Honmoku street is a wide, tree lined avenue that bends through the southern “Naka” district of the city of Yokohama. Close by sits the massive port, the gateway through which so much of Japan’s industrial output is sent to the world, its tall cranes working ceaselessly and with no regard for human concerns like the time of day. Above it all the Yokohama Bay Bridge soars like a vision, lifting cars and trucks across the entrance to the harbor as effortlessly as it straddles the line between art and infrastructure. Although the massive bridge and its double decked feeder highways encircle the entire district, the sense one has on the ground is of open space and nature, rarities in the second largest city in Japan. In the midst of it all sits the classic American Hot-Rod shop, Mooneyes.

Mooneyes is legendary among car guys. Its iconic eyes have adorned the sides of race cars and hot-rods since Dean Moon started the company in a small garage behind his father’s Norwalk, California café in 1950. An avid car guy, Dean Moon was heavily involved in the local drag and dry lake bed racing scenes in California as they gained momentum through the 1950s and 60s and his sense of innovation and style helped shape the nascent “hot rod” culture as it was emerging. Many of his stylistic innovations, things like spun aluminum disc wheel covers and the foot-shaped gas pedal are must-have items on any period correct classic hot-rod.

When Dean Moon passed away in the late 1980s, the company took a brief break and then stopped work altogether after the passing of his wife a few years later. In the early 1990s, Moon family friend Shige Suganuma, a long time dealer of Moon Products in Japan, reformed the company as Mooneyes USA. The US Branch of the company continues Dean Moon’s work at the shop’s location since the early 1960s, 10820 S Norwalk Blvd, Santa Fe Springs, CA where, according to the Mooneyes website, visitors are welcome and where there will be an open house from 9:00AM to 3:00 PM on Saturday July 13, 2013.

The subject of this article, Mooneyes’ Japanese location, is a place worth checking out. It combines a full service hot rod shop with a parts store, gift and novelty shop and an American 1960s style café complete with oversized hamburgers, milk shakes and apple pie. At night, its neon lights beckon you forward with a welcoming glow, and a row of classic cars, both American and Japanese, stand ready for inspection as they await just the right person to take them home. After a hard day’s struggle with the Japanese language and culture, stepping inside feels a lot like coming home to a better, vanishing America where the cars are cool, the gas is cheap and where no one counts calories.

Out back, rows of cars sit ready for the full hotrod treatment. During my time in Yokohama, I noted the progress of these cars on my way to and from work as they arrived in the rearmost parking lot in various states of disuse and decay and then moved to the area behind the garage from where they eventually disappeared into the shop for weeks or days before turning up refreshed, renewed and reformed for sale at the front of the building. My favorites were always the classic Japanese iron, the most common of which were variants of the Toyota Crown, including sedans, station wagons and even an El Camino-like trucklet. Some of these ended up as beautiful restorations, others as slick looking hot-rods and still others as mechanically solid rat-rods. All of them were appealing.

With Mooneyes just a block from my apartment, the whole area was frequently awash with car culture and excitement. Mooneyes is the sponsor of many great events, including hot rod and chopper shows that draw cars from all over Japan and visitors from all over the world. As of this writing, upcoming events include the “All Trucks Morning Cruise” on April 14th at Honmoku Hilltop Park, and a Hot Rod Cruise Night at their Honmoku Shop the evening of April 27th. More information is available in English and Japanese at www.mooneyes.co.jp

It can be hard for a foreigner to break into Japanese culture and make friends, but I have found that cool cars and fast motorcycles are a good way to break the ice. If you are ever in Japan, take the time to head out to Mooneyes’ shop in Honmoku, Yokohama. Grab a hamburger, get the T-shirt and take the time to talk to some of the people you meet there. You will return home happy, full and refreshed. The car culture that Dean Moon helped to start so long ago and so far away conquers all.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

You will find distinct improvements in the 1939 cars. The new cars are generally more functionally streamlined than ever before. Many wind-resisting gadgets have either been completely eliminated or made integral parts of the bodies. Headlights, in most models, have been set in the front fenders both to give wider light range and to reduce wind resistance. Trunk bulges have tended to disappear, but without loss of luggage space. Windshields are generally wider and higher, and corner posts are smaller to improve vision. Interiors are wider and seats designed for greater comfort. Upholstery is more luxurious. Door and window handles are improved to avoid catching clothes. Motors are generally more powerful without any sacrifice in economy. Hydraulic brakes have been improved, and frames and bodies strengthened for safety.

- Collier’s Magazine November 19, 1938

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Dodge Charger

They say that you don’t regret the things you do as much as you regret the things don’t do. I hope the auto manufacturers are listening, because when I look at so many of the fantastic looking four door sedans on the market today, I feel a sense of regret for what they aren’t doing, namely making two door coupes. I know there are financial considerations, probably tens of millions of dollars worth, at work behind the scenes. I understand, too, that there are likely to be engineering challenges and any number of other issues that a simple layman like myself can never really understand, but the fact that there are no really cool coupe versions of today’s hot sedans gnaws at me.

Thank God for artists like Casey Shain, a man of considerable talent who, like many of us, believes that today’s cars can be better. Unlike most of us, however, he has the talent and the ability to turn his thoughts into artistic reality. His website artandcolourcars.blogspot.com showcases his digitally altered “fake” cars and his love of all things automotive. It is filled with images that rival those of any professional design studio and I highly recommend checking it out. If you are anything like me, you will spend hours there.

Like so many of us, from the time he was a child Casey dreamed about designing cars. Instead, he earned a bachelor of arts from Vassar College and worked as a designer in the publishing industry for more than thirty years. These days he is a freelance book designer and a professional “starving artist,” but he spends much of his free time working with Photoshop and pretending to live that childhood dream. He says, “I’m the same doodler as when I was a child, only now my crayons are digital.”

Casey’s cars may not be real in the sense that they are made out of rubber, plastic and steel, but the detailed images he creates certainly have a life of their own. As a kid who grew up spending hours in front of the fire looking at the Sears Christmas catalog, I know there is a great deal of joy to be had simply looking at pictures and dreaming about the possibilities. Still, I hope that one day someone turns these ideas into reality. Come on car companies, don’t wonder “what if” – take a chance!

View more of Casey Shain’s work here: Casey Shain Car Photochops at Pintrest

Buick Verano “Skylark Hot Hatch”

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

If you have a spare four minutes and four seconds (plus time for the commercial) take the time to check out the following discussion over at Bloomberg.com. As a layman, I find these kind of discussions very interesting and would like to hear the best and the brightest, many of whom I know to be connected with auto industry, give a little perspective to what seems to me to be a very shallow look on the subject of modern car design.

The active premise of the Bloomberg piece is that American car design lost its way in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and is now beginning to return to its former glory. There is no doubt in my mind that improvements automotive technology have ushered in a golden age of performance, dependability and longevity, but I am left feeling cold when I hear people talking about how superior the “new designs,” are to the ones that came before.

There were some fantastic designs in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and when I look back at the clean, classic lines of many of those cars I miss the days when designers used a straight edge as a part of their work. The Chevrolet Vega and Monza, while mechanically problem prone, are still wonderful looking little cars that have aged quite gracefully. The mid 80s Fox Body Mustangs, shown in the piece alongside both previous and later versions, look especially good to my eye. Of course you already know my thoughts on the Chrysler LH cars of the 1990s – I like them so much I put my money where my mouth is and have a 300M Special in my driveway.

My take is that there were some damn good designs in the eras these people are deriding. Sure there were some uninteresting and even outlandish designs too, but that doesn’t mean that designers have spent the last 30 years sleeping on the job. They were trying new things and some of those really worked. So, tell us now, what are your favorite cars from the much derided ’70s, ’80s and ’90s?

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The best science fiction tells human stories set against a backdrop of strange worlds or futuristic cities. Because pacing and plot are more important than lengthy, accurate descriptions of the technology at work in those worlds, most sci-fi writers don’t spend a lot of time on the various machines their protagonists use. We might know that our hero traveled in a shiny aluminum air car, but the details generally are left to our imagination.

Fortunately for those of us who want a real peek into the future, film is a visual medium. The best directors know that set and prop design are critical to the tone of a movie and that machines can be as important as the action. They pay a lot of attention to getting just the right look and, even though we may not get to open the hood on that futuristic air car, we definitely get to see it at work, get a feel for its lines and even some idea of how it handles. If they do their job right, we might even believe these vehicle could be real.

The following are, in this author’s opinion, some of sci-fi’s finest.

Korben Dallas’ Taxi from “The Fifth Element.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

In our mind’s eye we usually think of the future as a bright shining place free of dirt and disease. The Fifth Element gives us vision of the future in which the world is as dirty and well worn as an old shoe. The cars in the film reflect this by being futuristic flying vehicles, but with design elements taken straight from the cars of our own yesteryear.

Korben Dallas’ taxi’s huge grill, sweeping fenders and fins hark back to the late 1940s and immediately let us know that this car is old and out of date. Although the technology at work is light years ahead of where we are today, the car is obviously a tired, overworked machine that would look perfectly at home along side any of the tired, overworked machines on the bad streets of New York today. It is at once futuristic and believable, normal yet totally over the top. For the sheer audacity of its design, Korben Dallas’ taxi must be ranked high among the best cars of sci-fi.

The “Spinner” from “Blade Runner.”

Blade Runner is another vision in which the future may not be a better and brighter place. In the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” the world is a fully fleshed out disaster in which humanity struggles relentlessly along while living amid the aftermath of World War Terminus. A lot of that back story is lost in the Ridley Scott movie and the viewer is thrown into a confusing future society complete with flying cars and robotic “replicants” almost indistinguishable from, and in some cases maybe even more human, than the people they are supposed to serve.

In his book, Philip K. Dick takes little notice of the vehicles Rick Decker and the other bounty hunters use, but the movie is a visual feast and no expense was spared. The Police “Spinners” used in the film are one of the iconic cars of sci-fi and they seem quite plausible designs. Their tires show that they would work well on the road yet they fly with equal ease. Their large glass cockpits are similar to the ones found in modern helicopters and look as though they would give their operators a good field of vision. What I like best about them is that they seem like regular workaday vehicles that could be at work on any police force in the world today. It is this touch of reality that makes me rank the “Spinner” among the best cars of sci-fi.

The “S.H.A.D.O.” cars from the TV series “U.F.O.”

Gerry Anderson had a huge effect on television sci-fi. Beginning in the 1950s his supermarionation hits including “Stingray” “Captain Scarlett and the Mysterions” and “The Thunderbirds” gave millions of kids a look at the future. By the 1970s, Gerry Anderson was producing movies and live action TV sci fi like “Space 1999” and “U.F.O” and his shows included full size working props along with the superior model-base special effects for which his shows are best known.

Two working cars, known to fans as the “Straker “ and “Foster” cars, were built out of aluminum on the chassis of the English Ford Zephyr Mk 4 and used in Anderson’s first live action movie “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun” and later in his series “U.F.O.” Angular and futuristic with gull wing doors, these cars are a very 1960’s version of the future and they have not aged particularly well. Still, because they were seen and obsessed over by millions of young sci-fi fans they must be counted among the important cars of sci-fi.

The “Cricket” from “A.I.”

The movie A.I. is not one of my favorites. Sorry, I wanted to like it but it comes off as a weird dystopian utopia and I think it sends mixed messages. Do we love technology or don’t we? What if that technology loves us? It’s gut wrenching in a way that makes me both glad and sad that I sat through it.

One thing this move does very well is give us a real vision of what our future may be. It is a better and brighter place, but it is not outside of the human condition. In the end, it is humanity’s own frailty and our inability to really understand how we should relate to the rapidly emerging computerized intelligence around us that that makes this vision of the future miserable. In short, the message is that people are jerks. Got that? Yeah, totally a chick flick.

The car, ‘The Cricket” seen in the film strikes me as the kind of car we might actually see on the road one of these days. Bright, light, futuristic and with convenient sliding doors rather than impossible to use in a parking garage gull-wings, the car looks like something you average suburban mom would drive. To be honest, I think it looks cool. Hell, paint it red and add a racing stripe and I’d drive it. It is because this car seems so realistic, without resorting to blatant product placement like some other movie cars (looking at you Lexus and Audi!) that I consider this one of the great cars of sci-fi.

Bonus – The “Landmaster” from “Damnation Alley.”

Sometimes the future sucks and when that happens you need something like the Landmaster to take you, your hippy wannabe Peacenik former subordinate and a couple of oddballs you find along the way to a better, happier place on the other side of the continent. When this movie was released in 1977, aka the middle of the cold war, wasn’t so much sci-fi as it was a vision of what might happen next week. Still, it was good fun and the Landmaster is awesome.

In the film, the Landmaster is portrayed as being constructed out of ordinary truck parts in order to facilitate repairs in the post apocalyptic world. It turns out that this is also a pretty accurate description of the real thing, too. The prop, built for the film cost of around $300K, used a Ford 427 CID industrial engine, the rear ends from two large trucks and an Allison truck transmission. The most unique feature of the vehicle, its drive wheels, are all fully functional and work shown as in the movie. The truck is said to have survived a 25 foot jump during testing with no damage. Because we are men, the Landmaster must be included in any list of the top Sci-Fi vehicles.

I know there are other vehicles out there, feel free to add your own. Just for reference, although I did select several model cars for this article, I purposely chose not to use any cartoon vehicles. If you know of other vehicles that you think need to be added, please add them. And now – to the comments!

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The newly shown Jeep Cherokee has created quite a ruckus. Some like the design, some describe it in language unsuitable to a family-oriented site like TTAC. The fact is Jeep needs this. The mother-ship, Fiat, is taking Jeep international and while Jeep’s design language gets good points at home, it really doesn’t strike a chord among buyers worldwide. What’s more, Jeep doesn’t have that much of a heritage outside US borders. So, the Italians are free to do with it what they like. For starters, Jeep now sponsors one of the most popular football teams in Europe. That is a sure sign that the Jeep you knew and loved is going through profound changes that will either make it relevant, or send it bruised and bleeding to lick it wounds back home.

The Twingo – polarizing, but popular

All you have to do is look at the story of the Renault Twingo to understand. Its designer, Patrick le Quément is known the world over and very influential. The Twingo was the car that made his career. The Renault establishment balked when le Quément presented his vision of the car. Undaunted, le Quément pushed it through. The car is now considered an icon of modern automobile design. If you have a pristine example, hold on to it. It might be worth a pretty penny 20 years from now.

When the 80s became the 90s, Renault was in a tough situation. Its conservative cars were quickly running out of gas in the market place. Newly hired chief designer le Quément proposed a radical new approach to design. He separated it from the engineers and product planners who, of course, were not pleased. So much so that they told le Quément the Twingo would have to be toned down from his radical vision. Le Quément appealed directly to Louis Schweitzer, Renault’s head honcho at the time: “The greatest risk is not to take any risks.”

Le Quément argued his case in a quintessentially French, counter-intuitive fashion, taking the results of the focus groups and turning them on their heads, “fifty percent of  the participants hated it and 25 percent were dubious. However, 25 percent said they loved it.”

The French designer radicalizes, “retro is retrograde. It’s driving looking in the rear-view mirror, admitting that you’ve run out of ideas.” In other words, don’t just keep repeating yourself. Retro cars usually create a short bounce of excitement that the good old days are back, then their sales sink into oblivion.

Italians loved the Twingo. They bought it in droves. This story is well known in European design circles. You can bet that it was part of the reasoning for the new Jeep Cherokee. The past is fine and dandy. Nevertheless, Jeep needs to move on. I sincerely hope the lesson is not lost on the great car makers of the even greater United States of America.

The person ultimately responsible for choosing colors for BMW cars, Sandy McGill, the other day attributed today’s popularity of white cars to the influence of Apple on consumers and designers.

Prior to Apple, white was associated with things like refrigerators or the tiles in your bathroom. Apple made white valuable.

McGill’s claims at first glance seem to be backed up by DuPont’s annual Color Popularity Report for 2011 that shows that 22% of new cars sold in the world were white, tied with silver. However, if you look at the historical data, white and lighter colors have been increasing in popularity for decades, long before Apple embraced white as their primary (no pun intended) design color.

I have, perhaps, a unique perspective on the topic. From 1982 to 2002, I worked in DuPont Automotive’s main car paint R&D laboratory in Troy, Michigan, originally as a technician but ultimately doing IT support. I’ve worked with the people who prepare those color popularity reports. I also worked with a lot of Apple computers. When I came into the IT department at the lab, DuPont at the time was the largest corporate user of Macintosh computers. Before the introduction of the iMac in 1998, Apple computers were a kind of off-white grey with maybe a hint of beige.

It seems to me that Apple didn’t embrace pure white as a design color until the introduction of the iPod in 2001. According to DuPont, though, by the year 2000 white was already the most popular car color. It’s entirely possible that Apple’s design ethos has influenced car color choices since then, and the Jaguar XF Supercharged on my driveway for a review is indeed Polaris White, but as I said, the trend towards white cars began a long time ago.

Just to be sure, I checked with a couple of experts, Gregg Schmidt at DuPont and Steve Klein of Your Mac Expert. Klein says that Apple first started using white as a design color with the iMac G3, released in 1998. Most people think of the original iMac as being mainly translucent blue, but it was actually available in 13 colors, one of them called Snow was white. However, Snow wasn’t the bright white that we now associate with Apple, it was translucent. According to my Mac expert (disclaimer: Steve is a first cousin of mine), the first bright white Mac was the iMac G4, introduced in 2002. The all white early iPod was introduced in 2001.

