Art & Inspiration Why our cars look the way they do.

We see here on the H.A.M.B. threads about legends who have p***ed on,here are some legends from behind the scenes from folks that are still with us and have a story to tell about the designs of the past and how they came to be,enjoy. http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/...in-the-new-film-american-dreaming/?refer=news

 

It's a philosophically fertile subject; it raises many interesting questions around product expectations and specific production-technological regimes, around enclosure in the political-economic sense, around concepts of type and model, around the nature of time, history, and culture.

The art has fascinated me all my life. I spent my childhood trying to draw like an automotive designer - whence my avatar - but somewhere along the line it dawned on me that someone's head was being messed with. To be fair, I think the designers' heads were being messed with as much as anyone else's.

I've hardly begun to get my head around these questions. Here's something I've written on the subject: http://artis****cars.blog.com/2012/12/28/design-in-the-service-of-empire/

 

Sometimes it's "where ya are & what ya got." Cuba has been under trade restrictions (started 1968) for five decades. As a result their supply was frozen in time. They're cruizin around in 40's &50's Fords and Chevy's that have been handed down through the generations and rehabbed many times. Some of em run Russian diesel engines. Some of em are cherry. They make hubcaps and wheels by hand. I saw a do***entary years ago where a guy fabbed up a very elaborate chrome grill for an old Chevy. I find their car culture fascinating. It occurs to me that the cars of a country have a direct semblance to that particular government. They are still in the 40's & 50's while Americans were free to dream on and man, did we ever. .At least until about 73 then (in my opinion) we kinda started devolving (see what I mean?, a direct reflection.) Cuba recently had their restrictions eased. They will be buying new cars but I bet they hang on to that old American steel

 

Slack, I think you need to go to Cuba.

Less 10% of their vehicles are pre60's.

The commonest vehicle would be a Hyundai and a lot of Russian vehicles.

VW trucks are common and Tatung busses from China rule the roads.

Cuba was only under an American embargo and there are quite a number of other counties in the world beyond the US of A.

Nice place to visit I was there in April as were a lot of American tourists.

 

The spirit reflected in the OP's and Ned's posts is fairly well gone. Schools today teach many students to "...do this..." vs "...use this..." (meaning to discourage or encourage imagination and individuality). What the 1st link is referencing might still happen a wee bit, but true enough, it's essentially another lost art. Sometimes we dig into our own personal philosophies and want to save, cherish, p*** on to the next generation, and yet how much self-inflicted damage do we do to ourselves when we find they don't want or respect it. The technology of today is wonderful but like any other of our favorite vices, only in moderation. I can't tell a Buick from a Nissan at any reasonable distance but sure can spot a 30 thru 70 near any make from an 8th mile or more. In the stuff we enjoy here there's so much more than the silhouette to enjoy. Many of us get just as charged up about the font used in an old gauge or the design of a door panel, and all of those elements we get fired up over were just as imaginative as the sculpted shapes of the sheet metal. Nice topic, and I'm looking forward to more replies.

 

Wow, that's cool! I've seen it from a distance, years ago but we didn't go ashore. I was referencing a do***entary I saw about ten years ago and recall different (non-American) vehicles but as I recall they were in more of a commercial capacity. The scope was on the old American steel and the clever ways (to the point of re-designing) their people got around trade restrictions. So that was the scope I was referencing. Did you have to jump through a lot of hoops beyond a simple p***port to enter Cuba?

 

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Good lord that was painful just looking at it never mind trying to read and understand it.
I don't appreciate that style of writing or fancy word smithing if you like

 

Academic language is about economy and accuracy, that's all. If a bit of poetry slips in that's all to the good, but it really isn't about trying to impress anyone in socio-economic cl*** terms. Saying the same thing in everyday language would take pages and pages of text and still fail to put the point across quite precisely.

 

I will disagree with you on that one. I know of and have read the works of a number of great writers who can get a point across quite well and quite accurately without resorting to "academic language".

 

Hmmm...

Ned, while I don't try to talk or write in that vernacular anymore, I could understand just fine. .
Maybe for examples' sake, you should re-write the 1st paragraph in common language... . Read it in ~ 3+ hrs? .
Marcus...

