And then, I just couldn't resist posting this beauty. Design/styling gone off the rails as it were. What I was trying to determine was the 'donor vehicle' Dodge Magnum Wagon? Image Unavailable, Please Login
WOW! Some Lincoln, a little Cadillac, a healthy dose of Batmobile......George Barris must be smiling down at this....... Yes, looks like some Magnum too.......
Humorous look at how cars used to be designed. Although I'm not sure it's a great deal different today. http://www.deansgarage.com/2021/how-a-body-design-is-developed-at-general-motors/ How A Body Design Is Developed at General Motors April 10, 20214 CommentsCartoons, Stan Mott How A Body is Developed At General Motors From Stan Mott: Digging through my files, I found this one. It’s the first published satire I did on GM Styling, running in something like 1955 or 1956 in Industrial Design magazine. It took apart the neatly complimentary article in a previous issue. I particularly enjoyed having the prototype racing around the inside of the vertical circular walls of the GM Styling Show Room. G. T. Christensen wrote: “Detroit” Postscripts (letters to the editors): “This story makes all other writeups seem inferior. On behalf of all of us in Styling, we want to extend our highest complements.” G.T. Christensen Administrative Assistant, Styling General Motors., Detroit Michigan Below Christensen’s letter, Industrial Design published Stan Mott’s take on the article: Image Unavailable, Please Login Policy Meeting: The President of the Corporation, Harlow Curtice, and his to p management committee decide there shall be a new body for the Chevrolet line in 195X. Present at the meeting is the General Manager of Chevrolet, and the Vice President in charge of Styling, Harley Earl. Image Unavailable, Please Login The President officially notifies Earl of the new assignment. Image Unavailable, Please Login Presentation of the Problem: Vice President Earl calls a meeting with the Director of Styling and heads of the Chevrolet Studio (Studio C) and the Advanced Body Studio, to discuss the objectives and character of the new line. Image Unavailable, Please Login Division Engineers (Chevrolet and Fisher Body engineers) are contacted by the studio heads to obtain the latest data n new developments and technical limitations. Image Unavailable, Please Login Preliminary layout is compiled from all available engineering data, setting specific measurements for ground clearance, seating points, overhead clearance, cowl point, and overhang. Image Unavailable, Please Login Seating Buck, or rough wooden mock-up, of the body section is constructed from these preliminary measurements. Designers and engineers test the measurements by climbing in and out of the buck. Image Unavailable, Please Login Search for design begins. Each studio, working independently with the preliminary layout, begins to develop sketch ideas that will lead tto a new styling direction. Image Unavailable, Please Login Sketches are reviewed periodically in each studio by the Vice President of Styling, the Director of Styling, and each studio head. A number of treatments —either the entire car, or more typically, a front, back, windshield or roofline—are picked out for further development. Several may be combined. Image Unavailable, Please Login Full scale proposals are reviewed by the Vice President Earl and his design committee. From these renderings they begin to isolate direction for the new line, again selecting ideas which are worth further development. Image Unavailable, Please Login With these selections as starting specifications, the studios again make sketches and another set of full-scale renderings. Generally the Advanced Body Studio concentrates on the general theme, while studio C develops ideas for characteristic detail. The melting-down process ay be repeated 2, 3, or 4 times, as ideas from each presentation are tried in new combinations or in new ways until the design committee finds one solution that successfully incorporates the characteristic features it is seeking. When the all agree on one, they give it the OK. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login This is the Kick-off—the basic body concept on which the new Chevrolet line, and possibly other lines, will be based. With the kick-off as a starting point, Studio C designers take over and begin to rework the parts that will assure them of a distinctive product: front end, rear end, final roof line, backlight, and all of the details and trim. After another round or two fo sketches and full-sized renderings, the new Chevrolet proposal is OK’d by the design committee. It is time for 3-dimensional studies… Image Unavailable, Please Login Clay Models: Studio C begins to transform its OK’d rendering into a full-scale clay model. Changes are made during modeling—frequently major ones—and all surfaces and lines are refined. An accurately-measured blackboard drawing or body draft keeps pace with event he slightest changes. From this templates are made, from which body dies will be produced. Top management is called in to view the finished clay model: The President, Manager and Sales Manager of the Division, and Fisher Body engineers are among those who give the OK. Changes may be suggested and made before the approval is final. Image Unavailable, Please Login Plaster casts are made from the perfect clay model, and a final fiberglass model is made from the casts. This is trimmed and decorated to the last detail to represent the finished car. Image Unavailable, Please Login The finished model is taken to the test track to be viewed in motion in daylight. Only in natural light can highlights be accurately checked. If no problems show up, the. Chevrolet is ready for production. 4 Comments April 11, 2021 at 6:35 am DICK RUZZIN I love the sketches, especially the people…. Brilliant. The process description has lost a lot of impact through the years. I guess that if you never experienced it you probably would find it funny but in the face of the humor of today it is a little mild, simplistic and low key. If you went through it as many times as I have, addressing the subject, it is amazing how different each experience in creating a car was, no two were ever the same, no two were even close. For me, some were unbelievably easy as the track defined was clear and fruitful. Some of the others that I experienced were very frustrating and difficult to say the least. Usually working long days, Saturdays, sometimes Sundays and even twenty-four hour shifts for several days in a row. And, sometimes very sadly, after all that the project would be cancelled. You were expected to go on and you did with great humor, the one element that was like glue present throughout the building. The two camps, the studio and the management were not always in sync. Trust was the singular element that would lead to success and if the studio was strong enough to gain control management would be placed in a reactionary position. Then you had it made. They helped a lot, putting together the right team of people, encouraging and mentoring. One thing was certain, they respected hard work and perseverance. They would move things along when the studio lost track of the vision. What was especially satisfying was when management started to delight in the progress that a design was making as we managed the themes, form language and proportion. It was not always easy in the earlier days when the platform developed by engineers was thrown over the wall to the designers to live with. That very important effort was missed in the story. I can only surmise that many at Styling in the fifties were learning to be designers on the job. It could be years before a designer could actually see enough of his work in clay to start discovering what artistic character in a car that he would actually like and be proud of. Missed also was the flexibility of the process which led to great success and the creation of the greatest industrial design complex in world history. It raised America up. Everything was provided to foster creativity, absolutely nothing was lacking. The place was inspiring in itself if you had time to look around. Every one of the very specially chosen people throughout the place, the tools created to do the work and the need. Through the years all of that would knit together to become a creative force that demonstrated great success and sometimes failure. All you had to do was to do it. If you had the talent, the determination and the will. Dick Ruzzin April 11, 2021 at 12:19 pm john m. mellberg Beautifully expressed and written Dick. You give further clarity to the story from the perspective of one who lived the dream too and realized fulfillment along the way… Thanks! Kind regards, John John M. Mellberg April 12, 2021 at 2:06 pm Stan Mott If you’re referring to the “How A Body Is Developed in General Motors” satire, John, I’m afraid I did all the cartoons presenting G.M. staff as the clowns, buffoons, nitwits and innocents as I saw them. And still do. April 17, 2021 at 8:47 am Gary Smith Stan is referring to this post, How Cars are REALLY Designed in Detroit. http://www.deansgarage.com/2011/how-cars-are-really-designed-in-detroit/
This is AWESOME! Scalloped paint, '58 Lincoln lights, subtle Cadillac Dagmars, and FINS! It probably weighs about six tons but it's way Kool... I see a seam there, but I'd love to know how those rear doors are hinged -
Maybe the back doors can only be opened when the front doors are open. That'd be an inexpensive solution. Effectively child locked by design. All the best, Andrew.