Schmidt, at DuPont, sent me the following chart showing the top two colors for selected years going back to 1960.

As you can see, white was the second most popular color not just in 1990, when Apples weren’t white, but it was also the second most popular color in 1960, when Steve Wozniak was in grade school and Steve Jobs was in kindergarten. As you can see from the timeline below, white’s popularity in 1960 may have been an outlier, but those 1990 statistics were part of a general trend towards lighter colors, with silver or grey being about as popular as white. Today over half of cars sold are one of those three light colors. By 2000, before Apple embraced white in a big way, white was already the  most popular color on trucks, vans, SUVs and luxury cars.

1953 – DuPont starts recording automotive color popularity.    Popular colors were medium blues, dark greens, and aqua colors.  Solid black, Ivory White, light beige and light gray were the neutral color spaces.

1960 – Metallic finishes are gaining popularity as medium brown and medium blue are popular.  

1970 – Browns, golds and olive greens are popular.

1980 – Light brown, gold, and beiges were popular.  Light blue was popular on full size and compact cars, dark blue was popular on trucks.

1990 – Trending towards lighter colors.  

2000 – White pearl gaining popularity on luxury vehicles.  Silver is the most popular on full and intermediate and white is most popular on Trucks, Vans, SUV’s, and luxury vehicles.

2010 – White is most popular overall in North America but Silver is #1 Global color.  Black is used to support a luxurious look in all segments.

Since white has been a popular color choice since the 1950s, it’s acceptance is really nothing new. What is new, at least in recent years, is a greater appreciation of brown cars. Worldwide, 5% of new cars last year were brown or beige. My fellow BCAS members rejoice. Apparently, what was formerly considered boring and reflective of malaise is now considered to be ‘authentic’. Jane Harrington, who manages color for DuPont’s competitor PPG, says that now brown is associated with luxury: “Think of the experience of good coffee, good chocolate, great pieces of wood. You’re seeing it across the crafts industry: more genuine materials, something that has longevity. The handmade quality people are looking for in luxury.”

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

No one cares, at least not among the automotive press, as to what happens at the  (Phoenix) “Arizona International Auto Show” held every year over Thanksgiving weekend. There are no world or US product launches, no concept cars on display, and only a few attractive booth babes. Just a bunch of production (or almost ready to launch) vehicles for the masses to touch, feel and some even to drive (on the road) or experience (like Jeeps on an indoor obstacle course) sprinkled with a few exotics (roped off of course) to ogle over.

But TTAC cares. Why? Because the world of automotive retailing depends on the masses to buy cars, lots of them. The folks who go to smaller market car shows don’t go to see the whimsical fancies of vehicle designers (cause there aren’t any), they go to check out real cars that they might buy. Watching and listening to these attendees can tell those of us that care where the winds of favor will blow. What’s hot and what’s not.

Here’s my take. Toyota and Honda are mostly last decade’s news. The public blew past their booths, barely giving the new Camry a glance, and ignoring the already disparaged Civic. The Prius V – meh – just a larger Prius. And Scion’s new IQ? There’s no chance of this vehicle gaining sales traction except in dense urban environments where parking is a premium or for ZipCar users. It’s just too small, not “cute” enough for high school cheerleaders, and not macho enough for…meat eaters. Both of these Japanese brands have resorted to dumbing down their product so far that they’ve become messes of mediocrity. Functional perhaps but competitors are passing them by…and so are shoppers.

Nissan is a bit more interesting than its two Japanese rivals, but that’s not saying much. At least there were some folks looking at the Murano Cabriolet, admiring its soft palette color clearly reaching for the heart strings of the ladies. But it’s expensive, lacks any utility whatsoever, and seems almost as a desperate attempt to revive sales of its base platform. The other mainstream cars – Versa, Sentra, and the aging Altima – had few showgoers touching or feeling them. Maybe the public is getting bored with Japanese cars? I am.

On the domestic front, things look better but the skies are still cloudy. Jeep brought their indoor adventure ride to prove the ruggedness of the Grand Cherokee and the Wrangler. It’s impressive to watch these machines, loaded with attendees, tackle obstacles that would destroy ordinary sedans. The public loves it and Jeep, Marchionne’s savior brand for Chrysler Group LLC, is bringing home the bacon. How much can the Wrangler really cost to build? And the development costs of the GC got wiped out in the bankruptcy. On the other hand, the Fiat 500 is now definitely considered as a “chick” car thanks to J Lo’s advertising. It might be cute but didn’t seem to be generating the buzz it needs among the crowd.

GM’s main sales driver is Chevrolet. People still get excited about the Corvette, the Camaro found a nerve with the politically incorrect, and its trucks pay for all of it. But the new Sonic – believe it or not – is truly competitive as a B-segment offering. It’s fairly substantial feeling – the doors close with a solid thunk, the interior is one of the best in the segment, and when the turbo 1.4l becomes available, it will become a darling of the community college crowd. Buick on the other hand is nice but….soft. The new Verano will be a sales flop. A tarted up Cruze that’s too small for most old folks…oh wait, that’s not Buick’s target market any more. How could I forget that the Regal is going after Acura buyers now…really? Was Acura even at the show?? Did anyone notice?

Ford. Someone needs to tell Ford to stop messing around with the consumer electronics interface and get back to some basics. I drove the Fusion Hybrid and it’s lacking (more on this later). I know a new Fusion is due next year and it can’t come too soon. The switchgear in this car is awful – plastic parts from years gone by. The driveline made funny noises – a couple weird clunks here and there and engine noise penetrated the cabin. I hated it. I then switched out and drove an Ecoboost 2.0L Edge. Surprisingly, it seemed to be adequately powered for a blown four, quiet on the inside, and fairly plush although the MyFordTouch is completely baffling. But then I saw something astounding. The driver’s door edge trim (where the door skin overlaps the door frame) was poorly finished. Creases were obvious and there was some pocketing that had started to rust – on a brand new car! I checked the other doors – same thing. And opening and closing the doors – light and tinny. The door handle mechanisms felt like they would break off in my hand. Alan – if you’re listening – you’ve got some work to do on the basics.

The star of the show – wait – it’s Kia. Yes, Kia. In particular, the new Optima. Get inside one. Check out the interior, the switchgear, the roominess, and finally the price tag. Amazing. And that’s not the only car in the lineup that’s impressive – the public flocked to the display checking out the merchandise. I can see why. I experienced the Optima Hybrid at the test drive center before entering the show. I was a back seat passenger – but couldn’t tell it was a hybrid. Smooth and quiet unlike the Ford Fusion Hybrid I drove later that day. I also drove a loaded Optima Turbo. Heated and cooled seats in a $31,000 ride! The car was powerful, smooth, and better than any Japanese car now offered in this segment. No wonder Kia can’t make them fast enough.

So there it is…the future is being led by the Koreans. The domestics are in second. And the Japanese are trailing by a mile. The world is changing fast. Who would have guessed?

I’ve often wondered if there is a relationship between the decline of the automobile’s cultural relevance, and the decline of the larger-than-life auto executive. Clearly the car’s waning ability to excite, inspire and shape material culture is a complex phenomenon with no single cause, but it’s got to have some kind of connection to the people making the cars. After all, the original Mustangs, Corvettes, and Model Ts emerged from firms led by such oversized presences as Lee Iacocca, Bill Mitchell and the original car-guy-as-folk-hero, Henry Ford. Today there’s no shortage of brilliant, engaging, passionate people working in the car industry, and yet few contemporary executives have made the kind of cultural impact that their predecessors once did. This, in a nutshell, is why Bob Lutz fascinates me: though he never made as wide of a mark on popular culture as an Iacocca or DeLorean, he’s one of the last remaining links to an era in the car industry that now seems impossibly out of reach.

But because he is not a man of the times, it’s incredibly easy to misunderstand the guy. In fact, having spent several hours chatting with him on and off the record, I’d argue that the best anyone can hope for is to simply not misunderstand him. In that spirit, I’ve assembled ten impressions of the man that I found not to be true in our conversation. But be warned: just because these “myths” aren’t completely true doesn’t mean they’re completely untrue either…

1. Bob Lutz is calculating about his own image.

This is a bit of a tough one to start with. Even as I write this, I can hear the clamoring from the comment section. “He got you, Ed,” you’re thinking. “So much for that journalistic toughness, you got played by a master.” But bear with me. Clearly Lutz has a well-defined persona: the cigar-chomping (he puffed an enormous stogie throughout our interview), martini-drinking, Cobra-driving, jet-piloting, hard-charging corporate warrior. And there may well have been a time when he worked at that image. But having spent some time around a number of latter-day execs and PR guys, the directness with which Bob Lutz engages you, his apparent lack of internal filters, is one of the major impressions I left our interview with. Even when his answers to a question skewed more towards self-serving rather than purely truth-serving lines of logic, they emerged almost as soon as the question was asked with little of the pause for calculation indulged in by modern execs (this was particularly surprising when he was faced with questions he clearly wasn’t expecting, like “why are GM cars so heavy?”). Reasonable people can disagree over whether there is daylight between his truth and their personal version of the “objective truth,” but  he tells his truth with the spontaneity of a person with no concern for what the world thinks of him. Indeed, over the course of our conversation I picked up the distinct impression that Lutz would rather be seen as complex, even contradictory, than consistent. And by the time I left his pied-a-terre outside Ann Arbor, I had a less concise idea of who the guy is than when I arrived.

2. Bob Lutz hates the media.

In his most recent book, Lutz rails at length against the media, assigning it what I believe to be an unfair share of the blame for the decline of GM. Heck, he even calls The Truth About Cars “a website that often offers anything but”… for a headline written by a New York Times editor.  And yet, nobody held a gun to his head and made him invite me to his own home for an extended conversation. And because he did invite me, I was able to ask him about his relationship with the media. We were talking about the politicization of the Volt (see myth number three) when the subject came up, so I asked Lutz: “you devote quite  bit of the book criticizing the media, and yet most people in the media feel that you’ve always been pretty well treated…” Lutz jumped in

I was, yeah. I have no complaints about my personal treatment, I mean, I always got along well with the media, and that’s globally… I think they recognized that I was a force for the good. No, I’m talking about the way the media generally treated the US car industry. We had a colleague of yours from Der Spiegel magazine in Germany… he asked “what were the factors behind the decline of the American car industry,” and I said, well, you know, I mentioned the US media. And he said, “you know, this is a curious thing because this is the only country that I know of where the media routinely trashes the domestic product. He said “the German media thinks Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche Audi are wonderful. Opel and Ford of Germany are semi-wonderful because they are, after all, American owned. French cars, well, if you must and the Italians and Japanese… yes, yes, they’re getting better, but they’ll never be [a German car]. Same thing in France. Japan. Korea.”

I’m not for a chauvinistic media, it should be objective and realistic, but with the American media you could put out some pretty good stuff and it was… dismissed. Dismissive was the best you could hope for. The Cobalt was routinely trashed in the media, but every time anyone actually drove a Cobalt, they said “this is a nice little car.”  It’s very refined… it’s peppy, has good brakes, good steering, the interior is… OK… seats are nice. I mean, it’s a nice little car. It deserved a lot better press than it got. I’ll put a Cobalt against a current generation Corolla any day.

Now, this whole rant was not unlike what appears in Car Guys, and it hardly disproves myth number two. But here’s the thing: I had driven a rented Cobalt out to Lutz Farm, and he was right. It was nowhere near as terrible as I was expecting. And looking through TTAC“s Cobalt review archives, the conclusions certainly belie TTAC’s reputation for GM bashing. Because Lutz has some valid complaints (there’s another that I’m saving for a final installment of “Cars Only Bob Lutz Remembers”), and more importantly because he only seems to really care about what the media said about his cars, I don’t get the sense that there’s as much personal animosity as comes through in Car Guys. On the other hand, I’m also not convinced that the media isn’t something of a convenient villain for the Car Guys narrative, and that Lutz gives it too much credit for the downfall of GM.

But all that aside, when pushed with the fact that Toyota reviews now feature the word “beige” with the same consistency that Buick reviews used to feature the word “elderly,” Lutz admit that

there’s a gradual change in how American cars are being treated in the American media. The Toyota troubles forever destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility and superiority.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and Toyota, rather than Buick is getting the “one-note” treatment from the automotive press, Lutz seems less concerned with the media’s failings.

3. Bob Lutz is a right-winger.

So, obviously Bob isn’t a left-winger. His views on global warming, for example, are well-documented. But if you tease out the politics that he weaves throughout his answers, what emerges is a man well out of step with the modern right wing. He sings the praises of socialized healthcare as an issue of economic competition, arguing that placing that burden on private business puts manufacturing industries at a disadvantage. He argues strongly for an “intelligent” gas tax, on the grounds that oil price volatility wreaks havoc on product planning. He even concedes that the latest version of CAFE is not totally objectionable. And when it comes to the Volt, he has nothing but contempt for what he calls the “extreme right wing” that tried to publicly kill it. When I asked if the politicization of the Volt was inevitable, or if it had something to do with the car itself, his immediate answer was unequivocal:

I think it predominantly had to do with the extreme right wing media, who will grasp at anything, right, wrong, accurate, inaccurate, to attack the Obama Administration.  The Rush Limbaughs, the Glenn Becks, the Mark Levins… these guys said “how stupid is this? This is the kind of car you get when the government owns a car company.”

Again, the guy has a point. When, in my NYT Volt Op-Ed I had written “In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy,” Rush Limbaugh quoted the first sentence repeatedly and left the second sentence un-quoted. But Lutz wasn’t done attacking the right:

“…and,” [said the right-wingers], “this thing is so bad, the government is going to offer you a [$7,000 tax credit] to get you to buy it. The same government that is forcing this on the American public is, in addition, going to spend your tax dollars to get you to buy it.” Conveniently forgetting, of course, that the [tax credit] went in under the Bush Administration. GM was the target of the extreme right. If they hadn’t have worried about a backlash (which would have inevitably happened), they would have cheerfully organized a right-wing boycott of General Motors.

Regardless of how Lutz feels about any one political issue, his ultimate loyalty is to Detroit, to the American car business. After all, have you ever heard a right-winger argue that

it’s silly for us to be paying $3.50 per gallon when Europe is paying $7 or $8 dollars per gallon

?

4. Bob Lutz only cares about extreme cars.

Even though we were sitting in an office festooned with models of yellow HUMMERs and billet Cadillac Sixteens, as soon as I mentioned that he was best known for his “emotional” cars like the Viper and Solstice, he cut me off

That’s a little bit unfair because I was highly instrumental in the second-generation Chrysler minivan, you know, the great big round one. At its heyday we were doing over 500,000 of those things each year and they were ringing the cash register like mad. I also get very excited about full-sized pickup trucks and sport utilities… I mean, I lavished so much affection on the current generation of GM sport utilities and pickup trucks. Supporting design in certain things and then getting the body gaps down to, like, Lexus-minus tolerances and getting beautiful interiors in… still, I think the Tahoe and Yukon have, for a mass-produced SUV, still one of the nicest interiors around. And of course the Escalade is off the charts… it’s “bling,” but it’s beautifully done.

So, I get just as excited about stuff like that as I do about a Corvette ZR1… in fact, maybe more so. The Lambdas, for instance… one of the beautiful things when you see an Acadia, Enclave or Chevy Traverse, is that beautiful taper towards the rear. You know, the way the body goes from near-vertical, to where it starts to roll in gradually, and you get that lovely tumblehome from the back which makes it look so stable. It gives them that dramatic appearance on the road. When they started out they had straight bodysides, like a Honda Pilot, and I said “why are we doing that?” “Well, it increases rear seat width and maximizes the internal cube.” I said “guys, that’s not what it’s about.” They also said “there’s one more thing. If we do it the way you want, we’ll never have a version with sliding doors.” I said, “well, we’re not doing a version with sliding doors.” [As a result], I think the Acadia, Enclave and Traverse are, from a body-surfacing standpoint, some of the best work done by the American industry.

So, why did it take so long for Lutz to put his touch on the Malibu, GM’s entry in the most important mass-market segment?

Yeah, [chuckles], three, three-and-a-half years. That’s normal. I had to live with the stuff that had been done before.

5. Bob Lutz hates “bean counters.”

As I point out in my review of his most recent book, the title “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters” seems almost to be more a reflection of the author’s internal complexity than a description of an actual battle within GM. Lutz has spent enough time in the business world to know that no business can survive with creative chaos or stifling discipline alone. And just as GM as a whole ebbed and flowed between the creative power of design and the disciplined control of finance, Lutz acknowledges that it takes a balance of two very different instincts to create a successful business. He admits:

The beanies do their job. I’m all for finance, financial controls, cost-cutting and tough discipline… I did it myself… for instance, the Malibu LT2 had a regular aluminum wheel with very shiny, circular machining on it. The LTZ wheel had finer machining, to where it almost looked like the surface of a compact disc. The guys showed them to me and said… “there’s a forty buck difference, it’s ten dollars a wheel.” I said “take it out.” [Costs] get in that shouldn’t be there in the first place. You just can’t let the beancounters be in charge and philosophically drive the organization… because that’s when it gets off track.

Indeed, the king of the car guys has an MBA, not an engineering degree, and his entire argument for his turnaround of GM was predicated on a beancounter’s argument: if controlling the bottom line is killing you, do something about the top line.

