Who'll design the new legends?
By DAVID GRAINGER
Thursday, January 13, 2005 - Page G7
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Some of the greatest art of the 20th century was incorporated in the design of automobiles and anyone who doubts that should take a look at an Art Deco-inspired coach-built French Delahaye, Talbot or Delage.
Other great marques that carried coachwork of superb artistic merit were Bugatti, Rolls Royce, Duesenberg, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo.
While these artisan-built cars shone during the years prior to the Second World War, the postwar period saw American culture personified in the mass-produced cars of the 1950s. American cultural ostentation expressed itself not on the walls of art galleries but on its highways and everyone, not just gallery goers, got to participate and revel in art dripping in chrome, daubed with multicoloured paint jobs and sculpted with great fins, bullets and toothy grills.
In a thousand years, when historians consider 20th-century culture, they will certainly be able to hold up a 1930 Duesenberg, '59 Cadillac, '69 Mustang or '90s PT Cruiser or Honda Civic and justifiably say: This is what the people were thinking artistically.
So with that in mind, what cars has the 21st century provided us in its short and troubled infancy?
Just as the last turn of century saw a great change in transportation, so I believe this century will provide a radical change in the way we get around.
Already, tiny cars like the Mercedes Smart are being enthusiastically adopted by those that have to travel the congested roadways of Europe's cities and now those same little cars are set to conquer North American metropolises. These are likely the way of the future, as are electrical, efficient diesel and hydrogen-powered vehicles.
New power sources may result in new design features and it is certainly true that whenever a car company seeks to introduce us to a new technology, it is usually wrapped with some futuristic but not too rational skin.
While most like to look at an aeronautically inspired bubble-topped hydrogen-powered vehicle, we are far more likely to buy a hydrogen-powered minivan or four-door sedan.
Radical design rarely appeals to the average buyer, who has to balance functionality with artistic appeal. The art of the car is not just expressed in design alone; it also has to have function and must encompass both the mechanical and cultural requirements of the age.
As an example, cars were created in the dawn of the 20th century that appeared almost like those from the '40s, with closed-in wheels, no running boards and advanced aerodynamic features -- but the culture of the day was not willing to leap that far from the horse and buggy to allow them to flourish.
Culturally, it took about 30 years for cars to completely separate themselves from the carriages and buggies that went before. Even today, a tenuous thread still links our modern vehicles to the buggy by using the names of carriages of the past -- Landau, Brougham and Phaeton being three that come to mind.
The first five years of this century have seen cars created that are largely children of the last century. No evolution is swift and it is only in retrospect that we can demarcate the exact moment of change but those new cars carry the seeds of change.
While some designs, such as GM's SSR pickup and BMW's Mini, clearly seek to tug at the strings of sentimentality other designs are seeking to cleave affiliations with vehicles of the past. New cars soon to appear on showroom floors, such as the Pontiac Solstice, are entirely new creations aimed at creating excitement in a youth market that has abandoned domestic breeds in favour of cleverly designed and well-made imports.
The youth of today do not get maudlin over the 1950s and '60s; they are looking forward to new designs and concepts. While a 60-year-old may never be entirely comfortable driving around in a Smart or accelerating from a green light in a car that hums gently, the 21st century's young drivers are going to be willing to embrace anything that doesn't reek of the past and gasoline.
While some designs, such as the new Mustang and the Volkswagen Beetle, may prove moderately successful, young buyers unaffected by the sentimentality implicit in the design will be quite willing to abandon them for any another design that strikes the right cultural cord.
Designers who purposely design for this are doomed to failure. Icons are usually accidental and a car company that seeks to create one, especially one inspired by previous legends, may find that it ends up with a great many icons sitting in warehouses waiting for buyers.
I look forward with great anticipation to the icons of the 21st century, designs that may encompass not just art and technology but, hopefully, environmental responsibility as well.
