Abarth built several tiny streamliners in the '50s, and set records with them. They looked a lot like the cl***ic German streamliners in miniature. Cool!
Hope this isn't a repost, but to me, the Lamborghini Miura is the ***iest design ever conceived. Pure design perfection. Not a bad line anywhere on the car.
I re-read post #1 of this thread, and I think it represents the exact style, design, and era the OP was referring to. He even mentions "OT cars", so I think we're OK.
Absolutely! I try to steer the thread to American and hot rod subjects to stay in Ryan's preferred realm, but European sports cars have always been a**** the swoopiest (and most athletic) looking vehicles ever designed.
The Tasco story is kinda strange. Gordon Buehrig is well known for his design work on the Auburn speedster and Cord 810/812; some people also know him for his work at Ford including the '51 Victoria and the Continental Mk II. The Tasco was a car entirely of his own design. He tried to raise financing to put it in production, but wasn't successful. The odd thing is that all the work he did for other companies was outstanding, while the thing he did without the influence of others is perhaps his least successful and attractive design.
It's easy to decry the influence of "bean counters" and salesmen on the work of artists and engineers. I do it myself. But it must be said that often they have a nice moderating influence on those otherwise sometimes "ivory tower" personalities.
Yeah, a moderating influence that is great at producing stuff that will be sort of appealing to lots of people. I'm much more interested in spectacular failures like , for instance, some of Raymond Loewy's designs ( like his Jag, his BMW, and most of all his Caddy ) And spectacular successes like some of Frank Costin's designs. ( like the Lotus Eleven, Nathan Costin, etc) The kind of stuff that can happen when Artists and Engineers get to pursue their goals... The Bean counters are usefull for all the inbeween stuff.
I think you know that I once worked for Frank, briefly. I asked him about the design of the original Elite, which I think is a**** the most beautiful cars ever. He told me that it was a collaboration between accountant Peter Kirwan-Taylor and himself; K-T would propose an overall shape, and then Frank would knock off the corners and swoopy it up until he thought that it was aerodynamically sound. An amazing collaboration between 2 guys with completely different disciplines and objectives, but obviously a very successful one.
Wow, that letter is a flash from the past. You may have found it in Dennis Ortenburger's book "Flying on Four Wheels", a kind of automotive biography of Frank. In the spring of 1961 I was working for BMW in Munich. I wrote to Frank asking if I might come to work for him; he told me to meet him in London. I did, we got along well, and he agreed to take me in as an unpaid grunt. He was just leaving for LeMans to ***ist in the development of Lotus' Index of Performance Elite, and told me to wait for him at a friend's racing garage in North London. The garage belonged to Willy Griffiths, and one of the projects being worked on there was prepping Les Leston's brand new Elite for racing. The mention of Griffiths and Leston in the letter brought back some pretty faded memories!
Yeah, probably... I have that book. That is one hell of a life experience, to be working with a man like that. The work that they did with the Elite and the Eleven in the Index of Performance is what made the French tech guys look really close at the 23 so they could disqualify it for a bogus reason. ( different bolt patterns front to back, and then they DQ'd the mod for engineering reasons ) Chapman vowed to never be back, and he didn't. I wonder if that is why Ford chose Eric Broadley ( Lola ) for the GT40 program. Chapman had pretty good ties with Ford as well... Every time we get to Frank Costin, this thread takes a little sidestep. But on a tread about swoopy cars, that is what he deserves...
And these are the cars that heavily influenced Bill Mitchell in the design of the original Sting Ray.
It really was; certainly more inspiring than working at BMW. Frank had several young guys who wanted to sit at his feet and learn stuff, including me. I gather that most of them were unpaid. How many creative engineers would do that today? When he learned that I could do realistic renderings of imaginary cars, he offered to cover my room & board. His shop was an abandoned boys' school near Llanberis, North Wales. While I was there, most of his automotive work was repairs to early Marcos coupes, and design work on a successor car to the Marcos with 2-stroke DKW power. I read somewhere that this Osca was built specifically for a member of the Orsi family, and that it still belongs to someone in the family. Racy!
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