The product development guys, whether at Ford, BMW, Chrysler or GM, liked my leadership because I insist on good rather than cheap. And it’s definitely paid off. The average transaction prices of GM cars are up so much it more than offsets, way more than offsets, the maybe thousand bucks I put into the vehicle.

6. Bob Lutz loves/hates electric cars.

Nowhere are Bob Lutz’s internal complexities better displayed than in the world of electric cars. To the EV enthusiast community he’s been both a villain of “Old Detroit”, railing against “the theory of man-made global warming” and the savior of the electric car, as internal champion of GM’s Volt.  In hopes of getting to the bottom of this mystery, I asked Lutz if he thought Nissan would gain a “first mover” advantage (alá Toyota’s hybrid advantage) over the competition by being first to market with a mainstream pure-electric car. To which he answered:

No. I don’t see the Leaf generating the “cool factor,” the “gotta have it factor,” the “this is the car to have factor.” I don’t see that in the media, it’s not generating any of the buzz you would expect from that. I think the Leaf is going to be a relatively low-volume vehicle. The problem is range anxiety. You hook a range extender onto that, which of course immediately drives cost for a second powertrain, but if you have a nominal 100 miles electric [range] plus another 200 on the gas engine if you need it… now you’re talking. But people with a pure electric, unless it’s got a 250 or 300 mile range… and the Leaf doesn’t even get 100 miles after a few years, or on a cold day.  So, the Leaf gets 70 miles on a good day and 50 miles on a bad day… meanwhile there are guys getting 56 miles  [of electric range] on the Chevy Volt.

In short, when the topic turns electric, Lutz wants to talk about his baby: the Volt. He half admits that the range-extended Chevy was a “PR exercise,” saying

PR has such a nasty flavor… let’s call it a “reputational adjustment exercise.” What the Viper did for Chrysler in 1992,  the Volt is doing for the Chevrolet brand [in an entirely different way].

And he argues that, although the Volt’s design is fundamentally less efficient over longer distances than a conventional hybrid or PHEV, that misses the point. “People want to drive 40 miles on electric power,” he says, “if you look at it through the eyes of the customer and not the EPA, they see it as ‘I’m getting 40 miles every day, practically for free.’” Is it, I asked, counter-intuitive to design a “green halo” car not to maximize efficiency?

It is if you look at a hypothetical usage profile. But we knew that 80 percent of Americans drive 40 miles per day, and the Volt is for them. I wanted to look at the real usage profile. An airplane engineer will tell you “you know, we can make this fighter much more efficient if we don’t add all the weight and complexity of an ejection seat”… but good luck finding someone to fly it.

Of course, even at a 70-mile range, the Leaf will still be able to get most of that 80 percent to work and back… especially if they can charge at work. But finding a consistent principle in Lutz’s opinions generally isn’t a question of analyzing any of these arguments. Though he wasn’t being paid by GM at the time of our interview, it was clear that Lutz’s principles are allied almost entirely with GMs. And if he has any regrets anything about the concept and development of the Volt, he isn’t ready to admit them.

7. Bob Lutz hates industry-outsider auto execs.

Though he rails against the “brand management” era of the 1990s, and the outside board members and packaged-good industry executives who championed it, Lutz is not entirely against outside influences on the car industry. He is not, as are many longtime industry insiders, completely convinced of the notion that  you must be steeped in the car business to understand the car business. Quite the contrary, he argues

Because we’re all trained the same way, a traditional automobile person from Ford, GM or Chrysler can move from company to company, and the way programs are created, the way they’re measured, the way they proceed through the approval process, the way they’re then finally executed… you hardly notice the difference. It is this finance-driven, metrics-driven approach that was originally put in by McNamara and the “Whiz Kids” at Ford… and it eventually translated to the whole industry. Ford Motor Company is so proud of the fact that they, I would call it infected, the whole industry with it. So, you take some 30-year veteran of that system, they know how that works, they know those rules, they know you set tough cost targets and then you turn the crank again and you drive costs down some more, the top line is more or less assumed, the argument that if we make a better car it will bring in more money just is not recognized. The top line is the top line, don’t mess with it.

So if [post-bailout GM] had gone back to some veteran automobile guy, there would be a high risk that we’d lose it. Again. But the fact is that all the Detroit Three are run by non-traditional Detroit guys, and the way Dan Akerson and Dan Ammon look at it,   is “30 years of doing it the wrong way resulted in decline and ultimate failure. Now, with a focus on excellence, and willingly doing the best engineering and manufacturing that we possibly can, do not skimp, don’t try to substitute margarine for butter…  now our average transaction prices are up four or five thousand dollars.

Though a product of the system he derides, Lutz was able to see its fatal flaw: a fundamental lack of desire to improve the top end. Convincing outsiders that you can “leave the butter in” and see investments in product quality generate much larger returns in transaction prices (again, a “bean-counter” argument, at its heart) was actually easier than convincing executives steeped in the Detroit business model. And in the old days of GM, changing the basic approach to the business was nearly impossible due to what he calls a culture of “genteel arrogance.”

It wasn’t an aggressive arrogance, and it wasn’t an active arrogance. It was a passive, genteel arrogance… somewhat like medieval aristocracy dealing with the peasants. Infinitely polite, fair… [mimics an upper-crust Mid-Atlantic accent]  “yes, that’s a good point… I don’t think we’ll be using your idea, but thank you very much.” So it was always very genteel, but it stemmed from this somewhat inbred culture that never drew people from the outside. It was almost a world of its own, and it was bred in the 50s and 60s when GM inarguably had total dominance of the market.

So, once his “top-line” argument started being taken seriously by Wagoner, the post-bailout influx of outsiders actually helped build support for his ideas. He recalls being told by one of GM’s new senior execs that “your fingerprints are all over this company,” and from the sound of that anecdote, there are no plans at the top of the Ren Cen to get away from Lutz’s basic philosophy. The contrast to the “brand management” days is clear: then, outsiders came in thinking they knew it all; now, the outsiders are steeped in the Lutz philosophy. No wonder the tune has changed.

8. Bob Lutz hates Toyota.

Lutz agreed that Detroit-based car executives “had good reasons to dislike Toyota,” but one of the biggest surprises of our conversation came when I asked if Toyota were owed some credit for its innovations.

Oh, absolutely. I don’t think they’re great at product creation… I’ve always said Toyota is vulnerable because the only image component that is driving sales is reliability and resale value, and if they lose [those two qualities], God help ‘em. The cars look average, they drive average… I mean, let’s face it, they’re bland-mobiles. It became a default purchase for people who knew nothing about cars, and didn’t care about cars… and sure enough, [the reputation for reliability and resale value] was true. And, early on, Toyotas were also beautifully finished, inside and out. Even a Camry or Corolla had a beautiful interior… not so much any more.

But, there was no doubt that Toyota’s success lay in the actual manufacturing of the car. The Toyota Production System, Just-In-Time inventory, error-proofing, Andon cords in the factories, the blend of human operatives and automation… all of that stuff, we undeniably learned from Toyota. If you have a bracket that has to attach to something, Toyota  would engineer that bracket in such a way that you could not mount that bracket upside-down. The whole industry was transformed from… looking back, you almost have to say haphazard manufacturing and quality control to designing a process flow in manufacturing that almost guarantees you perfection with every single vehicle. So, all the credit in the world to them for that.

I also think they had a very good and productive relationship with their suppliers, which we didn’t always have. Detroit keeps slipping into these periods of “let’s beat the hell out of [suppliers] and suck all the profitability out of them because it belongs to us”… with devastating results each time. They also showed, maybe by default, that you maintain residual value by not oversupplying the market. We would oversupply the market… “alright, another 50,000 into daily rental”… it looks good in the short term, you make the numbers, you make your market share, and then you wonder why the two-year-old off-lease Malibu was worth only 38 percent [of its original value].

This last bit is pretty key to Lutz’s “bean-counter” argument about improving the top-end of the business. That he learned the lesson at the hands of Toyota and manages to give credit where it’s due is a compelling admission, given GM’s notorious reputation for “not invented here syndrome.” And later in the conversation, when the new Camry came up in passing, he remarked

Apparently they were able to take 250 lbs out of it, while maintaining structural rigidity… everyone says it’s not a bad car… good for them.

Apparently he even has more respect for Toyota’s product development than you might think.

9. Bob Lutz can’t admit a mistake.

The quote above might be enough to show that Lutz is more reflective and self-critical than his “damn the torpedoes” public image would suggest, but his most significant admissions of failure have to do with GM. The on that is most damning, in my eyes, is his admission in Car Guys that he was not enthusiastic about GM’s expansion into China. Had Lutz been in charge, you could make the case that a late entry into China would have damned the company to bankruptcy years earlier than 2009. But there are other, more concrete examples of mistakes that he heartily admits to… mistakes in his own area of expertise. None looms as large as the GMC XUV, a vehicle he calls a “disaster.” And though he discusses this incident in the book as well, in our conversation he connects the episode with his critique of GM’s culture: executives at GM were, by and large, too smart for their own good. And Lutz himself, a man with no lack of confidence, found himself overwhelmed.

There were some times when I deferred to the GM people because they seemed so smart and seemed to have done their homework so well and they were so convincing and the PowerPoint presentations were so great. I felt like I was dealing with people of a really superior intelligence… and I was! That’s how the GMC XUV happened. I just got myself convinced… I hate it, but that doesn’t mean anything. I may not be the customer for this sort of thing, but these people have done their homework and we’ll let it go.  That one proved to be a waste of about $275 million, down a rathole, for nothing. That vehicle was a joke.

This anecdote goes against the grain of the bean-counter-slaying Bob Lutz narrative, but it also confirms a basic premise of his philosophy: being too smart is as bad as being dumb. Over-thinking things can lead to as many bad decisions as it can avoid. And if Lutz is going to admit a mistake, it will typically be a mistake caused by the head winning out over the gut.

10. Bob Lutz is old and out of touch.

When I showed up at Lutz Farm for our conversation, it never occurred to me that Lutz was just days away from returning to the payroll at General Motors. I knew he had been doing some “consulting,” but I didn’t imagine that he was as involved in decisions as he is. Indeed the first hint that he might still carry significant weight inside GM’s product development organization came in the answer to my very first question, in which I asked him to compare his time at Chrysler with his time at GM. After some background he explained

First of all, when I arrived at Chrysler, I didn’t have the all-encompassing powers over product development that I do now.

Part of me wanted to ask him how much I should read into that little  Freudian slip, but Lutz was off and running and I spent the next several hours just trying to keep up. And really, it would probably be a better question to ask Mary Barra, the relatively unknown actual head of product development at GM.

In any case, Lutz’s continued involvement at GM has raised more than a few accusations that “it’s time to let Lutz go” and that “the old man is past his prime”… but I saw nothing that led me to believe he couldn’t be helpful to a young exec trying to take charge of GM’s product development. When he was serving espresso before the interview began, I thought I saw his hand shake almost imperceptibly… otherwise, I wouldn’t have pegged him for a day over 60. For hours he puffed his cigar and kept up with my often-abstract questions, answering them rapidly, deploying pop-culture-references and decades-old anecdotes alike. His phone and Blackberry  chimed relentlessly throughout the interview, and he would sometimes interrupt the interview briefly to fire off Blackberry messages with the dexterity and nonchalance of a 13 year old.

I certainly hope to be in his shape when I reach 79… and anyone fascinated by the world of cars would be glad for the opportunity to spend part of an afternoon listening to his prodigious perspective. There’s no doubt that Lutz is a man from another time, but he’s also a man with the grit and determination to stay remarkably relevant in a rapidly-changing world. Agree or disagree with him, love him or hate him, Bob Lutz is a living link to an automotive era that seems unlikely to return… and from which the industry can still learn a lot.

I designed TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey to provide information an average of ten months ahead of the established annual surveys. Early last December we shared with TTAC readers that ”Early data on the Ford Fiesta is not good.” Then, in early March, we stated about the 2011 Fiesta and the 2010 Taurus that ”Ford does not appear to have tested either model thoroughly enough.” The late February release on the TrueDelta site went a step farther, asking, “Is Ford slipping?” The answer last week from Ford: “Yes, but we’re going to fix it.”

The official Ford line, as conveyed through Automotive News: we’re being open about our “tech glitches” because, in the words of CEO Alan Mulally, “You can’t manage a secret.” But what is Ford trying to manage by being open about quality problems? Not the problems themselves—it’s possible to be open about problems inside a company without going to the press about them. Instead, they’re trying to manage something outside the company: public perceptions.

Why now? Because later this month J.D. Power will release its annual Initial Quality Survey (IQS) results, and Ford knows that its scores are going to be significantly worse than in the past. The reason stated in the Automotive News article: glitches in the new “MyFord Touch” touchscreen-based control system. Because the IQS combines usability problems and mechanical problems (something we’ve criticized the survey for in the past), a hard to use control system will harm a car’s score even if nothing is technically wrong with it. BMW’s scores have suffered ever since it introduced iDrive.

The article refers to Consumer Reports as well, and drew on their auto chief David Champion for a couple of quotes. But, in noting that CR dropped its recommendation for the Ford Edge “in part because of the controls,” the author doesn’t seem to realize that CR’s road test evaluations and its reliability survey are two entirely separate entities. While MyFord Touch might fail the former, it could very well have no impact on the latter.

What will have an impact on CR’s reliability survey results, which will be next be updated in October: the problems noted in TrueDelta’s survey, and that aren’t mentioned at all in the Automotive News article despite Ford’s “openness.” Things like the chrome finish flaking off the taillights on the Taurus and Fiestas that won’t start, whose fuel gauges don’t read correctly, or (in fewer but more serious cases) whose dual clutch automated manual transmissions fail. The Taurus problem is admittedly minor, but it nevertheless indicates a faulty product development process. Proper testing would have discovered that the finish would peel off the taillights in less than a year. Similarly, proper testing would have found that a poor ground would lead to no-starts in the Fiesta, and that the fuel gauges in the car were often failing to read correctly. If these common problems that appear early on were missed, what else has been missed?

These glitches aren’t entirely a new development. Earlier, the 2007 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX suffered from very common failures to the seals of their AWD units, often multiple times with the same car—and this problem persisted for at least three model years. The 2008 Taurus has commonly had problems with its front struts. And the revision to the Fusion for 2010 created transmission driveability problems where none had existed before—and which have proven hard to fix. But the Fiesta has been the least reliable new Ford in some time, with multiple common problems (that have nothing to do with MyFord Touch). And as the first Ford of Europe car to be transplanted to North America under Mulally’s “One Ford” program it could presage problems with the 2012 Focus and upcoming Escape and Fusion replacements.

Someone within Ford is certainly aware of these other problems that have nothing to do with “tech glitches.” Mulally himself is likely aware of them; otherwise, he’s got an even bigger problem on his hands. If Mulally is aware of these problems, he realizes that they will impact the IQS this month and Consumer Reports survey results in the fall. But Ford’s professed openness didn’t extend to discussing these other problems with Automotive News. Instead, they focused on debugging MyFord Touch and installing new robots to improve the precision of panel fits. It’s not hard to imagine why. This way, when those poor scores come out, journalists and the broader public they inform might think that they’re due to buggy software and panel fits, and not anything more serious.

Ford might buy themselves a little time this way. But if they want to maintain the reputation for quality they worked so hard to achieve, they must address the true scope of the problem. Mo’ better robots aren’t going to do the trick now any more than they did for Roger Smith’s GM. Their product development process needs fixing.

In recent years the organizers of the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) have been especially eager to demonstrate that Detroit’s show is still relevant. Yet they crammed every OEM press conference save Volvo’s into a single day, leaving the second day for Li-ion Motors Corp., Mach 7 Motor Sports, and such. In years past there were two-and-a-half days of manufacturer press conferences, with little filler. Maybe next year everything will be back to normal?

When manufacturer press conferences are back-to-back it’s rarely possible to get a decent seat at both of them. Why not just have all manufacturers use Cobo arena, where there are plenty of seats, but which only Ford uses each year? No doubt they have good reasons, among them a desire to wow us with unique ways of getting a car onto a stage.

Some impressions from the show:

Acura RL: If they revised the exterior again, would it get even uglier?

Audi A6: The 2012 A6 looks much like the current A4 and A8, though the proportions are better than the latter’s. That such a predictable design won “best in show” for a production car provides a good indication of the quantity and quality of the new designs introduced. Especially the quantity.

Audi A7: I’ve been hearing that the A7 is based on the A8, but a view of the specs confirms that it’s much more closely related to this new A6. Compared to the all-aluminum A8, both the 2012 A6 and the 2011 A7 have tighter, more attractive proportions and have bodies that are about 20 percent aluminum. The A7 is the most attractive of the bunch and seems the sportiest from the driver’s seat. The rear seat is tight, especially considering the car’s 114.6-inch wheelbase (shared with the new A6), but at least it’s easier to get into and out of than that in the original Mercedes-Benz CLS, which originated the “four-door coupe” segment.

Buick Verano: Excellent seats, with luxurious padding over a firm, form-fitting foundation and premium leather. The rest of the interior is also quite good, with switchgear much like that in the Regal. But will the oddly-proportioned but otherwise innocuously styled exterior lead enough people to peer inside? A GM executive informed me that my opinion of the exterior is, well, just my opinion.

