I always find these psychoanalysis pieces about design interesting. Pick-up truck design has indeed morphed into something different than the original concept. From Bloomberg News. What Happened to Pickup Trucks? To get a handle on what’s happened to pickup trucks, it really helps to use a human body for scale. In some nerdy Internet circles — specifically, bike and pedestrian advocacy — it has become trendy to take a selfie in front of the bumper of random neighborhood Silverados. Among the increasingly popular heavy-duty models, the height of the truck’s front end may reach a grown man’s shoulders or neck. When you involve children in this exercise it starts to become really disturbing. My four-year-old son, for example, barely cleared the bumper on a lifted F-250 we came across in a parking lot last summer. Vehicles of this scale saddle their drivers with huge front and rear blind zones that make them perilous to operate in crowded areas. Even car guys have been sounding the alarm about the mega-truck trend recently. A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Neil complained about his close encounter in a parking lot with a 2020 GMC Sierra HD Denali: “The domed hood was at forehead level. The paramedics would have had to extract me from the grille with a spray hose.” Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds on average. Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds — or about three Honda Civics. These vehicles have a voracious appetite for space, one that’s increasingly irreconcilable with the way cities (and garages, and parking lots) are built. Styling trends are almost as alarming. Pickup truck front ends have warped into scowling brick walls, billboards for outwardly directed hostility. “The goal of modern truck grilles,” wrote Jalopnik’s Jason Torchinsky in 2018, “seems to be… about creating a massive, brutal face of rage and intimidation.” During the pandemic, U.S. buyers seemed to respond to this kind of packaging. In May 2020, Americans bought more pickup trucks than cars for the first time. Five of the 10 top-selling vehicles in the U.S. last year were pickup trucks. Giant, furious trucks are more than just a polarizing consumer choice: Large pickups and SUVs are notably more lethal to other road users, and their conquest of U.S. roads has been accompanied by a spike in fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists. As I wrote in my 2020 book Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Detroit Free Press have pointed to the rise in SUVs and large pickups as the main culprit in the pedestrian mortality surge. The truck trend is contributing to another troubling crash-related disparity: In a new study, the IIHS shows that women — who tend choose smaller vehicles — are suffering higher injury and death rates than their male counterparts, despite the fact than women engage in fewer risks and crash less. Why have pickup trucks morphed into such huge, angry, and dangerous presences? Traffic safety experts, commentators on U.S. automotive culture, and social scientists have suggested a range of forces behind truck bloat. The truckification of the family car One key driver of pickup growth relates to how they are now being used. If you overlook their gleefully violent styling and garage-unfriendly footprint, these vehicles have become more practical as family vehicles. Despite the agrarian pursuits that TV commercials suggest, today’s pickup trucks are being built more to haul kids and families than sheep and boulders. Until the 1980s, almost every pickup truck sold in the U.S. had a single cab, meaning seating for three max in a single bench-style seat, with a bed that was eight feet long for a full-sized long-bed vehicle. That old no-frills working-style truck is fading into history. In 2020, 85% of pickup trucks sold had “crew cabs” or “extended crew cabs” or one of a handful of other tough-guy euphemisms with two sets of seats for five people — most with four doors. Some have four regular-size doors. These passenger-heavy, cargo-lite arrangements are so popular that some automakers — like Ram — have stopped even offering single cabs in their best-selling pickup brands. As pickups transformed into family vehicles, they also became more luxurious. The average truck in the U.S. sells for almost $50,000 now — a 41% increase compared to a decade ago — and many boast posh, feature-laden interiors designed to compete with high-end SUVs and sedans, as auto writer Jim Gorzelany writes in Forbes. As a result, today’s truck owners include all kinds of people who don’t necessarily need (and rarely use) these vehicles’ defining features: the open cargo-hauling bed and towing capabilities. Some choose big trucks because smaller vehicles make them feel too vulnerable on modern highways. Michael Powell, a social worker who lives in rural Maine, says he’d rather drive a compact car, but he has PTSD from a former car crash: He drives a truck, he says, “because everyone else in my town does, and it’s the only way I can get around without feeling like I’m gonna die.” Jeff Weidner, an assistant professor at a college in El Paso, Texas, says he feels a little guilty about choosing to buy a full-size Toyota Tundra — but admits he likes it. “We were looking for something that would hold six people, would be good for long trips in terms of space and carrying our stuff,” he says. At first, he planned on buying the mid-size Tacoma, but “they upsold us hard with the Tundra. They barely even had stock of Tacomas — they probably do not make enough money on them.” The U.S.’s perverse regulatory and tax environment contributes to this arms race. Ford’s heavy-duty F-250, for example, benefits from its regulatory status as a commercial vehicle, unlike the slightly smaller F-150. The same goes for other heavy-duty models like