Very surprised with the car used for the cover shot for the Giugaro book. An interesting photo but not one of his better works and certainly not one representative of his best work.
would agree and go even further and say that car was dreadful, which just proves ya don't hit a home-run every time, even if you are Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds
Some of the worthy ones would be: Sharknose 250 SWB - from his earliest era Ghibli from his just pre-Ital Design Sirocco and Golf/Rabbit for mass production Lots and lots of show cars to choose from in the folded paper era.
Yes they were. Pininfarina represented finesse and Bertone/Gandini represented wow, sometime bordering on absurd. But Giugaro mastered the plane construction which was a sea change. The other part of Guigaro's period work was the near flush side glass to body side.
Never seen this one! The side window openning and rear quarter looks more like '70 Chevelle. :\ Yep! I agree, those flush side windows were cool. Modern cars are less flush. Mercedes W140 is the only one being even more flush than Audi with window buttons (metal buttons that hold the glass in the rails, you know). As for Giugiaro, I've always fallen in love with his extraterrestial sized tinted glasses of the late 80s - early 90s, as used on Nazca C2 and many others. His designs are very strictly ruled, he rarely uses any negative shape (concaved planes), only positive ones are present after the 70s.
It's now part of an awesome collection of Mopar stuff. All kinds of the Peter Max-like marketing materials of the Rapid Transit System era, as well as the Rapid Transit show cars themselves ... Just A Car Guy : The Steven Juliano Collection, I'm betting it's the best collection of Mopar stuff anywhere.
I was working at the FoMoCo Design Center when Larry Shinoda's Studio were designing that car, and I thought, WTF are these guys thinking? It was so OTT no one could believe it would ever see the light of day
Any not always for the good reasons. That was at the height of the Palace Revolt over the bringing in of Bunkie Knudsen.
It was a strange time to be at Ford. Politics to the death. I was in the studio next to Shinoda's Performance Studio, and the day they fired him was a strange day. The guys in his studio had mocked up Japanese flags and were waving them around when the news broke. Mr. Bordinat was a happy camper once again. That studio was doing all the cool stuff, like the Boss Mustangs, etc. Larry went on to join with Knudson and start RecTrans Motorhomes. Not like designing Corvette Stingrays. Crazy stuff.
believe it or not, I personally believe it was a little bit of both, but I guess I'll never know for sure. Because of the toxic political atmosphere, it wasn't cool to be on Larry's side. Yet I think his team for the most part liked him and his talent. The ironic thing is that I remember it so clearly, and it was over 45 yrs ago Must have made an impression on the wet behind the ears clay sculptor. from Wikipedia:In 1968 Henry Ford II hired former GM executive Bunkie Knudsen to be president of Ford. Knudsen recruited Shinoda to come to Ford in hopes of improving the styling and sales of Ford's lineup. Shinoda's first project at Ford was a high-performance Mustang known as the Boss 302 Mustang.[5] Reportedly Shinoda chose the name "Boss" as a homage to Knudsen. He led design for the Mustang models for 1970-1973 as well, but when Knudsen was fired from Ford late in 1969 Shinoda left as well.
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Strange stuff. It's amazing how political some companies can be. Nice exterior, but the dashboard needs to be more cocooning - straight or bending away doesn't have a good feel to it. All the best, Andrew.
my sentiments as well took a great looking car, and.......made it more complex & less attractive? Seriously?
well... at least they didn't do a terrible job. The Q7 is awful. They took a good looking unique looking vehicle in the segment with strong identity and just gaffed the whole thing. Its not hideous. But... its not what it was. I wouldn't even consider it now. In fact we have removed it from our list to purchase. The other very strange thing about the Q7s design even on the previous generation is... Where did all the room go? They are HUGE vehicles. At times Several inches larger than there competitors yet on the inside are even smaller? They use the space terribly. When you are in that 60k-70k SUV class... you have many great looking vehicle from which to choose. I don't know how anyone chooses the Audi