BYD: While Mercedes provides a choice between “herb roasted Alaskan halibut with fava bean and purple potato succotash, citrus-crab-salad an lemon aioli” and “beef tenderloin with bourbon-mustard-sauce and smoked tomatos served with Hombolt fog whipped potatoes,” the Chinese manufacturer (on the main floor for the second time this year) solicits our good favor with…store-bought candy and cookies neatly arranged on a plate. I had an Oreo. Clueless, or smart? How can one not feel warmly towards a lost child?

Chevrolet Sonic: Perhaps this will be the last time GM feels a need to change the smallest Chevy’s name? The Sonic is clearly a far better car than the Aveo. Very stylish both inside and out, with a very well done front end considering the need to make the hood both high (for pedestrian safety) and short. Materials aren’t quite up to those in the Fiesta, but the rear seat is much roomier than the Ford’s. GM promised excellent handling, and seems to really mean it. I’m hopeful. Chevrolet also aspires to be “among the leaders” (vs. Hyundai’s goal to be “the leader”) everywhere in fuel efficiency. They’ll achieve this through their Chevrolet heritage, design, a few other things I cannot recall…and fuel efficiency. Chevrolet also boasted that the Silverado won Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year award. Is this supposed to impress a large crowd of auto writers, 99% of whom do not write for Motor Trend? In general manufacturers’ presentations contained little material likely to impress journalists. They’re smart enough to realize this, so why?

Chrysler: Though the Chrysler brand presentation gushed sap, with music calculated to tug at the heartstrings of every middle-aged woman not in the audience (Jean Jennings is decidedly non-sappy), that the company was able to revise every Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep for 2011 impresses. The new interiors received by nearly every model are a big improvement, in some cases a huge one. The thoroughly redesigned Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger are both prettier than the 2005-2010 cars, and look better in person than they have in photos, but they are also less distinctive and less likely to be noticed. The 300’s front and rear fascias, which borrow even more from Bentley than they did before, reek of understated elegance. The windshield has been raked to a conventional angle, and the windows are a little larger, so the view from the driver’s seat is similarly more familiar and less distinctive.

Ford C-Max: The second- and third-row seats are very tight, and most suitable for children. Their seatbacks are very short, especially in the third row, so the headrests must be raised about a foot for adult use. But the way the center second-row seat stores inside the right second-row seat is quite nifty. The Mazda5 needs a seat like this. Typical of the class, there’s hardly any cargo space behind the third row. The Ford of Europe-developed C-Max’s interior materials and design, largely shared with the new Focus, are more solid than you’ll find in the typical Japanese or Korean car.

Ford Explorer: Having recently purchased a Ford Taurus X, I was very interested in checking out the new Explorer, which is based on the same platform. While I think I could live with the new MyFord Touch system, which is certainly prettier if not easier to use than the controls and displays in my Taurus X, I found a number of other things to dislike. The much higher instrument panel, meant to provide more of the character of a real SUV, makes for a much less open view forward. A folding front passenger seat, one of my reasons for buying the Taurus X, is not offered on the Explorer. Nor is a sliding function in the second row, probably because there’s much less leg room to work with. Finally, the fake stitching on the door armrests is far too obviously fake, a throwback to the 1980s. Ford does faux upholstered interior panels much better in the Lincoln MKX.

Honda Civic: Though “all new,” the 2012 Civic sedan looks much like the 2011 Civic sedan, just a little crisper with stronger shoulders, a BMW-style kink along the rear edge of the side window, and a less civic-minded front fascia (which could be limited to the Si). The small window ahead of the door has been replaced by yet another of those black triangles, while the doors themselves now include a small fixed pane of glass ahead of the opening part of the window. The coupe is changed a little more, with the fenders now flaring out over each wheel and an even more pronounced Hoffmeister. The changes make it appear longer, more massive, and more like the Accord coupe. The reaction in the crowd was surprisingly positive given such minimal changes after six years because many feared that Honda would mess up the new Civic like they have so many other designs in recent years.

Hyundai Veloster: Why didn’t they just name it Tiburon? The three-door configuration implies a very tight rear seat, but there’s plenty of legroom for the average-sized adult, and enough headroom for those under 5-10 or so. So why isn’t there a fourth door? Haven’t there been enough cases where a manufacturer initially went with three doors, then found they needed a fourth? Hyundai has failed to learn from history. Compounding the problem, the rear seats are split by a small console. To sit in the left rear seat, someone must either enter through the driver’s door, conventional coupe style, or hop this console. On the plus side, Hyundai promises excellent handling, and seems to mean it. I’m hopeful, especially given a sub-2,600-pound curb weight. Hyundai is not promising much in the way of powertrain performance aside from an EPA rating around 40 highway—same as the new Elantra on which the Veloster is based. John Krafcik, president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America, never fails to impress with his natural, honest delivery. Other auto executives should study his presentations to see how its done. The three lesser employees trotted out as the car’s Gen Y target sounded quite scripted in comparison.

Jeep Grand Cherokee: Who knew there was room for another trim level above the already pricey Overland? The natural-finished brown leather in the new Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland Summit looks and feels as good as any I’ve experienced in a car. But will this leather hold up? There’s a reason most car leather is processed beyond recognition.

Jeep Compass: Jeep introduced a refreshed Compass, and affirmed its commitment to the model because, apparently, it targets the largest SUV segment in terms of global sales. The Compass gets the CVT with a creeper ratio that was previously offered only in the related Patriot. No one seemed to care.

Jeep Grand Wagoneer: Is FIAT already backsliding on its pledge to not share models between brands? As I understood it, following the Commander fiasco Jeep wasn’t going to offer a seven-passenger SUV, while Dodge wasn’t going to offer a five-passenger SUV. But it seems that for the 2013 model year Jeep will get a Durango-sized variant of the Grand Cherokee, with the Grand Wagoneer nameplate revived for the combination.

Land Rover / Range Rover: Land Rover wants to have two separate brands, with “Range Rover” for the most luxurious models. One implication: the Land Rover Range Rover is now the Range Rover Range Rover, in the style of the Ram Ram. This isn’t the only corner into which Land Rover has painted itself. Much like the Discovery became the Discovery 2 in years past, then the Discovery 3 and Discovery 4 in the UK, which never went alphanumeric, the LR3 became the LR4 when it was redesigned for 2010. And the next LR2 will be called…what? Befitting the two-brand strategy, the Range Rover Evoque is considerably nicer inside than the Land Rover LR2. There’s less room, but still just enough for my 5-9 self in the back seat.

Porsche 918: Looks fantastic, and likely drives at least as good as it looks. By including a flywheel-based hybrid propulsion system, Porsche signals that, while the 918’s styling recalls past legends, the company intends to lead the rest of the industry into the future. Now that they’ve got their own, there will be no more pooh-poohing of hybrids from Europe. This said, I’m personally much more interested in “the car next door.”

Toyota Prius V: The company had been hinting about a Prius-branded MPV, and I’d been assuming three rows. The Prius V, it turns out, is essentially a Prius with 50 percent more cargo room. The difference is so small, why bother?

Volkswagen Passat: VW is clearly serious about greatly increasing its U.S. sales, bringing an army of employees to the show this year. The new US-specific Passat looks better inside and out than the new Jetta, and considerably better than I expected. Interior materials are a step or two back from previous Passats, in a bid to start at $20,000 and sell in the hundreds of thousands. The hard plastic on the door panels looks and feels cheap, at least in the light tan interior, but the rest isn’t too bad. In another attempt to cater to the priorities of American midsize sedan buyers, legroom is unusually plentiful in both rows. As much as I hate to admit that this strategy might work, this strategy might work, despite the likely negative reviews from the automotive press. No one enjoys being told, “You don’t sufficiently appreciate the good stuff, so here’s Grade B ‘just for you.’”

Bill Mitchell, only the second man to head General Motors styling when he took over from the monumental Harley Earl, was not a man about whom people were impartial. GM’s official history reveres him. Harley Earl’s family reviles him. His coworkers and subordinates at GM either loved him or despised the man. Even landmark designs that were signatures of his reign at GM Styling, the split-window 1963 Corvette Sting Ray and the boat tail Rivieras, are polarizing designs that had detractors, including some on the GM Styling staff. He admittedly ran that department like a dictator, though he rarely fired anyone. Mercurial in temper, he’d have screaming fits at his design staff, laced with the most vulgar epithets, then defuse the tension with an offhand joke as he left the room. Shamelessly ambitious and self-promoting, often taking personal credit for his staffs’ designs, had the term “larger than life” not existed, Mitchell would have coined it to describe himself.

By today’s standards of workplace political correctness, diversity and racial and sexual harassment law, Bill Mitchell was an atavistic throwback to an age when ethnic jokes by supervisors were uncomfortably endured by the brunt of that ‘humor’. An executive then could tell his secretary to order him up some hookers after a multiple martini lunch, knowing that she’d hold all calls and cover for him if his wife (or another executive) got jealous. As a result, in addition to whatever praise and criticism his aesthetic direction and management skills have garnered, Bill Mitchell’s legacy has been somewhat tarred with the brush of bigotry.

The question is are we being fair to the man? Are we applying contemporary standards to an era that was simultaneously more innocent and more evil in terms of racial, ethnic and other prejudice?

Just about every biographical account of Bill Mitchell written since his death uses the word “bigot”, mentions his profanity and his heavy drinking, and also usually references his recreational activities with those of the two X chromosome persuastion. It’s in Motor Trend Classic‘s profile of the man and shows up in Ate Up With Motors’ history of the Cadillac 60 Special, the first important design that Mitchell directed.

Based on how Mitchell’s vices usually come cataloged together, my hunch is that most of these accounts ultimately rely on Michael Lamm and Dave Holls’ encyclopedic A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design first published in 1995. In introducing their book’s section on the Bill Mitchell era at GM Styling, Lamm and Holls characterize the man thusly:

“He was tough and dictatorial, a bigot, a womanizer; he often drank too much [and] had a foul mouth…”

That Mitchell was a womanizer is in no doubt. He had a contentious divorce with his first wife, and was estranged from one of his daughters when he married his second wife a day after it was granted. According to Peter Robinson’s piece in MT, Mitchell’s indiscrete foursome with three women got him banned from an upscale Frankfut hotel. Lamm & Holls quote Chuck Jordan, Mitchell’s lieutenant and successor as saying, “He certainly loved women,” and Mitchell himself often said “If God made anything better than a woman, He kept it for Himself.” A former administrative assistant (they were called “secretaries” in those antediluvian days) said that had the laws existed then, she could have filed a hundred sexual harassment suits against him. One account had him hiring seven prostitutes for a lunchtime orgy. When he discovered that he was short of cash, he sent an underling to the bank with his personal $1,000 check so he could pay each of the working ladies her $100 fee.

When it comes to the ladies, Baruth ain’t got nothin’ on Mr. Mitchell.

He also drank quite a bit. At a party at GM designer George Moon’s home Mitchell was seen tying one on, only to disappear. The next morning they had to call the police and fire department to get him down from 50 feet up in a tree. Another time, he and Oldsmobile design director Art Ross got stuck trying to drive a horse drawn carriage they’d stolen in Central Park into the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Mitchell’s vices are documented but prejudices are a bit harder to pin down. He did have very clear gender roles.

Harley Earl was rather progressive in his thinking. He hired Jews, Latinos, openly gay men and women as designers. Though Arthur Ross had changed his name from Rosenman, he didn’t hide his Jewish ethnicity, and Earl hired him, eventually promoting him to head the Cadillac and Buick design studios. He hired the first female designer in the industry in 1943. Automotive design was often seen as a struggle between the “pretty boys” (designers) and the “tough guys” (engineers). Engineers would called the designers “pantywaists” and “fairies”. As a result of those perceptions Earl himself affected a hyper-masculine persona to have some leverage with the engineers. Still, as a matter of practice, Harley Earl hired some openly gay men for his design staff. Recognizing that women usually cast the deciding vote on car purchases, he made a point of having at least one woman on each design team. Today we’d probably call that tokenism, but in the 1950s it was genuinely progressive.

Earl even used the women on his staff for promotional purposes. Sue Vanderbilt and other female designers chafed at the PR copy that focused on them making cars living rooms on wheels, and weren’t thrilled at being relegated to interior design teams. Still, they were team players trying to get ahead in a very competitive field, so they didn’t complain about being “Damsels of Design” until after they retired. They took the opportunities presented to them, including a 1956 display at the GM Building of ten cars “feminized” by GM’s women designers and the chance to contribute to GM’s 1959 Motorama cars. Earl said, around the time of his retirement in 1958, “I believe the future for qualified women in automotive design is virtually unlimited. In fact, I think that in three or four years women will be designing entire automobiles.”

That prediction did not come to be and interiors would still remain the female ghetto at GM Styling for decades. Bill Mitchell said, “No women are going to stand next to any senior designers of mine on any exterior styling of Cadillac or GM’s other major brands,” and proceeded to demote all the females on the design staff. Not long after Mitchell succeeded Earl as VP of styling, Vanderbilt got a leave of absence from her position as an assistant styling director in order to get her MFA at the Cranbrook Institute. However, when she returned to GM after only two years away she had to start over as a junior designer. Men who left GM Styling and returned usually came back at the same or higher level than they left. Mitchell also paid his female designers less than the men, though this was standard practice in industry at the time and not necessarily due to Mitchell’s personal sexism. Vanderbilt does note that while restricted to interior design, she indeed moved up in the hierarchy at GM. She also points out in her oral history that GM Styling was intensely competitive and that she and other female designers did not always have the stomach for the political and corporate combat needed to move up in rank.

In terms of other prejudice, specifically racial, religious or ethnic bias, the question is a bit murkier. The Lamm/Holls book gives the perspective of the people who knew Mitchell and were likely to be on the receiving end of some of his epithets. Lamm and Holls characterize Mitchell’s bigotry as reflecting not the man, but the era. I’m not entirely convinced. He may not have discriminated against people because of what they were, he just seems to have enjoyed making them squirm for the same reason. I’m not sure that it’s much of a defense to say that someone wasn’t a bigot, just selfish and cruel.

His bigotry was perhaps typical of the era. “Minorities had a difficult time under Bill,” observed designer Stan Wilen [a GM brand design head]. “If you were Black or Latino or Asian, he’d put an adjective in front of a reference that would make conversation a little awkward. I qualified as a minority, so I hear[d] those things. Sometimes when he did not like the design of a front end, he’d say it looked like a grouper. But if someone was in the room who was Jewish, like me or Jerry Hirschberg [later vice president of Nissan Design International in California], Bill would use the word “jewfish” instead of grouper. Maybe he was just teasing, but maybe he wasn’t.

“Or he’d be up in the executive dining room, and there’d be all of his men around him. We’d be eating lunch, and Bill – with no [excuse that he'd been drinking] alcohol, because it wasn’t allowed there – would start telling stories. And Juanita, the waitress, would be serving a salad or something, and he would come up with some of the most outrageous sexual comments. Even the guys around him would curdle. But Juanita would look straight ahead… and pretend she didn’t hear any of it. I mention this to demonstrate a dimension of cruelty in his humor.”

Jerry Hirschberg had another explanation. “Mitchell was never an introspective man. He was all reflex and intuition., and it was clear to me that there was little intent in many of his statements and actions. I heard the ‘jewfish’ comments but also found myself being moved up the [GM] management ladder as swiftly as anyone. The words Jew, Jap, Wop and Nigger tumbled out of him, but his passion for beautiful cars and the talents needed to make them prevailed. Being Jewish never seemed to hurt my career at GM Design Staff, although it occasionally did hurt! Mitchell’s contradictory nature reflected the turmoil and pain around him – and the levels of energy and even inspiration that prevailed.”

Lamm and Holls continue:

Chuck Jordan likewise maintained that Mitchell didn’t intentionally hurt people; he was just thoughtless. And Corvette designer Larry Shinoda, who’s Japanese-American, said he never noticed any racial malice in Mitchell, “…none at all.” Shinoda often accompanied Mitchell on racing junkets and the two became quite close until Shinoda left to go to Ford. Strother MacMinn further pointed out that Art Ross, who was Jewish, not only worked closely with Mtichell on cars like the 1941 Cadillac [60 Special] but was also his friend and faithful drinking companion.” – Lamm & Holls, pg. 173.

Since the Lamm/Holls book has become a standard reference on the history of automotive design and designers, that would probably be where the issue ends: a man of his times whose use of slurs was more personal than prejudicial. However, as I discovered, Strother MacMinn’s reflection on Mitchell’s relationship with Art Ross was not the same as that of Art Ross himself.

How I got to that discovery requires a small digression, so please bear with me.

In recent years the fine art world has discovered and started to appreciate (in both senses of the word) the original artwork and illustrations done by automotive designers. In 2005 Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts published Future Retro: Drawings From the Great Age of American Automobiles, with an introduction by Frederic Sharf and selections from his collection of original design art. In 2007 the Louisville [KY] Visual Art Association put on a show, “Designing an Icon, Creativity and the American Automobile,” with over 100 original art works and clay models, with the assistance of Bill Porter, who drew the 1968 Pontiac GTO. That collection has been shown at a variety of museums, schools, galleries and automotive related institutions, most recently last week at the Northwood Institute.

In reviewing Future Retro, I came across some works by Jerry Brochstein, a GM designer from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Bill Porter and other colleagues hold Brochstein’s work in high regard, though Brochstein is somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Sharf’s book features work he did as a student, not an experienced designer. Among Brochstein’s designs at GM were the distinctive spoked and spinnered hubcaps for the ’63 Vette (which showed up in later iterations on the Riviera and other ’60s GM cars). He also worked on the AeroVette and Olds AeroTech concepts. Brochstein’s 1988 Cadillac Voyagé, to my eye, established the profile of the mid 1990s B-body Caprice/Impala.