the Ram 2500 and Silverado 2500HD, which aren’t classified as passenger vehicles, but as work machines, and are thus exempt from EPA fuel economy reporting regulations. “Nobody tracks the gas mileage — there’s no EPA rating for that car,” says Dan Albert, author of Are We There Yet?: The American Automobile Past, Present and Driverless. Business tax structure also encourages many business owners to opt for the bigger F-250 over the F-150, making the added cost almost negligible. Going large doesn’t necessarily exact a major toll in fuel expenses, either: While pickups have gotten bigger they have also become — while not exactly green — certainly less gas guzzling. Equipped with a hybrid powertrain, the 2021 Ford F-150 can achieve 25 miles per gallon in the city, six more than a Honda Odyssey minivan. “We have gotten better at making them more efficient,” says Benjamin Sovacool, a researcher who studies energy transitions. That fuel efficiency is set to leap forward again, with the arrival of Tesla’s Cybertruck, GM’s rebooted 1,000-horsepower Hummer EV, and host of other electrified rigs: battery-powered vehicles that overcompensate for their non-polluting powertrains with hyper-aggressive styling and power ratings. Make way for “petro-masculinity” But that doesn’t mean the decision to buy a $50,000 truck with a 4,200-pound payload rating for the occasional trip to the golf course or hardware store is strictly rational. Personal vehicles are not merely functional appliances: They are used as refuges, fortresses and private enclaves, and serve as important signifiers of class and gender identity, as Sovacool explored in a 2018 study. To Albert, the booming appeal of bigger and more brutish trucks reflects “a crisis of masculinity,” he says. “Nothing could be more emasculating than driving a minivan. So you want the vehicle that’s going to maintain your performative masculinity.” The fact that supersized pickup trucks were often deployed as political props (and weapons) during the Trump era did not escape the notice of scholars like Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech. In a widely shared 2018 journal article, Daggett coined the term “petro-masculinity” to describe flamboyant expressions of fossil fuel use by men (and some women as well, but mostly men) as a reaction against social progress. To these drivers, “the affront of global warming or environmental regulations appear as insurgents on par with the dangers posed by feminists and queer movements seeking to leach energy and power from the state/traditional family,” she wrote. Petro-masculinity helps explain not only these vehicles’ confrontational styling, but the often equally belligerent way in which they are operated. The EPA estimates that more than half a million trucks — 15% of the diesel-powered pickups on U.S. roads — have had their emissions equipment modified over the last decade in order to increase their power and polluting potential. There’s a cottage industry devoted to the practice of bypassing emissions standards; such modified vehicles are believed to emit as much pollution as 9 million emissions-compliant diesel trucks. While illegal, some drivers flaunt their ability to pollute, via the behavior known as “rolling coal,” in which drivers of modified diesel trucks blow black smoke at targets of their disapproval (often Prius drivers or bicyclists). “Burning fossil fuels can come to function as a knowingly violent experience,” Daggett writes, “a reassertion of white masculine power on an unruly planet that is perceived to be increasingly in need of violent, authoritarian order.” Built for battle Geopolitical factors have long played a role in car and truck design in the U.S.: Jeeps, of course, began as military vehicles adapted to civilian use, a heritage the company still proudly announces on its site, saying the brand is “forever tied to freedom, capability and adventure.” The first iteration of GM’s Hummer brand spun from the high-profile role that Humvee military vehicles used in the Persian Gulf War. Other manufacturers continue to cultivate connections to the military as well. Ford advertises its F-150 is made of “military-grade aluminum alloy” for the “working warrior.” In his excellent illustrated essay “About Face,” cartoonist Nate Powell, whose father was an Air Force officer, explores the recent emergence of the overtly “paramilitary aesthetic” in truck and SUV design and connects it to recent U.S. “forever wars,” in which regular troops have mixed with private security units, special forces and law enforcement officers in battlefields around the world. Many veterans of these campaigns employed up-armored civilian vehicles, and they brought a taste for such machines back home with them. That aesthetic can be detected not only in the raised “militarized” grille height of pickup trucks, but also the popularity of aftermarket modifications like blacked-out windows and “bull bars” affixed to the front end. Together, the way these trucks look speaks to a “rejection of communication, reciprocity and legal accountability,” Powell writes. At their heart, these consumer choices also reflect something else, says Sovacool: fear. “We are questioning our place in the world, with globalization and Trump. We’re also feeling really uncertain and unsafe — the pandemic, terrorism.” With its “bulletproof” stainless-steel skin and “bioweapon defense mode,” perhaps no vehicle feels as precisely calibrated to the anxieties of its era as the Tesla Cybertruck. Such vehicles promise more than just “defensive security,” wherein a larger vehicle at least theoretically protects its occupants better in a collision with a smaller vehicle: They are built to project “offensive security,” Sovacool says. “If you do need a vehicle that will go off road, carry lots of weapons or run over