But wait! That design genera already has some serious competition as an SUV. Image Unavailable, Please Login
What actress had the greatest influence on car design? I'm going to start this with two that spring to mind; Ingrid Bergman and Dagmar (see post 12459) Bergman for the Rossellini Ferraris & Dagmar for her rather large bumpers... your suggestions for other candidates please -
Could be interesting. Or—based on recent Lambo designs—maybe not! https://www.thedrive.com/news/41901/the-lamborghini-countach-is-coming-back
Interesting one-off Mercedes. The gigantic chrome surrounds around the headlamps are hard to comprehend. Necessity or design?
^^^. I vote "design." Creator needed to do something to distinguish the front end and create "buzz" without offending (much).
Surrounds are probably something to do with the scale of the rest of the design. Ferrari shows a similar idea on a smaller scale of headlight trim for this 275 GTB/4 from 1967. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Yes of course, but technology has progressed greatly since 1967. My observation was it would have looked so much better and upscale if they had executed a smaller section. The pieces on that car look like they went to Home Depot for the material. Just my $ .02 I'm an advocate of "If it looks like it's difficult to do, then it will usually appear more 'upscale', than a coarse, crudely built piece" On a one-off Rolls, every piece should look like it was difficult to fabricate. Not look like it was fabricated in some back-ally garage. Those '60's Ferraris were using the fabrication methods of the period. I doubt they'd execute that way today.
The chrome surrounds seem in keeping with it as a homage to the old design nomenclature. However, I don't think it works well with the modern trend to stretch the headlight cluster backwards over the top of the fender. In cars that use LED clusters for that vertical running light stretched back, it just looks kinda pokey, but the chrome stretching back a non-illuminated area really accentuates the appearance of eyelids taped back to the forehead to prevent them from closing. Perhaps someone wanted to be seen in a Mercedes that looks like it's being interrogated using torture techniques... All the best, Andrew.
another 1967 example with a perhaps more bespoke touch they were capable of executing back then > Image Unavailable, Please Login
This weeks Autoextremist continues his Design discussion. Includes the Ferrari 296 for those doubters. THE AUTOEXTREMIST - RANTS DESIGN MATTERS, PART III. Image Unavailable, Please Login TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021 AT 04:13PM By Peter M. DeLorenzo Detroit. In this conclusion of my series on Automotive Design (read Design Matters, Part I and Part II – WG), it’s clear that I place a high value on the efficacy and execution of design. It’s also no secret that I believe that design will maintain its position as the Ultimate Initial Product Differentiator going forward, in fact, even more so than ever before. This series has generated a lot of comments from within the industry, especially – and understandably so – from the design community. I would say that the vast majority of the comments we received were positive, and that’s gratifying, because I have the utmost respect for the creative talents who work in the design houses all over the world. As I’ve said many times before, the artisans who toil in design studios are the most influential people in the automobile business. They set the tone for brands and lead the word-of-mouth, “street look” discussions, and their visionary work can make – or break – a car company’s fortunes. It’s grueling work, too, because designers live in a particularly strange Twilight Zone where they have to dwell in the past and present, while working on a future that’s coming well down the road. That means lead designers have to present “new” designs to the media and public that have been basically “baked” three-to-five years before. Then they go back to their respective studios to put the finishing touches on designs that will appear five years into the future. This work requires, vision, discipline and a savagely creative mindset that is instantly graded the moment the wraps are taken off of their latest designs. It is a tough, tough profession, but when you talk to designers, most wouldn’t trade it for anything. Seeing something in concept or production form that they had a key role in creating presents a level of exhilaration that’s extremely hard to beat. That intro was kind of a labyrinthian way of getting to my final discussion topic, which is a question that I get asked all the time: “Given everything you know (and have