I took note of Brochstein’s somewhat Jewish sounding surname and thought about adding him to my list of “car Jews” I’ve been keeping for a possible book about Jews with notable roles in automotive history.

When Brochstein’s son told me via email that his family was “as Jewish as Tevya”, I added him to the list. Searching for information on his role at GM, I found the name of Art Ross, son of Sheckel and Miriam Rosenman, another name for the list. I was able to contact Ross’ son, Carson, via the web sites he has set up to honor his father’s artistic legacies (and sell reproductions, now that such art is considered gallery worthy and collectible).

In discussing Mitchell’s relationship with his father, Carson Ross said that at one time they were indeed close, had been friends, and worked closely with each other at GM. The junior Ross said, though, that the relationship changed as Mitchell gained more power, first as head of design at GM and then later as VP after Earl retired. Earl had hired Ross, was a bit of his patron, and ran interference for him with Mitchell. Once Earl retired, Ross resigned from GM, starting his own successful design firm. Despite what Jerry Hirschberg said, Carson Ross told me that his father considered Mitchell to be an anti-semite, and that one reason why he left GM was that he had grown tired of Mitchell’s frequent use of the word “Jew”. Mitchell would frequently “joke” about Ross being “GM’s token Jew”. Considering that GM hired other Jewish designers like Wilen, Brochstein and Hirschberg, and that both Ross and Wilen rose in the GM hierarchy to head brand design staffs, the joke sounds more pointed than funny. Considering, too, that for a decade and a half after he hired on at GM Mitchell’s paychecks were signed by Meyer Prentis, GM’s treasurer, comptroller and Alfred Sloan’s right hand man, the comment is even less funny, though definitely ironic.

So was Bill Mitchell a sexist, homophobic, racist, anti-semitic bigot? Unlike Mad Men’s Don Draper, Mitchell was a real person who caused real hurt with his remarks, not a fictional character who “evolves”. I don’t think that it’s applying today’s standards to a previous era to say that Bill Mitchell could be bigoted and cruel, but that he also appears to have never let that bigotry or cruelty get in the way of assessing talent.

Later this month at the upcoming Paris auto show, Lotus will be revealing the first car that reflects their new strategic vision, a vision of going upmarket and luxurious to compete directly with the likes of Porsche, Ferrari and Aston Martin. The car, originally slotted to fill the role of the much beloved Esprit, will now be “something more” than the Esprit. The midengine supercar is rumored to be powered by the V10 engine that powers the Lexus LF-A. Toyota currently supplies Lotus with all of its production car engines. The LF-A’s announced production run of 500 units probably won’t cover that engine’s development costs, so the rumor makes sense.

Lotus has been controlled by the Malaysian state owned Proton company since 1996. That was just as Lotus was launching the Elise, which signaled a new era for the company. The Elise introduced Lotus’ aluminum chassis technology based on bonding relatively inexpensive aluminum extrusions together to form a strong but light structure. The architecture also allows for changing track width and wheelbase without having to change chassis or drivetrain hard points. The Elise has been a relative success in the marketplace, selling more than any previous Lotus, and the variants like the Exige, and now the larger Evora have been well received by the motoring press and by enthusiasts. The side of Lotus that does engineering for other concerns has also kept busy.

So what’s Proton’s problem? Lotus hasn’t turned a profit since Proton has owned the British firm. While Lotus has been teasing about the exact nature of the new supercar, in June Datuk Mohd Nadzmi Mohd Salleh, chairman of both Proton and Lotus, held a press briefing laying out his strategic five year plan to turn Lotus into a profitable company. To many observers it marks a bold departure from the company’s current branding, and even more so, from its founder’s vision.

Average Lotus prices will rise to approximately $125,000 – $170,000 (£80,000-£110,000), and the company’s motto will be “Tomorrow’s luxury sports car, today”. Salleh projected that sales of Lotus cars would rise from 2,000-2,500 units annually to 6,000-8,000 in five years. The countries where Lotus cars are sold will rise from 30 to 55. Lotus Engineering, highly respected within the auto industry and the source of much of Lotus revenue through contract work for other companies, will take a greater role in the design and engineering of cars for both Lotus Cars and Proton.

That sharing of technology, and Proton’s desire to have Lotus emulate companies like Aston Martin, can be seen in the fact that Lotus will be selling a city car. While AM is basing their tiny Cygnet on the Toyota iQ, the Lotus city car will be a derivative of the EMAS concept that Giugiaro designed for Proton.

Lotus’ move upmarket can also be seen in changes in the executive suite as well as with their advertising and dealer network.

Mike Kimberley, who guided Lotus through some very rough waters after Colin Chapman died, recently retired for health reasons after a job well done. Since then, from Ferrari alone Lotus has hired Dany Bahar to be Lotus CEO, former Ferrari director of design Donato Coco, and Andreas Prillman who headed business development and sales in Modena. Cladio Berro, who has directed racing for Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Abarth individually, and then the entire Fiat Group’s racing operations including F1, GT, touring car and rally teams, now heads motorsports in Hethel.

Modena wasn’t Lotus’ only shopping stop. Former Mercedes-AMG managing director of Engineering & Production and chief engineer for Technical Strategy, Wolf Zimmermann, became chief technology officer at Lotus last week. He replaced former Porsche directory of quality Frank Tuch, who decided to move on to Volkswagen, which has arrived at an agreement with Lotus to allow Tuch to continue to advise Lotus.

Andreas Schlegel, who formerly ran Aston Martin’s marketing and dealer network management, will do the same for Lotus. He will have a delicate dance to perform as Lotus will continue selling its current range of minimalist lightweight sports cars as it completes the makeover.

Apparently Schlegel’s brief is to be a change agent, as significant changes in Lotus’ marketing and dealer network are already underway. In advance of the Paris Motor Show introduction, the McCann Erickson Central advertising agency was hired by Lotus to oversee the brand’s relaunch. McCann Erickson Central is preparing new brochures and websites for Lotus that reflect that rebranding. The release of the new materials will coincide with the Paris show reveal.

Schlegel is also overseeing changes in Lotus’ dealers. Lotus has been particularly weak is in the strength of their dealers. I don’t think that Lotus has ever had a consistent network in the US, with dealers taking on and dropping the brand. That may change if actions in Europe are any omen. All of their European dealers have been pink slipped. They’ve been given a two-year notice, and if they want to continue to sell Lotus cars after July 2012, they’ll have to reapply for a franchise. They will most likely be expected to make substantial upgrades in their showrooms and customer service levels if they want to sell cars to Lotus’ new breed of customer.

Since the new company motto looks to the future, the significantly higher prices will be based on Lotus’ reputation as a high technology car company, and “tomorrow’s luxury sports cars” will have active aerodynamics, continuously adjustable shock absorbers, range extended EV and hybrid drivetrains, and heads up displays. Salleh said that combustion engine powered versions might be capable of running on alternative fuels.

Many of these technologies are indeed core Lotus competencies. The company has been a pioneer in aerodynamics and suspension design, including active suspensions. Lotus’ developmental Omnivore engine can run on multiple fuels, and recently Lotus Engineering and component maker Fagor Ederlan announced a partnership to put the three-cylinder 1.2L Lotus Range Extender Engine into production.

Interestingly, though, the one competency for which Lotus is best known, it’s founder Colin Chapman’s credo, “simplicate and add lightness”, was left unmentioned. That has left car enthusiasts scratching their head. Luxury generally adds weight and the idea of more luxurious Loti gives rise to fears of Porsche level brand dilution. Autoblog suggested that the new Lotus cars’ alternative power source might be drawn from Chapman spinning in his grave.

On one forum a fan said “No, no, no, no, NO!”

At Gtplanet.com, some forum members were a bit more understanding of Lotus’ need to sell profitable cars that are not seen by the general public as lacking creature comforts. Still, the site’s poll results showed that 53% of respondents thought it was a bad idea vs. only 33% who supported it.

Motor Authority editor Viknesh Vijayenthiran described the move as “abandoning Chapman’s original philosophy” and Lotus’ “low weight ethos”.

Longtime TTAC readers will know of my admiration for Lotus and for Chapman. That admiration, of course, is tempered by reality. Chapman was not a man adverse to luxury. At his life’s end he was staying in luxury hospitals and traveling by private plane. His daily driver was an S Class Mercedes. Though the first Lotus road car, the Seven, was and is indeed a hair shirt car, as Chapman got older and as his family grew Lotus cars also got bigger and more luxurious. Colin didn’t let simplicating and adding lightness get in the way of his own creature comforts. After the Seven, the next road car that Chapman sold was the original Elite, a touring car. The Elite’s two-seater replacement, the Elan, grew into the Elan +2 after Colin and Hazel had a couple of kids. Then the proper four seat Elite and Eclat. Even the Esprit, a 10/10ths sports car, had fairly upscale interior trim. Electric windows and flow through ventilation were standard as early as series 3 & 4 Elans, and even the earliest Elans had fully finished interiors, something you couldn’t say for other contemporary sports cars in 1964. At the time of Chapman’s death, Lotus has a V8 powered luxury sedan, the Etna, on the drawing boards. That V8 would end up powering the later Esprits.

True Lotus aficionados know of and value the Lotus Cortina, the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus and the Vauxhall Lotus Carlton. Heck, Lotus fans don’t even casually disregard the Isuzus that wear “Handling by Lotus” badges. Lotus has shown a deft hand making a variety of car platforms perform in ways that make enthusiasts smile. Considering the cars that Lotus has badged, it’s hard for Lotus fans to make fun of Porsche producing a four-door. Conversely, one reason why Lotus fans don’t disregard those cars is precisely that deft hand. The Lotus badged cars have credibility so the brand hasn’t been diluted. Lotus could make an ox cart handle.

Still, there’s no question that this decision to move Lotus upmarket and make Lotus cars more luxurious has left Lotus fans queasy.

I’m sure that when Lotus takes on Ferrari, Porsche and other luxury sports car makers that the cars they produce will be fast, beautiful and handle better than the competition. That’s no question. The question is will those cars be Loti?

While his own racing success and the original Cobras’ performance and track success were the basis of the Shelby legend, I think it’s fair to argue that had there not been so many replicas made, that legend would be less renowned. The only reason why the general public knows about the car is because of the replicas. In the 1960s and 1970s, the chances of seeing a Cobra off of a racetrack were close to nil. Serious car enthusiasts knew about Cobras and of course the six Daytona Coupes took on a Bugatti like aura among collectors and buffs, but to the general public it was just another ’60s hot rod. If people outside the car world knew about the name Shelby, it was because of Ford Motor Company. Without the “Cobras” built by replica makers, most people would have thought that Shelby was just some kind of Mustang.

Mr. Shelby’s business relationship with Superformance is more of a marriage of convenience than an acknowledgment of how others have helped grow his legend. He gets a piece of the action from the leading maker of Cobra replicas and they get to say that their cars are authorized and licensed. While Shelby backed off from suing the Shelby American Automobile Club, the fact that he would even think of suing he biggest fans shows that he just doesn’t get it.

While Shelby’s company indeed assembled the original Cobras and he does own the name and the hooded snake logo, the idea of him suing replica makers was a bit absurd. The essence of most replicas is in the exterior styling, a fact to which the many Lambo and Ferrari bodied Pontiac Fieros, or faux Mercedes SSKs like the Excalibur attest. Some companies and craftsmen try to make exact mechanical copies, others cobble together components from more mundane production cars. Still, no matter what running gear they use underneath, they generally try to make the body look authentic. The guy who is driving a “Cobra” that is mechanically a Fox body Mustang doesn’t care as long as people recognize it as a Cobra. The resto-mod muscle cars may look like 1970 Challengers, but under the hood there’s a modern HEMI, there’s a modern front suspension and steering on a custom crossmember mounted to a new welded in subframe, and there’s a tub and non-factory multilink rear suspension setup too. They want modern mechanicals, but it has to have the right styling.

Shelby, much as he litigates to protect his legacy, had little to do with the styling of the Cobra roadster. The original Cobra was a small British roadster (in this case, the A.C. Ace.) powered by an American V8 (in this case the 289 Ford). If you showed most Americans an Ace, they’d think it was a 289 Cobra. Though some might notice the Ace’s smaller fender flares, it’s hard to argue that fender flares should be the basis of lawsuits.

Not only did Carroll Shelby have almost nothing to do with how the Cobra looked, he also, at least as far as how I heard the story, had little to do with the final engineering of the 427 versions.

This could be an urban legend, but it had the ring of Detroit truth and should be documented. On the Sunday following the Woodward Dream Cruise a few years ago, I stopped at one of the informal car shows that spontaneously take place in parking lots up and down Woodward. Maybe it was the safety wire ties twisted to the center-lock knock off wheel nuts on what looked to be real Halibrands, but there was definitely something about the car that said it wasn’t no replica. Indeed, the proud owner said it was a genuine side oiler 427 Cobra. While I was schmoozing with him, a nice old geezer ambled over. The guy was wearing blue jeans, a white dress shirt and suspenders. I almost could swear there was a machinist’s guide and some calipers in his shirt pocket. It was the uniform of an old school Detroit machinist. He had spent his career working in Ford’s fabrication shop in the Dearborn complex and proceeded to tell the Cobra owner the story of his car.

Apparently the concept of putting the big block 427 in the Cobra was the result of a three martini lunch involving Carroll Shelby and Henry Ford II. General Motors’ top brass was at best ambivalent about racing, but Hank the Deuce wanted to win and win big in the worst way. In hindsight looking at the Lotus Indy cars, the GT40, the Shelby Cobras, and Shelby and Boss Mustangs, the automotive world was the better for Ford’s involvement and investment and racing. Ford and Shelby figured that a big block powered Cobra would dominate the competition in racing and be faster on the street than any Corvette.

There is more to engineering a proper race car than shoehorning the biggest engine that will fit inside the bulkheads. Cast iron big block V8 engines are heavy and the A.C. Ace was originally designed for a four cylinder engine, not to handle 400+ horsepower. The original 427 Cobra mule was an abortion. It had inadequate brakes, dangerous handling and overheated badly. The mule was shipped from California to Dearborn, where the old guy with the suspenders worked with Ford’s engineers (and presumably some Kar Kraft people too) reengineering it into a competitive sports car.

The irony is that while it was Shelby who gave the Mustang credibility by making the GT350 and GT500 more Shelby than Ford, the most iconic Shelby of all, the 427 Cobra, may have been more Ford than Shelby.

The rest is history. The actual cobra is one of nature’s most deadly predators. When a predator has no competition, it dominates that ecosystem. In terms of raw speed and visceral visual appeal, there was nothing like the Cobra. Or was there?

Part two coming soon…

As yesterday’s sales graph proves, this is not the greatest time to be re-launching an entry-luxury brand. With Kias and Fords offering the kind of tech gadgets once found only in the upper echelons of true luxury brands, and with well-regarded import luxury marques moving into the front-drive, mass-market, the so-called “premium” brands are finding themselves caught in the middle and losing sales. But in spite of these damning dynamics, GM is moving to overhaul its entry-luxe Buick brand at top speed. Why? Because it can…

Ask Buick’s paid representatives when the much-maligned brand began its turnaround, and they’ll point to the 2007 launch of the Buick Enclave. And sure, the Lambda-platform crossover helped slow Buick’s precipitous decline into “don’t trust anyone under 70″ status, but the brand didn’t truly start reversing its terminal sales (and demography) momentum until the Buick LaCrosse became a fixture on showroom floors. Through the first four months of this year, the LaCrosse has already sold just under half the volume it sold in all of 2009 put together.

And no wonder: though not without its flaws, the LaCrosse is a capable mid-to-full-size car, with distinctive Buick cues like the “Sweep-Spear” character line. It manages to look more thoroughly modern than any other recent Buick, while still looking unmistakeably “American” (despite having been styled in Shanghai). Considering the dearth of modern-era inspiration for a contemporary Buick flagship, this is no small accomplishment, and it makes the LaCrosse the natural starting point for a rebirth of the brand.

Apparently though, this is not to be. Whereas the LaCrosse development team took global GM components and created a unique body that captures Buick’s traditional, professional-class values (now alive and well only in China, it seems), the plan going forward is shaping up to be far less sophisticated. With the new Regal, we are seeing the first example of what appears to be Buick’s new strategy: rebadging Opels.

With the bad-old days of badge engineering finally drawing to a close (don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Mercury), it’s being replaced with a new paradigm: global badge-engineering. Fiat-Chrysler is doing this with its Lancia and Chrysler brands, cherry-picking the best from both lineups, and selling the resulting recombination as Lancias in Europe, and Chryslers elsewhere. At GM, the practice centers on leveraging the high-quality Opel products that would otherwise remain trapped in Europe’s brutally competitive and contracting market.

But how will the decision to base Buick’s new products on rebadged Opels affect the Buick brand? At the Regal launch last week, Buick’s PR folks seemed unconcerned with this question. “The plan was always to bring this car to America,” said GM’s midsized and full-size sedan supremo Jim Federico (also VLE for Opel Insignia/Buick Regal). What’s changed is that the Saturn brand, which was going to be Opel’s American-market vessel, is now defunct. Having developed a fresh lineup for Opel, GM had to sell them as something in the US. Too good for Chevrolet (“Excellence For Everyone” tagline notwithstanding) and incompatible with Cadillac’s Art and Science styling, the only way to bring Opels stateside without major restyling was as Buicks.