people,” he says, “then these bigger vehicles do it better than these smaller ones.” Only in America Threaded within the pickup’s militaristic branding is a powerful appeal to national pride. U.S. automakers have long dominated pickup truck sales, which produce enormous profits for Detroit-based companies and employ a lot of domestic auto workers. No wonder there’s such hesitancy among regulators to stand in the way of some of their more egregious styling trends or emissions loopholes. “In a way, critiquing them is seen as anti-American and anti-jobs,” says Sovacool. In a 2016 essay for N+1, Albert also reflected on the burden of associations — nostalgic and nationalistic — that pickups carry: “To drive a thirsty truck is to live in a pre-EPA era, before the spikes in gas prices, before political correctness,” he wrote. “To fill the bottomless tank of a pickup … is to practice the religion of the American Way. It is to affirm climate denial, petrol-adventurism, and American exceptionalism.” There are many ways to untangle pickup trucks from this trap and rein in their most destructive excesses. Federal regulators could revise the EPA mandates that the largest pickups now avoid, and impose stronger rules on pedestrian safety to make trucks and SUVs less lethal. The tax code could be reformed, so businesses that purchase the largest commercial trucks aren’t rewarded with a 100% depreciation bonus on the first year. Cities could stiffen parking policies and raise vehicle fees so that such impractically scaled machines will be less appealing to buyers who have little need of their capabilities. But any such efforts can’t be merely “technocratic,” Daggett says — they must grapple with the broader societal forces that these supertrucks have tapped into. “A lot of things are attached to fossil fuel culture because they are symbolically a part of a certain way of life or an identity,” she says. “It’s no longer possible to operate in the world and not understand that fossil fuels are violent. It’s a kind of spectacular performance of power.” Angie Schmitt is a writer and planning consultant and author of Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/best-vintage-car-designs?fbclid=IwAR1cQG8jEXdQAIqtws88da6fDOMpmHOeH2dR7NGsXB91iWlxIC5TDOG_Qmg See some of the greatest and most bizarre car designs of the 20th century By Jason Barlow22 October 2019 Imagine!, a new book charting never-before-seen designs from the American auto industry’s Big Three, is a window into a bygone era, when art and industry were intertwined on the ultimate canvas: the car In Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 – the source of François Truffaut’s fabulous 1966 film – books are outlawed and burned by government "firemen". These days all they’d need to do is unplug the internet or immolate the world’s vast server farms. It doesn’t do to stop and ponder how much human knowledge and thought exists only in the digital realm, but perhaps Charlie Brooker might want to have a look at it. It’s an idea that Patrick Kelley’s book Imagine! plays with to a certain extent. It’s a book, for a start, from one of those boutique publishers whose existence gives succour to the idea that plenty of people still cherish the written word printed on a physical page. (Dalton Watson is based near Chicago and specialises mainly in delightfully obscure automotive subject matter.) But the extra layer here is the real hook: it’s a history of automobile concept art during the midcentury heyday of the American car industry, when Detroit’s Big Three – Chrysler, Ford and General Motors – employed armies of designers and let their imaginations run riot. They drew, painted and rendered – using ink and pencil or mixed media, pre-computers of course – and in this heady era the results were often astounding. But they also rarely saw the light of day, the conceptual art remaining filed away in the design offices for fear of plagiarism or letting slip some big idea, and ultimately destroyed. Image Unavailable, Please Login Kelley’s interest in the area grew out of his love of art deco and he stumbled upon some original car art work at a San Francisco antiques fair 15 years ago. "I wanted to share these images, as I believe that this is an American story now almost lost, from a period when the automobile companies were kings of American industry, when imagination and creativity were driven and encouraged," he says. "The only way the images in this collection physically left the design centres or factories was if the designer took them home. Michigan experiences fierce winter weather and pipes break and basements flood. Dad or grandpa’s old car drawings might just have been floating in the mess downstairs." So having amassed a remarkable collection of images, Kelley’s decision to publish the book amounts to a public service. This is in part, at least, the story of the defining industry of America in the 20th century. If Henry Ford is credited with pioneering mass production, GM’s president Alfred P Sloan is the figure who realised that regularly updating the model lines, charging more for different versions and annually updating the styling would generate increased revenue. Yep, he’s the father of "planned obsolescence". Image Unavailable, Please Login Some hugely influential designers ran in parallel – Harley Earl, Virgil Exner, Raymond Loewy, Dick Teague and Bill Mitchell were all genuine visionaries – and Kelley’s book provides a rarely seen insight into the work their teams did. The post-War era, spanning the jet age up to the early Seventies, when the Oil Crisis permanently disrupted Detroit’s output and creative mojo, is beautifully documented. There’s as much art as there is industry here. Imagine! Automobile Concept Art From The 1930s To The 1980s by Patrick Kelley (Dalton Watson, £100) is out now.
