some insight into the environment that Erickson was likely to have been experiencing. For you, recognize that especially in those early 1960s, what you saw on the street was already old news as the design language was advancing rapidly.

 

Jeff, this pretty much nails it...3D objects can take on another completely different look when viewed from a multitude of angles.
Orthographic views never are the same with some vehicles. Clinical and rigid. We aren't looking at architecture, but a very complex sculpted object.
But I think we've beat this one enough.

 

and now a word from 'our/my' sponsor:

I've been remiss the last several semesters in not showing the class work at school.
This semester, our sponsor is Michelin the French Tire Mfg.
The Senior project is to design a race/street car for LeMans for the yr 2030.
Rather than do the unlimited LMP, they want the students to design a car for the GT-E, class with the additional requirement of also designing a 'street version' not unlike Ferrari 458, Ford GT, Porsche et.
They must choose a brand either the traditional brands i.e. Ferrari, Aston Martin, Audi, Porsche, etc. OR a non conventional brand i.e. : Google, Dyson, Tesla, Faraday,etc.

The deliverable is a 1/5 scale painted clay model in December.

Stay tuned!

 

When did the semester start/presentation by Michelin with the design brief?

How many students?

Of those how many gear heads?

Jeff

 

We are in week 3.
Michelin kicked off the project the 1st week in Sept.

17 students

can't tell yet....

 

Mercedes rethinks the van:
Mercedes-Benz Vision Van Design Sketches and Renderings

 

Kind of cool. I remember when GM rethought the city bus, wich I liked. I heard GM had a lot of problems with the production versions. Now look at the new buses, they look like rolling sheds with windows

 

the RV's that GM was doing in the '70's based on the front drive Toro engines were the coolest....
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I LOVE these things! I'm thinking of getting one and reconfiguring it. I'm thinking an Injected LS engine, shorten the rear overhang, a bed and a large bathroom. It would make a great travel vehicle for my wife and I.

 

those things a way cool
talk about being way ahead of it's time
the interiors were very '70's, but pretty cool nonetheless

 

Huge files on these at Winnebago. Clearly the RV industry was scared that GM would come in and wipe them out. Must of been some real good sources since there were lots of confidential internal GM documents.

The GM motorhome was an absolute financial disaster. Their annual production plan turned out to be the entire total production run.

Part of the financial problem was that based upon the high production rates GM has committed to sophisticated tooling that needed to be amortized across a large (never achieved) unit volume.

The tooling also restricted make more variations of the vehicle. It was offered in 23' and 26' versions only at a time when the industry was doing 23/24' to 32' with increments in every one or 2 feet. The GM system was also far more restrictive when the traditional manufacturers were doing lots of floorplan variations which in turn made different window placements.

As neat as it was to have the Toro front wheel drive that turned out to be a problem. Motorhomes are significantly tail heavy. The fwd apparently did poorly in bad weather.

The per nit loss by GM was astounding. But the ultimate killer weren't the losses but when the Toro/Eldo downsized the smaller transmission/transaxle could not handle the vehicle requirements.

But, all that said, the GM design sophistication was so far ahead of its time. The rest of the industry was selecting which corrugated aluminum siding to use for the flat body sides.

 

Interesting side note, GM Design still uses one of the GMC Motorhomes that was completely renovated in the '90's that included adding a very large 'picture window' on 1 side only, and adding 2 rows of stadium seating so that the vehicle could be used to evaluate full size clay models on the GM 'Patio' in inclement weather.
Spent many design reviews inside that vehicle.

It's painted silver and lo & behold it's referred to as the 'Chuck Wagon'

 

No Chrome Cobra hood ornament?

Metallic silver leather seating too?

 

Exterior is 2 tone silver/met. grey
no 'hood ornament'
black fabric covered seats!
functional V 'stylistic' execution

 

was searching for something for class and these shots of the Opel CD are in my files.
Not 'editorializing' but take away what you will
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Interesting that the show car was not symmetrical. Trying different variations from different sides?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

yes, and in the biz it's referred to as a 'Clown Suit' for reasons I'm guessing you can figure out
why duplicate side to side if you can try 2 different themes?

we also had a very large mirror that we could put on the centerline of the clay to see what the symmetrical version would look like
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Opel CD

I had forgotten how the line on the nose was so sharp then made a wonderful transition to a very rounded form. That kept the clay models up late.

 

That's really cool.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

By the way......that's a young JM2 sitting at the desk reflected into the mirror

Advanced Pontiac Studio @ 1975...back in the 'Design Stone Age'

 

Proof positive that design does indeed matter:
Car Designer Peter Schreyer Helps Kia Almost Triple Sales in 10 Year Period - AutoConception.com

 

cool piece on the 1963 Corvette Rondine

Corvette Rondine (1963) - Car Design News
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There's also the fact that it's gone WAY up in quality during that time... J.D. Power, etc.
That's all a couple of my friends cared about.

I personally care about design.

 

In the many yrs I've been involved with 'focus groups', and listening to buyers talk about their car purchases, I can't ever remember anyone saying:'i wanted to buy an ugly car'

They'll tell you about how they bought for quality, price, brand, convenience, color , but given the choice between ugly & attractive, which do you think they chose?
many buyers are ambivalent regarding their purchase, in that they just want transportation, and that's to be expected, but given an A vs B choice of 'hey that looks good' or 'man is THAT ugly' they're pretty consistent as one would expect