And though this “market-engineering” approach is all-too reminiscent of GM’s poor past practices, the Buick strategy is surprisingly pragmatic. Instead of starting with a brand image (which, in Buick’s case was badly damaged anyway) and adapting existing technical underpinnings to it, GM is bringing high-quality European products to the US market and letting the Buick brand fall where it may. The quality of these products, say Buick’s reps, will define the Buick brand going forward, instead of the other way around.

The other side of this equation is the death of the Pontiac brand. Without Pontiac’s volume, former Buick-Pontiac GMC dealers (now just Buick-GMC stores) need something other than trucks, crossovers and mid-sized sedans to stay healthy. Buick must expand its offerings into the untested waters of the compact (C-segment) sedan and crossover segments in order to drive business to Buick-GMC showrooms and hedge against another possible gas-price spike that might otherwise scuttle the two-brand channel. Again, Opel is the obvious source of these products, offering already-developed models like the compact Astra and the subcompact Meriva MPV.

Thanks to Buick’s new emphasis on the Chinese market, we already know what comes next: a Buickified Astra sedan has already been caught on camera looking a lot like a half-sized Regal. Less of a pure Opel re-badge than the Regal, this new Jetta/Civic competitor still maintains the brand’s new Opel-bred stylistic subtlety without the sweep-spear and ventiports that make the LaCrosse so obviously a Buick. A Regal wagon is also being talked about, but with Federico telling C&D that this unpopular bodystyle would also offer diesel engines and all-wheel drive, we’re going to take the rumor with several grains of salt. Still, these vehicles confirm the momentum towards making Buick a vessel for lightly-modified Opels.

The only confirmed Buick product that bears much speculating on then, is the compact/subcompact MPV that will be the final piece of a 2013 Buick lineup of which the Regal will be the oldest product (the Enclave and LaCrosse will apparently have been refreshed by then). Referred to in-house as the “baby Enclave,” this MPV will be built alongside the Aveo at Orion Township, strongly hinting at Gamma II platform underpinnings (Buick reps say it will be “either Gamma or Delta”). Given that Buick is otherwise being revived without investing in materially new products, the picture looks clear: this MPV will be an Opel Meriva.

But will this Euro-confection retain the suicide rear doors that will surely satisfy America’s constant craving for novelty? And just as importantly, will it feature styling cues from that other another spot-on Chinese interpretation of modern Buick-ness, the Buick Business Concept? One high-up but new-to-the-job Buick exec I spoke to did not even seem to be familiar with the Business Concept. With the Business’ styling influencing the larger next-gen, Chinese-market-only GL8 minivan, and with Buick’s 2013 lineup otherwise being made up of lightly-retouched Opels, the signs seem to be pointing towards a relatively mild restyle of the Meriva.

There are plenty of very rational arguments for making Opel and Buick interchangeable between markets, the way Chrysler and Lancia will be. If you accept the reasonable premise that Opel’s products are neither Cadillacs nor Chevrolets, then the logical way to build their global volume is to market them as Buicks in the US and China (surely all reasonable people agree that GM needs another US-market brand, Opel in particular, like it needs a hole in the head). The real issue then is how distinctive GM will make the Buick versions compared to their Opel predecessors, the answer to which appears to be not much at all. And there are two reasonable arguments for this: first, that Opel’s design is subtly classy enough to embody a new Buick aesthetic, and second that the money GM might have spent differentiating Buicks will probably be spent rescuing Opel.

In other words, rather than completely re-thinking the traditional approach to entry-luxury branding, GM is simply playing the same old rebadging game across global markets instead of within a single market. That the new Buicks are simply rebadged mass-market Euro-cars is not likely to occur to many buyers, means there’s none of the traditional rebadge strategy downside. For Buick, anyway. The problem with the strategy is that Ford is practicing the exact same strategy, but with its mass-market Blue Oval brand. Rather than bringing its latest European products stateside to revive its nosediving Mercury entry-luxe brand, Ford is using its Fiesta, Focus, Kuga and C-Max to burnish its Ford brand to a shiny finish and (apparently) letting Mercury die alone. Instead of taking on Acura, Lexus and company, Buick could just as easily find itself battling with the mass-market Ford brand for customer consideration. Especially if it falls into the trap of believing that the Opel look is “Buick enough” and that new Buicks don’t need at least some kind of heritage branding element.

Of course, the new Buick-as-Opel strategy is a lot smarter than GM’s immediate post-bankruptcy plan to sell Opel and rebadge Saturns like the Vue for Buick. Once Ed Whitacre decided keeping Opel made more sense than keeping Fritz Henderson, there was no going back from the Opelification of Buick. But Ford’s apparent decision to jettison Mercury in favor of a two-brand strategy that strengthens its mass-market Ford brand seems to point out that, like Henderson, Buick might have been better left behind. Don’t get me wrong: Buick’s current strategy will absolutely strengthen the brand in the short-term (and relatively inexpensively to boot),  but over the long haul it will also severely limit Chevrolet’s ability to keep up with Ford’s Euro-premium makeover. In a world of Hyundai-branded luxury cars, this will be a bad situation for GM’s most important brand to find itself in.

So, what’s the answer? As GM’s experience with brands and platforms teaches, differentiation is everything. Though the current batch of Opels are, by all acoounts, attractive, high-quality vehicles, they’re also mass-market European vehicles designed around a brand that means nothing in the US. With entry-luxury brands under assault in the US, GM has to look to the emotional power of a MINI brand to understand how to make Buick fundamentally strong enough to thrive even as Chevrolet steps up its game to keep up with Ford. Clearly the globally underleveraged Opel vehicles are the place to start, but LaCrosse, not Regal is the model to follow.

Local Motors wants to create unique automobiles that conventional automakers cannot possibly make. They want to design with creative talent from around the world, using the Internet and open source practices to make computer renderings into reality. After seeing (via word-of-mouth Facebook event) their first offering, the Rally Fighter off-road coupe, I have to say this business model is so crazy it might actually work.

Local Motors chose a fancy Houston restaurant for their release party, with their Rally Fighter prototype parked amongst the Cowboy Cadillacs (that’s a truck to you Northerners) entering the valet lot. It was a stunning contrast, until a truck shared the Rally Fighter’s adjacent parking spot. While it looks like no other dirt-ready Pre-Runner, this car is just as massive as your average long bed rig: it’s a modern interpretation of a 1970s Camaro lifted on a Chevy Blazer frame. Local Motors uses international design talent to create their flights of fancy, but designer Sangho Kim’s “American Southwest” inspiration is a clarion call for the mullet wearing, Journey-listening rocker within.

From the Civic coupe taillights, Miata door handles and the vinyl-wrapped body (a novel alternative to eco-rude paint booths) this rig is quite the eye catcher. While lacking an interior, all the proper wires, seats and controls are present and accounted for. The finished product is near, but the Rally Fighter is still a strange creation: this makes Tesla’s cramped roadster seem downright logical. But the Local Motors fan base chose this concept when put to a vote: implying they’d put down greenbacks to own a Rally Fighter.

Considering the design’s simplistic nature, they only need a few buyers to make a buck: hire a few engineers with collegiate SAE Baja backgrounds and the car almost makes itself. There’s even a dollop of green washing, with a BMW-sourced turbo diesel promising good power with clean diesel technology. But choose the LS-X based Chevy V8 if you want to save the green in your wallet, superior performance notwithstanding. GM sells these gasoline crate motors for $10,000 or less: I suspect a turn-key clean diesel from Germany will be double. Or more.

Pricing isn’t available yet, but $50,000 was one number thrown around. And to extend the platform’s commercial appeal, Local Motor’s has future plans for a street worthy Rally Fighter: lower ride height, high performance street suspension and the requisite big wheels make more sense given the body’s curvaceous profile. But a solid rear axle and a frame worthy of a truck? The “Street” Fighter is delusions of grandeur: given the crowded high performance car market, the Street Fighter sounds thoroughly out of its league.

Then again, this is a vehicle of limited production and scope: according to Local Motors’ PR folk, Rally Fighters are registered by a state’s Custom Vehicle umbrella. The lighting is DOT approved, the powertrains already pass EPA regulations, but the roll cage is only certified to meet desert racing specifications. Racing helmets aside, Local Motors assures us that the Rally Fighter has crumple zones like any modern passenger car, and will meet federal standards when they sell enough units to justify the expense of testing.

I spoke at length with Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers. Like every MBA-backed, former McKinsey & Co. consultant that I’ve met, Jay possesses the charm and intelligence to lead any organization to victory. And his passion for cars brings about a secret envy: making American cars without the Detroit state of mind. Jay’s definitely got the “vision” thing down, and speaks in a shockingly candid manner about anything automotive. We only dream of this level of candor in other auto making execs: refreshing doesn’t even begin to explain it.

Yes, buying into Local Motors means believing in their Commander in Chief. But start-ups are just that: the success rate of modern entrepreneurs in the OEM car biz is terrible. But if you’re gonna take the plunge, learn from Tesla and start small. And don’t overpromise. Local Motors’ regional centers are a good start: an IKEA-like facility in a suburban area that provides assembly and manufacturing, sales and support. It’s one stop shopping, a destination unto itself. And once the purchase is made, servicing the Rally Fighter is like open source software: any mechanic has access to Local Motors’ repair information. Hard to believe, but check out their webpage: even the Rally Fighter chassis’ CAD drawings are there for inspection. Try getting that from any other automaker.

So Local Motors has a great idea in their hands. The first product is certainly not for everyone (anyone?) but the business model has enough traction and common sense that Detroit should stand up and take notice. For all the talk of the American manufacturing sector’s decline, Local Motors is one moon-shot that merits a closer look.

March 20, 2010.  Spring Equinox. Spring has sprung. How could Thetruthaboutcars.com celebrate the first day of spring 2010 better than with a concise pictorial history of springs?

Apart from tires and seats (which typically have their own springs, the seats, not the tires) the car’s suspension is what protects your (personal) rear end and spine from the rigors of the road. Apart from shock absorbers (which we’ll celebrate the minute we’ll find an appropriate season for shock absorbers), springs are an essential ingredient of your suspension. Springs come in three basic flavors.

The common leaf spring has been in use in cars and trucks into the mid eighties. From then on, they became an object of derision, except on heavy duty trucks, which use them to this day. The leaf spring was also called “carriage spring,” because it is as old as the horse-drawn carriage. Hence its humorous effect.

To the untrained, a coil spring seems to be the most logical choice. It’s inbred: Most of us have been created with some type of coil spring involved. (See picture left.) To remove or to install a coil spring, you need to be able to operate a coil spring compressor tool. If you don’t know how to operate it, this can have similar effects as a coiled snake. The coil spring is sometimes used in combination with the leaf spring. Or with a shock absorber inside. We’ll get to that later. There are many other coil springs in your car, from valve springs to the spring that pulls your accelerator back – or not.

Then there’s the torsion spring, that strange contraption I learned to hate when I was a young copywriter and they threw me on the Volkswagen account. Die Drehstabfeder or Der Torsionsstab is (so it has been drummed into me) basically a rod that twists along its length. It was popular in the VW Beetle, in the Porsche 356, in the early Barockengel BMW 501/502, in early Porsche 911s, and several Chrysler and GM cars. To this day, I don’t understand why one would twist a poor old rod if there are springs. To this day, they use torsion bars.

From here on, we get into more complex matters, such as coil-over-oil, (or possibly coil-over-gas, but it doesn’t rhyme). It is a combination of a shock absorber and a spring, also known as a McPherson strut. When I was a young copywriter in 1973, this was a big deal. Later, they confused me completely by combining a McPherson strut with a double wishbone suspension. At that point, I turned into a Creative Director and was above such minutiae.

This concludes our TTACesque celebration of the Spring Equinox. May the sun shine bright on you, don’t forget to change the winter tires, and  give your car a good rinse to get the salt out.

The history of mid-engined Corvette concepts is almost as old as the car itself, but even more colorful. Once the performance and racing potential of the ‘Vette was unleashed by its father, Zora Arkus Duntov, ambitious developments intended for the race track, Futurama, or the front pages of buff books speculating about the coming mid-engined production Corvette have never ended.

Duntov is shown here, proudly posing with his 1959 CERV (Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle) I, clearly a racing-oriented concept intended to test advanced designs and components for future use. The CERV’s independent rear suspension was adapted to the 1963 Corvette. It’s 350 hp 283 CI V8 featured aluminum block and heads, and fuel injection. A grand start to a long series of exciting Corvettes, even if they never made it into production.

There’s some question about the body on this CERV II from 1963-1964 (above), because there are pictures (very poor quality) of an earlier and different looking design. The CERV II was intended to be a competition car, and it had formidable performance from its revolutionary four wheel drive system. It was unusual, to say the least, with a Powerglide automatic on both ends of the 377 CI advanced V8, each one feeding its respective axle. It could top 200 mph, and knock of the zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. In 1970, the CERV II had a 427 ZL-1 engine installed for tires tests. This radical concept is perhaps Duntov’s greatest achievement, heralding four-wheel drive in racing cars, and clearly influenced the Chaparral.

It’s a little sketchy as to what exactly defines a Corvette concept or not. The CERVs weren’t actually called Corvettes, nor was this ultra-low Astro 1 from 1968. But all the mid-engined concepts were in some related to the Corvette idea, this one exploring the outer limits of aerodynamic drag reduction for a sports car, as well as alternative power plants. The Astro 1 featured a modified Corvair flat six, making 240 hp.

The 1968 Astro II (XP-880) was the first real attempt to envision (and start rumors of) a mid-engined production Corvette.  Chevrolet was now frantically following Ford, who had set the racing car world on its ear with the GT-40, of which a street version was available as the Mark III. The Astro II was cobbled together quickly, using the Tempest-sourced two-speed transaxle. That alone raised questions as to how serious Chevrolet really was, or if this was just ther first of numerous exercises in arousal without fulfillment.

The power struggles over the Corvette (as well as everything else) at GM were well known. Larry Shinoda had commissioned the Astro II, and was more worried about its looks and image. Zora Arkus Duntov didn’t buy into the modest two-speed Tempest transaxle in the least, and set about building his own answer to the mid-engined problem, the XP-882 of 1970 (above). He mated a Chevrolet 454 V8 with the Toronado’s FWD transaxle, which found a home under the louvered slats of this slightly cobbled-up but wicked-looking concept. It might have been one of Duntov’s rare missteps, as the whole powertrain weighed almost a thousand pounds. Ouch! So much for all those studies in lightweight alloy engines. But a lightweight engine solution was beckoning, just across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the 454/Toro combination went on to have a useful life in GM’s motorhome.

GM liked extremes, and the jump from the monster XP-882 to the diminutive XP-897 2-rotor concept (above) certainly defined that. GM had signed a licensing agreement to build Wankel rotary engines, and the  1973 XP-897 was the first attempt to show off its potential. Unfortunately, it didn’t get the blood boiling too much, despite the handsome Pinifarina-built body.  The little mill cranked out some 180-250 hp, but it was emissions and efficiency concerns that ultimately killed GM’s rotary program.

If the cute little 2-Rotor was wasn’t up to true Corvette status, then Duntov had the solution: mate two of the 292 cid spinners into one 585 cubic inch rotary monster, and reuse the Toronado transaxle and platform of the failed XP-882. But this time there was serious support for this to be a true Corvette replacement: GM would trump the world with the first production high-performance rotary sports car. Styling guru Bill Mitchel was personally involved, as were GM President Ed Cole and Sales exec Joe Pike. This was going to be the real thing! Seriously!

The early seventies were heady times for the experimental Corvette development group, with concepts flying out left and right. The XP-895 was an experiment in using aluminum extensively, although heavily based on the 2-Rotor. But it used a conventional (presumably aluminum) 400 cid V8, and weighed some 400 lbs less than its steel donor. But plain old cast-iron and fiberglass production Corvettes were flying out the dealers’ doors, so there was little incentive to rock the boat.

In 1986, the Indy Concept was intended to piggy-back on Chevy’s Indy-engine program, although not as in actually use that 2.65 turbocharged demon, but in the classic halo-car way.  It used a 32 valve 5.7 liter engine, and showcased GM’s styling themes of the times, evoking the Aurora in particular.

The Indy concept was developed into the CERV III of 1990, designed to be (another) world-class top-level sports car, but this one was taken towards being more production ready (or am I just stirring up old rumors?). It’s 650 hp twin-turbo LT-5 engine left little doubt as to its capabilities. The car was built by Lotus, using carbon fiber extensively. Final cost estimates to produce it: $400k. Never mind; once again.

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/03/an-illustrated-history-of-mid-engined-corvette-concepts/feed/ 12 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/03/geneva-day-one-attempting-to-grasp-the-concept-of-concept/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/03/geneva-day-one-attempting-to-grasp-the-concept-of-concept/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:33:10 +0000 Martin Schwoerer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=347257
At the Geneva car show, this year’s bon mot among the journos is: there are two kinds of auto companies, those with problems and those that will have problems in the future. That’s one of the many reasons to take interest in the latest crop of concept cars: today’s concept could just be tomorrow’s catastrophe. Look past the bright lights and posed displays, and you can see visions of designers gone mad, branding gone astray, and a complete lack of any managerial imagination. Luckily, not all is dark on the horizon…

When I first heard of the Mercedes F800 Style I was reminded of the Mitsubishi Charisma: a car likely to have nothing of what it is named after. But up close, it’s not quite so bad. Mercedes’ designers are expressing themselves rather defensively, and they say future Benzes will no longer have ‘additive’ shapes. In other words, none of the ungainly, almost tacked-on looking fenders and trunk lids that the present S-class has.