More women in design https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/08/automotive-hall-of-fame-helene-rother-automotive-designer/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALOy-spYaLIbPbEnYq2hBf6Vp36_ZKGiQ3Dhkj51qgytxZcX6uT8Mjk0npId3tAkPM51iEa1AX96IkuAm0ypiUKOmq1Uovsry9LarrByoh_nuVuKAPPlWKB9-rSEbx1EqcuZsqWiebNbXx1N7p-BTlxPgvgh8ZW1Ql6OPo3ALQ_U&fbclid=IwAR3r1Lz6Pyk7H5ydzORF_IqnxDlCtBTSeLHUT8RpC7c9t6gk7CcLQOg3_i8
Enzo had it right. https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/jaguar-e-type-60th-anniversary-collection-1234601291/?fbclid=IwAR0BNRaN7lOWyNr5yrb2jUqDjpazUKUOaT6RMaZlqpKfTCY6sv2QYbXpuoE MARCH 12, 2021 How the Jaguar E-Type’s Legendary Debut Inspired This Limited Pair of 60th Anniversary Models Sold as a set, the commemorative coupe and roadster will be limited to a total of six examples each. By BASEM WASEF Image Unavailable, Please Login Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. Upon seeing its lithesome shape for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show, Enzo Ferrari famously declared the Jaguar E-type to be the most beautiful car in the world. But the backstory behind Jaguar’s conspicuous debut is one for the ages. Two E-types were unveiled in Geneva on March 15, 1961: an Opalescent Gunmetal Grey fixed-head coupe, and a British Racing Green roadster. While their jaw-dropping shapes awed the crowd in attendance, their debut was a last-minute boondoggle that could have ended in a no-show. Image Unavailable, Please Login The Jaguar E-type 60 Collection comprises six sets of coupes and roadsters. Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. The coupe had been loaned to journalists for test drives ahead of the exhibition, achieving a remarkable 150 mph on public highways before it was driven to Geneva by publicist Bob Berry just in time for the introduction. And on the night before the event, company founder Sir William Lyons ordered test driver Norman Dewis to “drop everything and bring the open-top E-Type over,” which triggered a frantic 17-hour cannonball from Coventry to Geneva, culminating in his arrival just 20 minutes before its official reveal. Image Unavailable, Please Login The coupe dressed in an exclusive color dubbed “Flat Out Grey.” Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. The two prototypes that spawned the E-type’s 13-year production are the stuff of automotive legend and, 60 years later, Jaguar is commemorating their anniversary by building a dozen identically spec’d E-types for six lucky customers. The E-type 60 Collection, comprising vehicles that will only be sold in pairs, will be finished in uniquely formulated paint colors dubbed “Flat Out Grey” and “Drop Everything Green,” similar to the shades of the original coupe and convertible, respectively. Out of respect for the singular pair, the colors will never again be used in another production Jaguar. The six coupes will be upholstered in what’s named Smooth Black leather, while the same number of convertibles will receive Suede Green hides. Image Unavailable, Please Login The celebratory roadster wearing “Drop Everything Green.” Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. Moderate mechanical upgrades include a specially developed five-speed gearbox with synchromesh, electronic ignition on the 3.8-liter inline-six engine and a stainless-steel exhaust system. Modernizing the cockpits are retro-style Jaguar Classic infotainment systems offering Bluetooth connectivity and satellite navigation. Image Unavailable, Please Login A 3.8-liter inline-six engine is carried by every car in the Jaguar E-type 60 Collection. Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. The vehicles will also be distinguished by an engraving on the center console by artist Johnny Dowell, each of which takes approximately 100 hours to finish by hand. The inscription depicts the drive route from Coventry to Geneva, and will be executed in collaboration with each owner. Though the color and trim specification for these dozen cars is non-negotiable, Jaguar Classic will be happy to work with customers on so-called “sympathetic” upgrades, such as power steering or air conditioning. Image Unavailable, Please Login Each vehicle will feature a center console hand-engraved by artist Johnny Dowell, work that takes 100 hours to complete. Photo: Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC. While Jaguar Classic offers 3.8-liter E-type continuations starting at approximately $440,000, it has not disclosed a price tag for these unique pairings. If you’re on the fence about this limited-edition duo, consider one perk of joining this tiny club: Jaguar is organizing a commemorative Coventry-to-Geneva road trip with the twelve cars in the summer of 2022— hopefully at a more leisurely pace than the original jaunt.
