car design thread

In addition to "Go ahead, make my day", what if Clint had said "my day is one thing you can go ahead and make, but enough about my day, what do you think of my day ...?"

 

yes. too much gilding, not enough restraint.
its somewhat unfortunate that modern production capabilities allow for more and more fantastical shapes.
if they were actually physically restrained from some of these things, they would produce better designs.

like the '56/57 continental. simple yet elegant.

 

Gilding is the word Ive been looking for for weeks !

 

I found myself browsing images from the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show and have really fallen in love with the :

Daihatsu DN Compagno Concept
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Honda Sports EV Concept
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Apologies if these were discussed in October. I may have missed it.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/best-cars-of-the-2017-tokyo-motor-show/

 

SO ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!! It is so disappointing that there is leadership throughout the industry that has abdicated all semblance of taste.

 

In the home building business, we call this "canine design." Picture a circle of dogs sniffing each other's butts.

 

I dont think Id seen the Devel Sixteen posted in this thread. Its an unlikely to make it to production concept but I find the rear end very interesting. I dig it.



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Funny, you posted the exact same post... maybe word for word... in the home design thread a while back.
I'm in the business and never heard the phrase 'canine design', but, I'm not in Texas...

 

Actually, my business partner made it up. We did about 250 homes a year, but they were our own designs. Whenever we would open new models, the entire design and marketing team from David Weekly would come out with cameras and tape measures. We would smile because we knew they would never get it. They designed products. We designed places where people loved to live. They read Big Builder magazine (I believe it is now gone) to get ideas. We went to California to meet with really creative designers to get ideas. We were always at least two years ahead of them. I’m not a designer. (I’m the money guy.) But, I did learn it costs just as much to do ugly as pretty. I also learned ugly is the most expensive design one can do.


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Your description of the difference of good and bad design is the same as what Bob Lutz preached. The cost is virtually the same but when the design is compelling the potential buyer is not cross shopping or relying upon the size of discount to close the deal.

 

I can go for days on this subject. The problem, in my experience, is most designers focus on what they like. They want to express their vision. That's cool if you are an artist and don't give a damn whether anyone likes your vision or not. When you're selling big-ticket items, and housing doesn't get any bigger ticket, you better pay attention to what customers like. I said I was a home builder. That's not completely correct. What we actually sold was a lifestyle experience that began at the neighborhood level. We only had four floor plans,but we typically had four different neighborhoods ongoing in the $190k to $490k price range. Each neighborhood would be designed from the ground up for a specific market niche: young families, move up, pre-empty nesters, and active retirees. But, each neighborhood had the same basic kitchen floor plan.After finally nailing kitchens, we stuck with what worked. It was funny watching a couple walk our models. The guy would dig the elevation and the neighborhood. The wife would walk in and make a beeline for the kitchen. She'd walk around it a few times and then go sit down in the family room. All that was left was for the husband to start filling out the mortgage paperwork.

Guess what car company also does this (or used to)? Toyota.

BTW;, the one thing different between uis and car companies was WE controlled the sales environment. No turnover plans, No ****ing sales manager bs. No ****ing F&I crap. We didn't even use sales traps. You didn't have to go through the sales office to walk the models. I HATE THE NEW CAR BUYING EXPERIENCE. Thankfully, I'll probably never do it again.

 

Great business model, and as far as home building goes, it sounds very similar to what people like Eichler and Alexander did in Southern California back in the middle of the 20th century. Homes designed for a particular lifestyle and designed around the way people wanted to live. Those pockets of Eichlers or the vast neighborhoods in Palm Springs of Alexanders each had their own identity and lifestyle associated with them. And as I'm sure you know, in some of those neighborhoods, they didn't even have four models...just a single floor plan with 4 or 5 different elevations.But they worked because of how well-designed they were and now have come to be regarded as very desirable classics. I'm not surprised you created a successful business working that way.

 

Thanks. Frankly, I believe understanding what your customer wants, even when they don't know what they want, is the ONLY business model that works. Our problem in Houston was customers didn't know what they wanted because everybody built the same crap (sound familiar). You wouldn't believe how hard we had to fight developers and bankers, "You want to do what?" For example, in the late '80s, during the worst of the depression here, we opened a neighborhood for young families. We insisted the developer build a small park at the entrance to the hood, and they fought us and fought us and fought us on this. At the time, the only lots they were selling were big custom lots to people relocating from California. (This was when the tax law made you reinvest the sale of your home.) After much grumbling, the developer built the park. We had a line the first day. This was with no advertising. It's really not hard. You need to develop empathy skills so you can climb out of your skin and look at the world through your potential customer's eyes. Sadly, so few designers do this.

 

Here's a challenge for you car designers. One of the biggest challenges for home designers is.... garages. Garages and driveways are ugly. This is one area where pretty can cost a lot more money than ugly. Once upon a time, the standard lot was 90 x 120, and you could hide a detached garage behind the house. Today, most builder lots are 50s, some even 40s. It is relatively easy to shrink and be creative with the house plan, but a damn two-car garage is a PIA. Even worse, you can end up with a baby snout where two-car garage is bigger than the house, "Someday, when I grow up, my snout won't look so big."

The current workaround is alley loaded homes. Problem is alleys are ugly and don't work well with the traffic flow in suburban designs. If there is any interest, I can share the "basket weave" solution we came up with.

The link to car designs is wheels are garages, and they are too damn big today. Look at a Fisker. Nice looking car, but those wheels, ugh. It makes the car look like it needs to blow its nose. (Sorry Ross) When you combine huge wheels with low profile tires, all you see are the wheels. To me, these huge wheels are strange attractors. It makes it hard to look at the rest of the car. Not to mention, having Cam-Am race car size tires on a street car is stupid. Makes me want to get into the rim repair business. But apparently big ugly wheels sell. So whatcha gonna do?

Ps: These big ugly ass tires are also noisy. That muted roar you hear from the freeway, is all from wide profile tires.



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i think wheel size is a personal preference.
putting enormous wagon wheels on cars that were not specifically designed for them does not look good.

but, one of the standard comments on my fisker is 'wow, those wheels are great. they really fill out the wheel wells, make it look powerful, etc'. and the reason that is so is because the car was designed from the start to have that size on there - it is why the front and back fenders arch up to portray strength, leaping cat, powerful shoulders etc - and would not look as good with 18" wheels.

 

Thought that might get a rise out of you.

The new camaro is probably a better example. Wheels are too damn big.

 

I agree mostly with Texas Forever on this one. While I agree that wheel wells look much better when they're "mostly full of wheel & tire", I MUCH prefer a smaller wheel with higher profile tires than what we're currently seeing. I also much prefer wheels that have some depth to them. Since I'm not racing cars on a track, I really don't care about the loss in aero that the depth might contribute to...I want them to look cool! (and of course the higher profile tires make the ride better, too)

 

Maybe we should define what we're all talking about a bit more. To me, these are both just about perfect, and much nicer looking than the ratio of most wheel/tire combos today. I drive an SUV and there's more rubber on these two cars...are these wheels too small in your opinion?


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And by the way jm, you were clearly spot on in what you were pushing for in terms of wheels / tires as that is clearly what everybody likes..as you said, ahead of the curve

I just prefer something different.

 

Looks spot on to me.