The F800 sports lines that begin somewhere near the radiator and end… somewhere else. I don’t really understand all this sculpting, all these creases; just look at Mazda’s concepts from 2007 and then at the new Mazda 5 to see how much can go wrong in translation between crazy-fantastic wavy concepts and real-life cars. (More about the 5 tomorrow). To Mercedes’ benefit, this rendition of what the next C-class is likely to look like has short overhangs, a thoughtful snout, and no really ugly elements.

That’s more than you can say about the Hyundai i-flow. This looked good on paper but I am sorry to say it is truly ghastly in the flesh. A German, Thomas Buerkle, designed it, and it’s totally overwrought, with an oddly aggressive shark’s-mouth front and all kinds of lines that go nowhere fast. Clean sculpture is one thing; sedans are not supposed to look evil/nightmarish. One has to assume that Hyundai’s management already knows this, and just wanted to show they are able to do something daring.

Speaking of nightmarish. I don’t know how to say this after Bertone’s personable head stylist spent several minutes with me, trying to explain the Alfa Romeo Pandion concept’s styling language to me, but I fear I will sleep badly after seeing the Pandion. It has a HR Giger interior and an absolutely atrocious rear full of metal flaps that would doubtlessly command respect at any traffic light. Google ‘Indonesian tree man’ if you want to know what it makes me think of.

There are several concepts on display in Geneva that would properly be called ‘teasers’ because they are near-identical to upcoming cars. The Peugeot 5 is full of copycat elements (S-class trunk lid, Hofmeister kink, S80 shoulders) that somehow manage to gel. The Citroen DS High Rider is basically the upcoming DS4, and can be considered bizarre, because it is a coupe-SUV-hardtop. Who the hell needs that? My take is that the design works well enough to be interesting, nevertheless. If Peugeot’s HYbrid4 Diesel-electric system (which the DS4 will employ) turns out to be a technological success, then why shouldn’t the DS4? Speaking of Peugeot: the droptop concept they are showing in Geneva is, in my mind, Aston-Martin-league beautiful. Not that anybody was asking for a French competitor to Aston.

The Opel Flextreme GT/E is an expanded, faster, uprated, nicer Volt. There is nothing wrong with its styling; as a matter of fact it’s downright impressive. It would be nice to know that GM has enough money to design luxury cars for markets in which it hasn’t had a successful luxury car in decades — if it wasn’t taxpayer money they were spending.

Fisker doesn’t have much of a heritage either, and there’s a certain taxpayer element to the company too (but isn’t that the case everywhere nowadays?). They didn’t show a concept car in Geneva but they did display the space frame of the upcoming Karma series hybrid. A Fisker guy who prefers to remain unnamed after having experienced many a tussle with a certain Robert Farago, said the space frame is way more rigid than the frame of just about any other car you could think of. Of course, I couldn’t confirm that, but I did have a sit inside a Karma and it is without doubt a totally gorgeous and cool interior design. The rest, as the joke goes, is a “mere matter of implementation”.

A major qualm one might have with concept cars is the problem of what is left after you subtract the gull-wing doors and the 22″ wheels. Happily, there are some truly innovative ideas on display in Geneva. Famed designer Giorgio Giugiaro joined forces with Malysia’s Proton and England’s Lotus to design the car, as he says, he’s been thinking about for five years. His concept has enormous interior space for four (I sat in it, so I know) on a tiny, 3.5 meter footprint. And his concept is a series hybrid, meaning it has a gas engine in the front, batteries in the middle under the seats, and an electric range-extender motor in the back. And it even looks good — not at all tippy-narrow like other sandwich-layout concepts tend to be. Proton wants to bring this car to international markets within a year, and since they are known to bite off more than they can chew, I’d be sceptical. Still, this is a fantastic concept that gives hope to those who are dismayed at the news of Mercedes giving up the sandwich concept for the upcoming A-class.

The Heuliez Mia is another intruiging yet ambitious project. France’s Heuliez has a new Turkish investor, so the Mia’s designer, Murat Guenak of Passat CC and Mindset fame has hopes of bringing it to market soon. Here’s what makes this electric car special: a tiny footprint yet space for three; easy entry via sliding doors; Lithium-Phosphate batteries that don’t have the range of Li-Ion but need no cooling, as they are less thermally temperamental. Heuliez makes the batteries themselves; Guenak says the first 1,500 Mias will be built already in 2010, and sold at the highly competitive price of 15,000 Euros.

Have I overlooked anything? Oh yes, the Rinspeed UC? (you see?), a shortened, electric Fiat 500, is cute but crazy — too crazy, I fear, with joystick controls and a Tonka-toy interior. The Honda 3R-C is pretty good looking for a three-wheeler, offers a modicum of side impact protection, and is weather-proof, so one can expect the likes of it to be a solid contender in the electric-micro-city-vehicle market, if such a market should ever begin to exist. The Toyota FT-86 is either boring or I don’t get it. On paper, I thought the Subaru Hybrid Tourer was boring too, but in the flesh, it looked like a remarkably clean and pretty design. After all the convoluted, pretentious, super-wavy designs, after all the crazy “look at me” concept cars, the Subi looked sane, solid, sweet and yes, sexy. Will something like it survive market research and the heavy hand of niche marketing? Don’t hold your breath.

[Note: A significantly expanded and updated version of this article is here]

For most of the fifties, sixties and into the early seventies, automotive aerodynamicists were mostly non-existent, or hiding in their wind tunnels. The original promise and enthusiasm of aerodynamics was discarded as just another style fad, and gave way to less functional styling gimmicks tacked unto ever larger bricks. But the energy crisis of 1974 suddenly put the lost science in the spotlight again. And although historic low oil prices temporarily put them on the back burner, as boxy SUVs crashed through the air, it appears safe to say that the slippery science has finally found its place in the forefront of automotive design.

During the ornate and boxy fifties and sixties, with the exception of Citroen, Saab and a few other minor adherents, aerodynamic progress was relegated mostly to the racing world. The value of reducing forward aerodynamic drag on race cars was understood from the earliest LSR days. But what was not at all so well understood was the role of vertical aerodynamic forces, the tendency of most streamlined shapes to start acting like a wing, and want to take flight with increasing speed. This not only makes high-speed racers unstable, but also contributes to reduced cornering ability.

In 1957, British researcher G.E. Lind-Walker published the results of studies that opened the door to understanding the importance of generating downforce, particularly in racing cars. His work began a revolution in racing car design as down force played such a critical role in improving acceleration, cornering and braking, the three essential components of racing.

By the early sixties, front air dams and rear spoilers were appearing on racing cars, and no one exploited the possibilities more than Jim Hall with his highly successful Chaparral racers. The 2B above shows the first fully functional use of front and rear spoilers and fender vents, all specifically to generate down force. They made the Chaparral essentially unbeatable in 1964 and 1965.

Two years later, Hall introduced the startling Chaparral 2E, which was the paradigm-shaping race car in terms of aerodynamics. In the the 2B, the aero aids were tacked on to a relatively typical sports racer of the time; the 2E was organically designed to maximize down force, including the adjustable rear wing. The 2E profoundly influenced the whole racing world, including NASCAR. The Plymouth Superbird (and Charger Daytona) shows the extreme lengths taken by Chrysler to incorporate these on a production car for their aerodynamic benefits, although the actual racers did better when they had a much larger lip spoiler added like this one.

We’re not going to pursue the evolution of racing aerodynamics further in this limited survey, but the Chaparrals’ influence would also quickly spill over into passenger cars. GM hired an aerodynamicist back in 1953 to assist with wind tunnel tests on its turbine concept cars, although he was grossly underutilized for years. But GM’s technical assistance to the Chaparral team was a well-known fact. How much of that was aerodynamics is not clear, but the first mass production car to sport a chin spoiler like the  2B above was the 1966 Corvair. It was added in the second year of the Corvair’s 1965 re-style to reduce drag and improve down force and cross-wind stability.

In Europe, Porsche also put its racing experience to good use, and its 1972 911 Carrera RS sported a full complement of spoilers to dramatically increase high speed stability and handling.

In Europe, Citroen was mostly the keeper of the aero flame for production cars. But one outstanding example in Germany was the rotary engine-powered NSU Ro 80 from 1967.

It’s Cd of .355 set a low-air mark for sedans that would stand for some years. Other than its rotary engine, the NSU was a remarkably influential car, defining the modern idiom almost perfectly. Citroen’s SM Coupe of 1970 (below) lowered the bar for coupes, with its .26 Cd, thanks in part to its adjustable suspension height setting.

After NSU was bought by VW, Audi took up the work that had begun with the Ro 80. This resulted in an aerodynamic breakthrough and one of the most influential design of the modern era, the Audi 100/5000 of 1982. With flush mounted windows and a modified wedge shape that paid tribute to the NSU, the Audi became the first mass-production sedan to achieve a Cd of .30.

In the USA, the energy crisis of 1974 suddenly thrust aerodynamics into the mainstream, and the long-neglected aerodynamicists were now finally embraced and integrated into the design process. GM’s downsized sedans of 1977 were the first to benefit from their knowledge, although its quite obvious that these cars like the Caprice below were relatively slow learners of the art. Although well behind Europe’s state of the art, even fine detailing for aerodynamic efficiency made an effective difference.

While GM was dipping their toes, Ford suddenly plunged wholly into the aerodynamic ether. Determined to jettison their boxy image after their near-death experience in 1979, Ford’s new management made a bold commitment to a complete embrace, and was determined to be the leader in the field. The 1983 Thunderbird was the first volley, but the really bold gamble was the 1986 Taurus, and its Sable sibling.

The Taurus and Sable were among the first US cars to use composite headlights, allowing for a smoother front end. The Sable was slightly more aerodynamically optimized, and beat the Audi with a .29 Cd. The race was on, and within a few years, GM would also be fielding dramatically more aerodynamic cars.

Mercedes had been utilizing aerodynamics to fine tune their cars for decades but the W126 began a more aggressive push to stay on the leading edge. The highly influential W124 (above) achieved a Cd of .28 in its most slippery variant. From this point forward, there were continual improvements from the major global manufacturers, although total aero drag often rose because cars were generally getting wider and taller too.

Needless to say, the SUV phase set aerodynamic influence in that segment back to the horse and buggy era. The ultimate wind-offender was the Hummer H2, which not only sported a .57 Cd, but its total aero drag of 26.5 sq. ft. is the highest on record for any modern vehicle listed. Wikipedia has nice charts of both Cd and total drag here.

To give GM credit, the 1989 Opel Calibra coupe set a new record for its class, with a superb Cd of .26. Fine detailing, now including the vehicle under-belly, paid off without having to resort to extreme or stylistically unpalatable measures. It led the way into the mainstreaming of super-low Cd vehicles. Incidentally, that .026 is the same value that the 2011 Chevy Volt finally attained after its extensive date with the wind tunnel.

GM’s experience with the Calibra and long hours in the wind tunnel paid off dramatically with the EV1. Electric vehicles’ limited energy storage density necessitates optimized aerodynamics if the vehicle is to run at highway speeds. Thanks to its phenomenal Cd of .195, the EV1 had a semi-respectable range of 60-100 miles, despite its old-tech lead acid batteries.

The Cd .25 barrier for mass production cars was broken by the 1999 gen 1 Honda Insight, a remarkable accomplishment considering what small car it is. Given that the Coefficient of Drag (Cd) is relative, its generally easier to attain a high number in a larger vehicle without having to resort to more drastic measures. The Insight shows plenty of those, including its rear wheel spats.

A more practical solution that also achieved a .25 Cd (in the specially optimized 3L version)was the advanced Audi A2 from 2001 (above). A lightweight four seater with aluminum construction, the TDI three-cylinder diesel powered A2 was the first four/five door car sold in Europe to be rated at less than 3 liters per 100 kilometers (78.4 US mpg). Surprisingly fun to drive too, it was not a sales success, likely due to its rather odd styling. It may well have suffered from Airflow syndrome, being just a tad too far ahead of mainstream styling acceptance.

With a Cd of .25, the 2010 Toyota Prius brings our survey of production cars to an end. It represents the current state-of-the-art for a production sedan without any compromises or additional tweaks. Undoubtedly, we’ve arrived in the full flowering of the aerodynamic age, even without the teardrop pointed tails and dorsal fins. That the aerodynamic frontier will continue to be cleft with ever less resistant vehicles is now an absolute given. We’re well beyond the point of no return, although the same sentiments were also widely held in the late thirties.

While continued refinement of the traditional automotive package will undoubtedly yield further reductions in the aerodynamic coefficient, to make a more dramatic jump requires extreme measures, like the Aptera. Its Cd of .15 is stellar, but substantial compromises are involved. It’s highly unlikely that this represents the shape of mass-production cars in the foreseeable future. But if the available energy resources for a rapidly expanding base of of global energy consumers and auto buyers happens to runs into a collision course, cars like the Aptera may well represent a possible solution to maintain personal mobility.

[A significantly expanded and updated version of this article is here]

In the “streamlined decade” of the thirties, automotive aerodynamics was promoted as the great breakthrough to the modern high speed automobile. It was almost a religion, and its influence was essentially universal. By the end of the thirties, highly streamlined concepts were in every manufacturer’s styling studios. Everyone assumed the post-war era would be dominated by further developments on the air-splitting Tatra theme. But the reality turned out quite different, especially in the US.

Before we move on, it’s essential to put the initial zeal for aerodynamics and streamlining into a larger context. Automotive streamlining was just a minor part of the most influential single design movement in history. The transformation of mechanical objects and the built environment from one that involved ornamentation, classical influences, and the exposure of the mechanical functioning (think traditional steam locomotive) to one where suddenly the exterior envelope was paramount was a paradigm-changing event. The fact that it emerged during the great global Depression gave it a transformative potential; the public saw streamlining as a way to “move forward”, and everything from skyscrapers to toasters were caught up in the zeal.

The crowning glory of this movement was embodied in the 1939 New York World’s Fair, whose theme was Building the World of Tomorrow. GM’s building was the zenith, especially its Futurama exhibit, which portrayed the world of 1960, with its fourteen-lane highways and giant streamlined apartment blocks. It’s hard to see from the pictures, but the thousands of moving miniaturized cars were perfectly streamlined, with tear-drop and finned tails straight from the Tatra 87.

Needless to say, the world of tomorrow shortly after 1939 was interrupted by a less optimistic world affair. The war certainly took some of the edge off a design movement that somehow saw its social influence exceeding its grasp, but a look at GM design prototypes from round 1946 shows clearly that the now-classic streamliner model was still the predominant influence.

The models shown above attempt to predict the evolution of GM styling, starting in the rear and advancing to the glass-domed, central-steering but still dorsal-finned Cadillac of 1960. That turned out rather differently!

This more down-to-earth 1948 model year Cadillac concept clay (above) from 1945 or ’46 still shows a strong aerodynamic influence in its swept front and tapering rear. What caused the change in thinking that led to the final design?

The 1948 Caddy is mostly acclaimed for giving birth to the rear fin. But those were minor compared to the more significant deviation from GM’s advanced designs: the decision to retain the classical long front hood/short rear deck proportions, and to highlight them with a bold grille. America’s love affair with streamlining was essentially over before it was ever really fully realized. The Cadillac correctly predicted (or even more correctly, led) the coming decades of American car design, emphasizing power over aerodynamics. With ever more potent V8 engines and a steadily falling price of gas, who needed to cheat the wind  with wimpy little pointed front ends, especially when the failure of the Airflow was still fresh in Detroit’s collective memory?

That’s not to suggest that the streamlined era and aerodynamics hadn’t already transformed the industry. The ’48 Caddy may have been the turning point away from the pursuit of aerodynamic ideals in the US, but other manufacturers, particularly the independents, adopted various degrees of its influence on design, to their eventual peril.

With the first new post-war cars in 1947, Studebaker shows fairly muted but unmistakable aerodynamic influences on the styling trends of the era: the “pontoon” all-enveloping body, tarnished here by functionally unnecessary vestigial rear “fenders” and a bright accent line where the running board used to be.

The 1948 Hudson (above) was a bolder step, with its “step-down” frame and jelly-bean styling. It also shows the final break to the past by ditching any references to free-standing fenders.

Nash took aerodynamics more seriously than the rest. Its all-new 1949 Airflyte design shows a fairly comprehensive adoption of the fundamental principles. But both Nash and Hudson soon paid a price for their aerodynamic designs: as taste quickly changed, including hard-top coupes and sedans, larger glass areas, and more rectilinear designs, their bodies were not as adaptable as those of the Big Three. Their aggressive annual restyling cycles played a significant role in the demise of the independents during the fifties.

The Tucker Torpedo is still hailed by some as a direction the American industry could have taken but chose not to. It’s a viscerally exciting design, and certainly dramatically more aerodynamic, although in some ways disappointing. With its air-cooled rear engine and fastback, designer Alex Tremulis was clearly following the path that the Tatra T77 had trod fifteen years earlier, but with less conviction. That’s reflected in his choice to incorporate the tradition-evoking fenders that Tatra and even Frazier, Hudson and Nash had already tossed overboard. While the Tucker’s Cd of about .30 to .37 (depending on whose numbers are being used) was excellent for the times, it still far from the T77′s .212. Public response to the Lincoln Zephyr prototypes made it clear that Americans were wary of rear-engined full-sized cars (with good reason). An interesting historical footnote it was, but as a design the Tucker was already looking old-fashioned compared to what the Europeans were up to.