PROFILES 5 MIN THE JACKIE ROBINSON OF CAR DESIGN: MCKINLEY THOMPSON JR. Image Unavailable, Please Login Detroit earned its moniker “the Motor City” because it was the home base of the “Big Three” automobile manufacturing companies: Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. The Ford Motor Co.—whose history traces back to the early days of cars when they were called “horseless carriages”—was noted for various innovations. Indeed, in 1913 Henry Ford helped develop the moving assembly line system that increased the efficiency of industrial mass production. Then in 1914, Ford led the way in fueling the Detroit-area’s economy by suddenly doubling the wages of many thousands of employees—autoworkers who eventually formed a new local middle class. But unlike the Motown music factory across town, none of the Big Three would be particularly renowned for recruiting Black talent into important positions, which makes the saga of the Black designer McKinley Thompson, Jr. quite remarkable. His hiring by Ford occurred just as the civil rights movement began to make serious progress, and later the Detroit Free Press would be inspired to refer to Thompson as the “Jackie Robinson of car design.” Image Unavailable, Please Login McKinley Thompson Jr., a Ford designer who helped pen the first-generation Bronco, was the first African American designer hired at Ford Motor Company after graduating from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California with a degree in transportation design in 1956. Photo provided by Ford Motor Company Image Unavailable, Please Login Born in 1922 and raised in New York, “Mac” Thompson recalled that his fascination with cars came seemingly as a sort of divine revelation when, as a young boy, he spotted a stunning DeSoto Airflow on the street. “It just so happened that at that moment the clouds opened up for the sunshine to come through. It lit that car up like a searchlight. I was never so impressed with anything in all my life. I knew that’s what I wanted to do—I wanted to be an automobile designer.” Thompson went on to serve in the U.S. military during WWII where he learned drafting and worked as an engineering layout coordinator. Then in 1953, Motor Trend magazine held a car-design contest titled “From Dream to Drawing Board to?” Thompson’s futuristic entry won the contest and his prize included a scholarship to the ArtCenter College of Design in California. In 1956 he graduated with a degree in transportation design and Ford promptly hired him to work in their advanced design studio where Thompson would be tasked with working on a light-duty truck project, on the sleek Thunderbird, on the legendary GT40 racer, and on early sketches of Ford’s Mustang sports coupe. Image Unavailable, Please Login THOMPSON’S WORK IMPACTED THE DESIGN LANGUAGE THAT WOULD BECOME ICONIC ATTRIBUTES OF THE FIRST-GENERATION BRONCO. Image Unavailable, Please Login SHOP MACKINAW WOOL CRUISER JACKET Introduced in 1964, the Mustang was the first of three Ford models that would carry names associated with horses. The effective and emotionally powerful image of magnificent wild stallions running free across the open range has been harnessed by savvy marketeers in their ongoing quest to sell products. Ford saddled up and rode that concept hard, also introducing, with varying degrees of success, the subcompact Pinto in 1970 and their sports-utility vehicle, the Bronco, in 1966. While the former ultimately flopped, the Bronco proved to be a dependable workhorse. Image Unavailable, Please Login 1 OF 1 The Ford Bronco was intended to compete with two existing off-road vehicles, Chrysler’s CJ-5 Jeep and International Harvester’s Scout. Thompson began his conceptual sketches for the Bronco at least as early as July 1963. His proposed designs showed an open-air, two-door, short and square, 4×4 boxy rig with high ground clearance and wheels positioned at the extreme corners, offering a look of aggressive yet stable functionality. As the Bronco project progressed, other engineers took the lead while Thompson moved on to other design challenges. After a productive career with Ford, he retired in 1984 and passed away in 2006, but Thompson’s legacy lives on. When Ford began planning for a revitalization of the Bronco, their team began to scour the archives for historical documentation of the model. To their great surprise, they unearthed Thompson’s original signed and dated Bronco sketches, which revealed his brilliant early influence on the model—an influence that had all but been forgotten in the mists of time. Ford trumpeted the fact that Thompson’s work impacted “the design language that would become iconic attributes of the first-generation Bronco.” Image Unavailable, Please Login 2 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 3 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 1 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 2 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 3 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 1 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 2 OF 3 Image Unavailable, Please Login 3 OF 3 After Ford announced the discovery of those vintage drawings, another in-house designer hailed Thompson’s key role, saying in tribute: “McKinley was a man who followed his dreams and wound up making history. He not only broke through the color barrier in the world of automotive design, but he helped create some of the most iconic consumer products ever…designs that are not only timeless but have been studied by generations of designers.”