discussed especially these past few weeks), who’s doing design well right now?” That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it? Design matters more than at any other time in automotive history. In this 24/7, nanosecond-attention-span world we live in today, the hot “street look” of the moment captures all the attention and interest, and usually results in red-hot sales figures too. Exotic cars lead the discussion, but just because a car is expensive doesn’t mean its design is automatically compelling. Unless, of course we’re talking about Ferrari. The newest Ferrari – the 296 GTB – is compact, lightweight and has a taut skin that stretches over its fenders and haunches to create a damn-near perfect form. It is simply extraordinary from every angle and it is the definitive supercar of the moment. Image Unavailable, Please Login (Ferrari) The 2022 Ferrari 296 GTB. Image Unavailable, Please Login (Ferrari) Image Unavailable, Please Login (Ferrari) Image Unavailable, Please Login (Ferrari) But you’re probably saying, that’s Ferrari, we expect a Ferrari to have jaw-dropping street presence and compelling design. Fair point, but I can also mention several exotics that have little to no appeal at all. We’ll skip that for now, however. When I consider contemporary design, I am going to leave pickups, SUVs and crossovers out of the discussion. I am just not interested, and even though they are the overwhelming choice in the mainstream market, they bring nothing to the design table. At all. (The exception being the Cadillac Lyriq, which is due next spring.) That word “mainstream” is key. It’s one thing to do provocative concepts that shine under the auto show lights, but it’s quite another to bring those high-concept executions to the street. Bill Mitchell, the exceptional design legend who inherited the mantle from Harley Earl and propelled GM to incredible heights during the company’s heyday (1957-1977), specialized in bringing concept car looks to the streets and byways of mainstream America. It was a 20-year period unrivaled in automotive history, in fact. No one did it better, and no one influenced contemporary automotive design quite like Bill Mitchell did. The 1959 Corvette Sting Ray racer; 1963 Corvette Sting Ray; the Mako Shark concepts; the 1963 Buick Riviera (although I prefer the ’65), the Oldsmobile Toronado; the Cadillac Eldorado; the Chevrolet Camaro; the Pontiac Firebird, Grand Prix and GTO; and the list goes on and on. Image Unavailable, Please Login (GM) Bill Mitchell and the 1959 Corvette Sting Ray racer. Image Unavailable, Please Login (GM) The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. Image Unavailable, Please Login (GM) The 1963 Buick Riviera. Image Unavailable, Please Login (GM) The 1961 Corvette Mako Shark I and 1965 Corvette Mako Shark II. And when I think of Mitchell and his thoughts on design, and his absolute belief in bringing the “good stuff” to mainstream America, I believe there is one contemporary car that would meet with his approval, and that is the Lexus LC 500 (images below). Yes, it is pricey (at around $100,000), but when this machine appeared as a concept several years ago and then appeared in showrooms pretty much untouched and intact, it resonated with people and still does to this day. Why? It is fluid and expressive, its surface detailing is impressive and its overall form is flat-out gorgeous. I would argue that no mainstream contemporary car manufacturer stuck to its guns like Lexus did with the LC 500. They could have pulled up short and faked it in spots, but they didn’t. Instead, they executed it perfectly and the result is especially pleasing to the eye while projecting a street presence that is unmistakable. Mitchell would have been pleased. That does it for my design discussions, at least for now, but I can’t leave you without mentioning the annual events taking place out in Monterey, California, this week. “Monterey Car Week” stopped being about the purity of automotive enthusiasm a long time ago, and all perspective has been most assuredly lost. Now, it is a Greed Fest extraordinaire, with a level of hucksterism and debilitating, fleecing auctions that far exceed anything even remotely resembling “normal.” When WG pointed out to me that tickets for The Quail had risen to $995.00 each, with a six-month advance purchase awarded through a lottery, I knew that the whole thing had become a pathetic exercise that we’re very happy to miss. And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week. Image Unavailable, Please Login (Lexus) The 2021 Lexus LC 500. Image Unavailable, Please Login (Lexus) Image Unavailable, Please Login (Lexus) Image Unavailable, Please Login (Lexus)