 

x2... I could probably read and understand that using a dictionary....but as a not native English speaking person it´s just to damn difficult, at least for me. Although this is a very interesting topic ,that is why I wish I could read it more easily.

 

Another influence is the issue of the American "market economy" which seeks to make owners dissatisfied with their current automobile and requires them to purchase the next great thing to maintain prestige and surp*** their peers. While the USA was on a 3 year product cycle, many European (South American and the rest of the world) markets were more like 8 years. Our cars had to "look" different every 3 years or so, but mechanically there was little change. For example, flathead Fords from 32 to 53. Stovebolt Chevs from 36 to 80 something. Mopars similar. For the rest of the world, the models looked much the same (minor changes in appearance excepted) but the mechanics were constantly evolving, from carburetors to fuel injection, 3 to 4 to 5 speed transmissions, disc brakes, etc. Then the Asians "revolutionized" the automotive experience by doing extensive market research and actually polling potential customers about what features they wanted in a car and then building to suit. Which approach brings us back to the HAMB which is ultimately about acquiring, building and driving what you want, and not what some soulless company wants to foist off on you to make a buck - or many bucks.

 

I was one of those kids who grew up in the '50s and aspired to be a car designer. I pursued it pretty hard; studied car design at Art Center, worked as a gofer at BMW in Munich and for aerodynamicist Frank Costin in the UK. Never graduated, though, and worked in aerospace for 6 years before I found the toy industry in '68. That was a good thing, and I got to work on toy cars for the next 30+ years, eventually retiring as the VP of design on Hot Wheels at Mattel.

In retrospect, I was never a real visionary, a futurist like Syd Mead. I never had a design idea that was wild enough to be more than a couple of years beyond what was currently being produced. I greatly admire the few who did have that kind of original thinking, to imagine really innovative ideas that were waaaay beyond the stuff on the road at the time, but I don't think I ever knew more than a couple of guys like that.

I finally found my comfort level tweaking existing designs, rubbing off the rough spots and getting them the way I thought they should be in the first place. It's certainly not the same thing as designing something from scratch, but it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I suspect that most hot rod and custom guys are in a similar place to mine.

 

There was a notification of a reply to your post, which has apparently been deleted. I was all ready to answer it; so much for that. Suffice it to say that I appreciate your putting the expression "market economy" in quotes. If ever there was a practical example of Orwellian Newspeak in general everyday use it is the popular notion that the modern Western economies are "free market" economies. It was questionable before the New Deal, and a complete misnomer thereafter.

I agree with the rest of your post, too, though I don't think the Asian manufacturers are any more market-responsive than anyone else. They certainly consolidated their position through the fleet-market gadget wars of the late 20th century, by offering more creature-comfort trinkets for less money than the American or European compe***ion, but by then the real work of defining "the modern automobile" as a necessarily large-organizational product had already been done - including the painstakingly crafted myth of "functional evolution", which has become the standard interpretation of automotive-technological history.

"Functional evolution" is why it is so hard to consider a question like "why did automobiles gradually go to pontoon bodies from c.1935 on?" in anything like a radical way. "Functional evolution" puts the idea in the back of our heads that it was necessarily going to turn out that way anyway, and that no other line of development was seriously possible. An old girlfriend of mine taught me about good reasons and real reasons (for which I shall be eternally grateful, even if she caused me to sell my BMW 2002 after we broke up.) There are a lot of good reasons and real reasons going on in the history of automotive technology, lots to dig into.

 

Hmm. I started writing my post above, thinking, "This thread is my meat. I'll have something profound to say on this subject." When I re-read what I had written, I thought, "That wasn't anything profound, I just wrote some more twaddle about me. Well, **** it."

There, I did it again.

 

Ned, while I don't try to talk or write in that vernacular anymore, I could understand just fine

 

Ryan!...Ned Ludd is using those big ten dollar words again!

 

Slack,

A visa and P***port.

Wasn't able to use my AMEX card as the States won't allow it.

And there were hundreds of American (not Canadian) tourists.