Always liked how the work product was dated. In this case entered as 8 20 63. Amazing when you learn the historic background to the older design development stories. Thank you for that; plus the parade of other 'knowledge' here to!
It was Art Center School then and located in Los Angeles. The move to Pasadena did not occur until 1976.
It was always up to the designer as to whether to date their work or not. When I first started, one of the more 'experienced' designers told me not to date my sketches. That way down the line, you could put up older sketches that may had been previously rejected. A good idea is a good idea. Sometimes I dated my work, sometimes not. No one seems to date their digital work today.
It was Art Center College of Design when I was there in the early-mid '70's at the 3rd St campus. The move to Pasadena was @ '75-'76 IIRC. The Pasadena campus was like a rocket ship compared to the Los Angeles campus which started out as a girl's school in the '30's. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login Ferrari Daytona Shooting Brake Hommage Teased By Coachbuilder It takes inspiration from a unique Daytona. Niels van Roij Design recently completed itsFerrari Breadvan Hommage, and the coachbuilder has decided to stick with a similar theme for its next project. The company has decided to build a modern take on the one-off Ferrari Daytona Shooting Brake from the 1970s. Right now, the unique car only exists in renderings, but it's absolutely striking. The low-slung, point nose immediately recalls the actual Daytona. The somewhat bulbous extended rear with two glass panels separated in the middle is not a shape you expect to see on a Ferrari. For now,Niels van Roij Design isn't specifically saying what the basis is for this new creation. The company's only mysterious statement is that: "The base vehicle is a grand tourer produced by an Italian automobile manufacturer. The two-seat model was produced from 2006 until 2013 and will undergo significant design changes to almost every single body panel." The story of the authentic Daytona Shooting Brake (gallery below) is even more fascinating. ArchitectBob Gittleman requested something special from Ferrari importer Chinetti Motors. Luigi Chinetti sketched the shooting brake shape and worked with a British firm to modify the car. The result was an overhauled 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 with a new roofline that included a pair of opening glass panels and a clear section in the tail. Inside, there was a wood center stack festooned with gauges and more lumber decorated the cargo floor. The car received a restoration in 2001. Gooding & Co included the shooting brake in its 2016 Monterey auction. Niels van Roij Design intends to chronicle the build of its Ferrari Daytona Shooting Brake Hommage on social media, so interested folks can follow along with how the machine comes together. Judging by the Breadvan and other creations, the result of this work should be an impressive creation. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Too bad they got the design credit wrong on the Daytona. It was Gene Garfinkle who was hired by Chinetti to do the design. Gene was an ex-GM designer. He also did a Momo car built in Italy using American power.
Pontiac’s Sporty Wagon Concept: Firebird Type K by MCG Image Unavailable, Please Login Enthusiasts have always been drawn to sports car/station wagon hybrids, in theory at least. Pontiac’s stab at the concept in 1977-79 was the Firebird Type K. The original Camaro/Firebird F-Body platform was barely off the drawing board when General Motors stylists began toying with sporty station wagon variants of the pony car package. The idea just seems natural somehow, intuitive. While this example, the 1977-1979 Firebird Type K, wasn’t GM’s first F-Body experiment in station wagons, it is by far the best known. Image Unavailable, Please Login Based on the clean second-generation Firebird body shell sculpted by famed GM designer Bill Porter, the wagon variant was styled by another accomplished GM studio man, Gerry Brochstein. The K stands for Kamm tail, a reference to the abrupt chop at the rear of the body, which reduces aerodynamic drag. While the rear glass was fixed in place, a pair of glass side hatches hinged in gullwing fashion allowed full access to the rear cargo compartment, which was nicely trimmed in carpeting with bright metal rub strips (below). Image Unavailable, Please Login In 1977, GM commissioned Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina to build two working prototype vehicles with steel bodywork, one silver and one gold, though the silver Type K seems to have gotten all the glory. Both cars, born as 1978 production Firebirds, were reportedly equipped with the 403 CID, 185 hp V8 (an Olds division engine, actually) with shaker hood scoop and screaming-chicken hood decal. As the Type K was displayed around the country, car fans at the Chicago Auto Show and elsewhere elbowed each other and asked, “Is this cool or what?” The silver K Type took a bow before the television cameras in March of 1979, appearing in a two-part episode of The Rockford Files, “Never Send a Boy to Do a Man’s Job.” Rockford star James Garner, a certified car guy and a Firebird fan in real life, didn’t much care for the wagon, it’s said. Instead, the car was driven in the episode by the character Odette Lependieu, played by Trisha Noble. In The Rockford Files role, the Type K has been updated with a 1979 Trans Am nose, as shown in the GM publicity photo below with Garner and journalist and PR guru Eric Dahlquist. Image Unavailable, Please Login As we know, the K Type never made it to the showrooms. Production studies showed the F-body wagon would need to be priced in the $25,000 range—far too expensive to sell in any useful number. A few years later, a California outfit called Deco International, not aligned with GM, produced a handful of replicas. Could GM ever revisit the pony car wagon concept on its current Camaro platform? With station wagons in general at a historic low in popularity, that seems unlikely. But it’s fun to imagine. Image Unavailable, Please Login "Rockfish" was not a fan...
Didn't like the first one and not 'gunna like this one. Now the 456 on the other hand........Love me some 'longroof'....... PS poor pix of it tho......
A tour around that Camaro with the designer is not to be missed! More to come is hinted at...where is the 2009 movie car 'Sideswipe' languishing these days? Image Unavailable, Please Login A favourite showcar!
Here's an article on a reimagined DeLorean: https://manofmany.com/rides/cars/angel-guerra-delorean-concept Ever Wondered What the DeLorean Would Look Like in 2021? MAN OF MANY, 18 MAR 2021 Image Unavailable, Please Login The idea of a modified DeLorean isn’t new. After all, Doc Brown turned one into a time machine in Back to the Future. But now there’s a new modified version—or rather, a new, updated DeLorean. Spanish car designer Angel Guerra has taken a futuristic look at what a DeLorean in 2021 could look like, and the result is pretty amazing. Image Unavailable, Please Login There are plenty of tributes in the 2021 version to the original DeLorean, and for pretty sentimental reasons. Guerra explains “that car and that movie overclocked my mindset forever. Ever since that car rolled down the ramp of the truck in Back to the Future I knew that I will be a car designer.” Over the course of two weeks, Guerra completed the project, combining the design language of the original DeLorean with more modern aesthetic. Image Unavailable, Please Login The original low-slung profile is still there, and of course the stainless steel body. The gullwing doors are still a part of the car as well—after all, you can’t have a DeLorean without gullwing doors. The updates come into play with bigger wheels, though they still have the turbine rims, and a wider body. The sharp angles have been refined into more curvy lines. The double square headlights and the rear lights have been replaced with an LED strip that runs around the car. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a flux capacitor included in the new design. Image Unavailable, Please Login With rumours abounding that a new DeLorean DMC-12 will potentially be unveiled in the fall of 2021, we can only hope that that new car will bear more than a striking resemblance to Guerra’s rendition. And perhaps that new car will inspire a new generation of time travelling—at the very least, it should be able to hit the requisite 88 miles per hour with general ease. Image Unavailable, Please Login I really like it! All the best, Andrew.
And while we’re on that topic, this writer proposes that there isn’t enough intellectualism in car design. Any thoughts? https://www.formtrends.com/repurposing-the-pen-why-automotive-design-needs-an-intellectual-tradition/
I do agree there are a number of parallels between Architects and Car Designers. Remember when these were all the fashion? Many of us have seen one or both. One was even deemed a Wonder of the World for a time! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The author makes some interesting, if not novel, observations, but generally overstates the case and/or misses the target. To start with, there is a glaring fallacy of composition in the comparison with architecture: architecture firms are headed by architects, but car companies are not run by designers and only low-volume automakers are led by engineer/designers. This is probably the biggest reason why little scope for critical theory and exercise is afforded to working car designers at major OEMs. The writer also ignores the way designers and engineers work together, and the fact that complex design always involves plenty of intellectual muscle but exercised in a visual rather than verbal mode. In any case, as a branch of industrial design, automotive design is all about meeting market needs as defined in design briefs. If you really want to apply intellectualism to the process, a useful focus is the history of defining and solving automotive design problems. This would allow you to bring in the kinds of concerns cited by the author – economics, environmentalism, inclusiveness, etc – in a way that illuminates past practice and future approaches. Then designers could use such insights to inform their process and solutions in practical ways. But you're never going to (and probably shouldn't) have an intellectual understanding of automotive design history as an actual driver of car design. Given the way big car companies are structured, it won't give designers any more authority in the way the design brief is defined. At most it can be an additional tool with the potential to enrich the process. After all, does the success of people like Ed Welburn and Ralph Gilles reflect their adaptation to traditional ways or a transformation of them? Surely the former: their career portfolios were highlighted by brilliant performance vehicles, but they did not turn car design in a conceptually new direction. They represented a welcome and long overdue broadening of the talent pool in the field, but they did not revolutionise it. What is revolutionising automotive design today are the dramatic new challenges posed by sustainability, autonomy, and the intrusion of new technologies into the automotive realm. This has meant lots of new eyes on the future of personal transport, including non-automotive industrial designers and even architects. No one could have a problem with that. This will naturally increase the range of considerations brought to bear on meeting the challenges, but always subject to the essential design discipline of balancing innovation and creativity with pragmatism. Isn't that enough of an intellectual quest in itself?
Addendum: And of course there is always the counterpoint for each profession. Unfortunately, Architects see their mistakes remain around for 50+ years. Car Designers see their mistakes go away in about half that time. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
First let me say thank you for your thoughts on a very interesting topic. Having been involved in automotive design for over 50 years, this is a subject that has always been a part of my professional thought process. Sometimes I think I've been too close to the topic to be impartial. Where to begin? Intellectualism and critiqes have been a part of art, music, literature and film forever. It's human nature to want to analyze and critique artistic endeavors. People want meaning behind the things that make up their lives. I enjoy reading, and am amused by 'design reviews' of people like Bob Cumberford who used to write for Automobile magazine. Like many art, literature, film and music reviews, many are written by individuals that never had to produce the stuff they are reviewing. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. But having spent a great deal of time in my design/art education sitting in art history classes listening to how 'experts' were explaining the meaning behind various works of art gave me pause. Automotive design is less than 100 yrs old. An infant in the artistic pursuits, much like film. An effort to 'understand' and intellectualize car design can be an interesting goal. As we try to find meaning behind a given design, we want to theorize the why of a given design. But as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Car design started out as pure styling and aesthetics incorporating function, manufacturing, costs, etc.,etc. As the craft has progressed over the last 100 yrs, it has pretty much walked away from 'styling' and morphed into industrial design, which is form/function and problem solving. Providing the customer with a very complex product that performs all the expected functions and looks good in the process while meeting manufacturing goals, passing safety standards, reaching cost targets, and any number of increasingly complex criteria. The comparison to architecture is interesting, but not wholly accurate. A building is a one-off. An automobile is mass produced and requires the customer to part with their money on a personal level. Auto design is entering a new era. Electrification, autonomy, reduced driving, etc. will transform the automobile as we know it. The architecture of the auto is changing. Design will become even more important as a differentiator. Design is a visceral thing as much as anything. While we humans want to intellectualize and try to find meaning in what we see, it's just as much a 'heart' thing as a 'brain' thing. How does it make you feel? We want to know why of course, but it's still that 'feeling'. We've tried to make a science out of the 'why' of art for thousands of years. Not sure we're any closer to understanding today than we've ever been. Used to work for a prominent, famous designer that liked to say: "Never trust a designer that talks too much". That was the anti-intellectualism the author was referring to that was the beginning of car design. We've come a long way from those days. The 'why' of design is becoming more important than ever. Getting the answers is another question. I spent many years asking customers why they liked a certain design, and why they didn't. I'm not sure I'm any smarter today. I'll leave it at that. It's a complex topic.