While it’s quite likely that I’ve done the US immediate post-war aerodynamic era some injustice, it will be inevitable in regard to Europe. Due to very different circumstances in regard to fuel cost, economics, and a more progressive mind-set, the aerodynamic era of the thirties was only a preview of coming attractions. Much more than post-war Americans, Europeans saw genuine possibilities in the marriage of aerodynamics and small cars to create breakthroughs in performance, efficiency and affordability to first-time motorists clamoring for new cars. The mid-engined three-seat Wimille Coupe of 1948 (above) wasn’t exactly intended at the low end of the market, but it does give a clear picture of how the Europeans were pushing forward with aerodynamic design.

The Saab 92 prototype of 1947 (above) is actually more of a thirties/Tatra throwback, but its clarity of line and remarkable functionality thanks to a FWD arrangement make it’s delicious tail worth savoring one more time. It’s Cd of .35 was terrific for a near-production car.

A more radical concept was the 1948 Panhard Dynavia. An extremely slippery (Cd .28) design based on the Panhard Dyna, which itself was a highly advanced small car utilizing a front boxer two-cylinder and FWD. But the practical limitations of such pointy tails (yes, that is the rear), not to mention passenger comfort (no AC), made this another unfulfilled slippery dream.

Even the smallest cars showed aerodynamic influence. This Isetta is a miniaturized rear-engined egg-shaped streamliner with a greenhouse remarkably similar to those advanced Cadillac concepts above.

In 1953, Alfa Romeo commissioned Touring to build open and closed sports racers with maximized aerodynamics. The resultant Disco Volante (flying saucer) coupe had a Cd of .26.

Alfa then had Bertone to build a series of coupes to push the aerodynamic envelope even further.  The result was the BAT cars, of which the BAT 7 attained a remarkable Cd of .19. The early fifties was to see a renewed interest in aerodynamics in Europe, but the leadership now changed hands. Whereas the Germans had been the early champions, and most of their early fifties cars showed strong aero influence, like the Porsche 356 and the DKWs and Auto Unions, influential Mercedes was taking a decidedly more upright and conservative stance with their passenger cars after their flirt with streamliners in the thirties. Of course, their racing and sports cars still benefited from their extensive aerodynamic research and experience, like this 300 SLR with a wind brake.

And there were compelling reasons for Mercedes’ conservative and pragmatic approach with its passenger cars. The maximization of interior volume, trunk space and a traditional RWD layout did not favor extreme aerodynamic measures. And the prestige of the Mercedes radiator shell still carried a lot of weight.

Now the Italians and especially the French were taking the lead. The English? They were still mostly stuck in the twenties, except of course their remarkable land speed record breakers.

With a Cd of .36, the Citroen DS was of course remarkably aerodynamic for a practical sedan in 1955. And that it bristled with other advanced technological design features is beyond this quick look at the “Goddess”. But it reaffirmed that aerodynamics could be successfully integrated in a new package, with FWD and little compromise in passenger space.

Given the front-end styling similarities of the 1953 Studebaker to the Citroen, this makes a good point of departure back to the USA. Both of these wind-cheating efforts show that the thirties have now been fully left behind, and that it was possible to integrate sound aerodynamic principles without having being stuck in the cab-forward long-tail streamliner mold. The Starlight Coupe’s Cd may have only been around .40, but it was the only serious effort of its kind in the US at the times and it was quickly adopted as a favorite for stock-bodied Bonnevile speed records.

Of course, it wasn’t just 200 mph Studebakers that were in demand on the salt flats. Early hot rodders knew that aerodynamics is the key to puncturing the brick wall to higher speeds. After WW II, surplus auxiliary external aircraft fuel tanks (bellytanks) were available cheaply. This created on of the more brilliant adaptations, the Lakester.

Looking remarkably like the steam LSR vehicles built by Stanley and others at the turn of the century, a flathead-powered Lakester tearing across the flats is truly a time-warping and wind-splitting experience on several levels.

Undoubtedly, many other cars deserving of mention in this time period were left out. In Part 3 we’ll take on the recent era, up to the present day.

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/a-brief-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-part-2/feed/ 0 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/an-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-in-three-parts/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/an-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-in-three-parts/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:29:41 +0000 Paul Niedermeyer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=345269

[Note: A significantly expanded and updated version of this article can be found here]

That air presented the greatest obstacle to automotive speed and economy was understood intuitively, if not scientifically since the dawn of the automobile. Putting it into practice was quite another story. Engineers, racers and entrepreneurs were lured by the potential for the profound gains aerodynamics offered. The efforts to do so yielded some of the more remarkable cars ever made, even if they challenged the aesthetic assumptions of their times. We’ve finally arrived at the place where a highly aerodynamic car like the Prius is mainstream. But getting there was not without turbulence.

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Racers, particularly those chasing the coveted Land Speed Record (LSR), were generally the first to employ aerodynamic aids. The La Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) was the first automobile to break the 100kmh (62 mph) record, in 1899. Like all the first batch of LSR holders, it was an EV. The driver’s position seems to negate the aerodynamic aids, or maybe he was just posing, and more likely crouched down for the actual run.

The evolution of aerodynamics for LSR cars was remarkably rapid, as this Stanley Steamer Rocket of 1906 evidently shows. And the increase in speed was even more dramatic: the Rocket broke the 200km barrier, with a run of 205.44 kmh (127.66  mph). That would not be bettered until 1924, and not until 2009 for steam powered vehicles.

The first known attempt at streamlining a passenger car is this Alfa Romeo from 1914, built by the coach builder Castagna for the Italian Count Ricotti. Due to the very heavy bodywork, it turned out to not improve on the top speed of the open Alfa it was based on.

Undoubtedly, the real breakthrough aerodynamic passenger car was the German Rumpler “Tropfenwagen” (teardrop car) of 1921. Unlike the impractical and heavy Castagna Alfa, the Rumpler was as dramatically different (and influential) for its completely integrated and original design and engineering. It had a mid-engined W6 engine, and four wheel independent suspension using swing axles which Rumpler patented. The Tropfenwagen was tested in VW’s wind tunnel in 1979, and achieved a remarkable Coefficient of drag (Cd) of .28; a degree of slipperiness that VW’s Passat wouldn’t equal until 1988.

It’s important to remember that the Cd is a coefficient, and denotes the relative aerodynamic slipperiness of a body, regardless of its overall size. A brick of any size has a Cd of 1.0; a bullet about .295.  To arrive at the critical total aerodynamic drag that determines power required and efficiency, the frontal area (cross section of the vehicle looking straight on) is multiplied by the Cd. The Rumpler was relatively very aerodynamic, but it was also quite tall and boxy, which resulted in the one hundred or so production cars being used primarily as taxis. An ironic ending for Rumpler, but his ideas spawned imitations and extensions world-wide, and opened the whole field.

To put the nascent field of automotive aerodynamics in perspective, the typical two-box car of the twenties was more aerodynamic going backwards than forwards, as this ass-backwards car showed. That brings back memories of Bob Lutz stating that the Volt concept would have had better aerodynamics if they put it in the wind tunnel backwards.

Hungarian-born Paul Jaray used his experience working int the aeronautical field, and especially designing Zeppelins, to develop a specific formula for automotive aerodynamic design principles that lead to a patent, applied for in 1922 and issued in 1927.  His approach was influential, and numerous companies used Jaray licensed bodies during the streamliner craze that unfolded in the early thirties. His early designs tended to be very tall, and with questionable proportions and space utilization (below).

His designs eventually became more mainstream, and Mercedes, Opel, Maybach, and numerous other makes, primarily German, built special streamliner versions using Jaray bodies, like this Mercedes below:

The limitation of these cars is like the Castagna Alfa, they were re-bodied conventional cars with frames, front engines and RWD. Jaray only addressed the aerodynamics, not the complete vehicle like Rumpler had. It was a start, but others were taking up where Rumpler left off, like the English Burney, below:

Obviously more Rumpler influenced and less by Jaray, the 1930 English Burney featured a then-radical rear engine and also four wheel independent suspension.

One of the most influential and lasting designers of the whole era was Austrian Hans Ledwinka. After he took over as chief design engineer at the Czech firm Tatra in 1921, he developed the basis of a series of remarkable Tatra cars and eventually streamliners with platform frames, independent suspensions and rear air-cooled engines that Ferdinand Porsche cribbed from heavily in his design of the Volkswagen (VW made a substantial payment to Tatra in the 1960s to compensate them for this theft of IP).

The compact Tatra v570 of 1933 (above) is the forerunner of both the larger Tatras soon to come, and obviously of the Volkswagen. We’ll come back to Tatra later.

This Volkswagen prototype from 1934 (above) shows a very strong resemblance to the cribbed Tatra v570, with the benefit of some further refinement. Although the visual cues are not really as significant as they might appear to us now, because these were the leading-edge design elements of the time, and widely imitated or shared, on both side of the Atlantic.

As this 1934 prototype for an American rear-engined sedan by John Tjaarda shows, the Europeans weren’t working alone. This fairly radical design became tamed-down for the production 1936 front-engined Lincoln Zephyr, of which the less common but handsome coupe version is shown below:

Of course, Americans’ introduction to streamlining had come two years earlier  in 1934, with the stunning Chrysler Airflow (below). An essentially pragmatic approach, the Airflow also kept the traditional Body On Frame (BOF) front-engine RWD standard, but made some significant advances in terms vehicle design by pushing the engine further forward over the front wheels. This, combined with a wider body, dramatically improved interior space and accommodations. The Airflow had the same basic configuration as American cars from the late forties and early fifties. Progress is not always linear.

The failure of the practical Airflow can probably comes down to one thing: that overly flat waterfall grille. That was too much of  a break for the symbolism still engendered in the remnants of the classic car prow. The Zephyr had one, and it was a success, despite not being nearly as a good a car as the Airflow.

An even less pragmatic but remarkably practical and effective American vehicle was the Stout Scarab (above). Aviation engineer William B. Stout designed this extremely roomy mini-van precursor using  a unitized body structure and a rear Ford V8 engine. The first was built in 1932, and several more variations, a total of nine, were built in the mid thirties, but series production never got off the ground, due to an asking price almost four times higher than a Chrysler Imperial Airflow of the times, and even those weren’t selling so well just then.

A much more radical approaches to streamlining was Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion. The first of several prototypes also saw the light of day in 1933, in the midst of this fertile period on both side of the Atlantic. The Dymaxion also had a rear Ford V8, but with a tricycle carriage and rear wheel steering, which allowed it to turn on the length of its body.

Another lesser-know variation of the popular Ford V8 engined aerodynamic vehicles was this Dubonnet Ford of 1936, whose very slippery body allowed it to reach 108 mph. I appears to have  Isetta-type front doors for the front seat passengers. About as much crumple zone too.

Let’s jump back to Czechoslovakia and the fertile Tatra design studios. Here are some clays from about 1933 or so, showing the development of both the smaller VW-like v570 on the right, and the larger streamliners in the rear. The first of these, the T77, arrived in 1934 (below):

The T77 was measured to have a Cd of .212, a number that was not broken by a production car until GM’s EV-1 of 1995, which measured at .195.  A remarkable achievement, the long-tailed T77 was powered by a rear air-cooled V8, and began a long series of Tatras until the 1980′s along similar lines. My retrospective of Tatra is here.

Tatra became synonymous with the advanced streamliner of the pre-war era, enabling remarkably fast travel (100 mph) on the fledgling Autobahns of the Third Reich. Favored especially by Luftwaffe brass, they had a nasty habit of killing them, due to its wickedly-abrupt oversteer, thanks to the combination of rear V8 and swing axles. That earned it the nick name of “the Czech secret weapon”.  So many died at its hands, that supposedly Hitler forbade his best men to drive them. In many (other) ways, the Tatra 87 was the Porsche Panamera of its time.

To demonstrate just how far the aerodynamic envelope was pushed in this golden decade of streamlining, this 1939 Schlörwagen prototype was tested originally at Cd .186, and a model of it was retested by VW in the seventies with a Cd of .15. Either of these values put the “pillbug” at or near the top of the list of the most aerodynamic concept cars ever built, like the Ford Probe V of 1985, with a Cd of .137. Built on the chassis of the rear-engine Mercedes 170H, it was substantially faster as well as 20% to 40% more fuel efficient than its donor car. The Russians took the Schlörwagen as war booty and conducted tests as a propeller driven vehicle. It represents a state of aerodynamic efficiency in league with the most aerodynamic cars being considered today, such as the Aptera.

Its important to note that the rise of interest in aerodynamics in the 1930s arose out of the desire to reinvent the automobile from its horse and wagon origins and the assumptions that average driving speeds would be on the rise with modern roads. This made it a forward looking undertaking, as most drivers were plodding along at 35-45 mph outside of cities. But the first freeways were being built in Germany, and improvements in US roads, including the first parkways and freeways were taking place. It also explains the particularly strong interest and adoption of streamlining in Germany.

Note that I have not attempted to survey the influence of aerodynamics on the styling of cars in the latter thirties and up to WW II. Needless to say the influence was utterly profound, and gave us some of the most remarkable cars of the late classic era. But this had relatively more to do with style (and even affectation) than a genuine effort to push the envelope in terms of leading edge aerodynamics. Nevertheless, the benefits and beauty that resulted, like in this Bugatti Atlantique coupe are undeniable, but beyond our scope here.

Part 2: 1939 to 1955

Part 3: 1955 to the Present

A good window into someone’s soul is their screen saver/wallpaper. You’re looking at mine. I don’t reveal my innermost secrets everyday; except, of course, all over the pages of my Auto-biography. This ad crystallizes my psychedelic experience as a seven-year old arriving in NYC from Austria on a hot summer night in 1960. You can read it here. But let me just say there really was a 1960 Pontiac parked at the curb as we stumbled out of the International Terminal after our twenty-four hour trip.

The Grand Prix CC reminded me of all these wonderful Fitzpatrick and Kaufman print ads that graced our optimistic early sixties. They worked as a duo; Art Fitzpatrick rendered the cars, wider than reality by a long shot, and Van Kaufman filled in the backdrops and the happy people. Does this seem like a different world?

Wide Track Pontiac’s just got that much wider, as the two master painters took on Pontiac’s new image with a vengeance!

They captured the times perfectly, as long as those times lasted. Their style was still working fairly well onto the middle of the decade, like these GP ads of 1963 and 1965.

By the latter part of the decade, their version of surrealism wasn’t working quite as well anymore, despite the counter-culture’s embrace of a new version. Ads had to become more realistic, so you’ll note that the the exaggerated widths are out by about 1969.

This ’69 GTO ad even featured snow!

The FK style petered out about this time; photo-realism and new photography techniques ruled the seventies. But the fact that Pontiac’s golden decade corresponded with the legendary art work of Fitzpatrick and Kaufman is probably no mere coincidence.

Few aspects of the automobile are as examined, analyzed and obsessed upon as styling. Ask most people about cars and they won’t talk about engine displacement or suspension setup; it’s the physical presence of cars that captures interest and sparks passion. For a niche luxury brand like Jaguar, which  survives on the margins of major markets without the backing of a full-line automaker, the art and science of auto styling is of supreme importance. Unable to match its rivals in the technological arms race of the upper-echelon luxury segment, Jaguar’s relevance is perhaps more tied to its ability to create compelling designs than any other modern brand. Were this the only challenge facing Jaguar’s chief designer Ian Callum, his job would be one of the most interesting in the business. Thanks to Jaguar’s nearly 40-year stylistic stasis however, Callum’s tenure is nothing less than one of the most significant in the history of automotive design.

Callum’s brief begins with a deceptively simple question: what is a Jaguar? The lack of easy answers indicates the enormity of the challenge. Is the brand a last bastion of old-world throwback luxury, as evidenced by an XJ flagship which went without a significant restyle for nearly 40 years? Is it a purveyor of retro-styled, also-ran sports sedans like the recently departed S-Type? Or is it a quasi-volume, entry-luxury brand, destined to do battle with the Buicks of the world with such models as the late, unlamented X-Type? Or is Jaguar a low-volume sportscar maker, battling with Aston Martin for the hearts and minds of Anglophile speed freaks?

Ask the average consumer, and you might receive any one of those answers. Indeed, the Ford managers which guided Jaguar’s fate for nearly 20 years seem to have run with each of these visions at one time or another. Had Jaguar been blessed with a deep development budget, lending its every model with the kind of technological halo enjoyed by brands like Mercedes and Lexus, it might have gotten away with such a diffuse identity. Stylistically though, there’s little middle ground between a classic XJ (let alone its mini-me, the X-Type) and a modern XK. Creating a modern, relevant Jaguar brand had to start with a single decision.

In light of the new models introduced under Callum’s supervision, the sleek new XK, XF and XJ, the remaking of Jaguar might seem as simple as moving the brand away from a decades-long overindulgence in heritage and retro. But, explains Callum with a hint of a smile, Jaguar isn’t torn between heritage and modernity for the simple reason that they are one and the same. “Most people of the world see Jaguars as traditional looking cars,” he admits, “and the XJ was certainly part of that. But what people have forgotten is how radical that design was when it first came out. Jaguar had always made sleek, sexy sportscars, but even the Mk II owners thought it was ‘too much’ for a Jaguar sedan.”

For Callum, everything comes back to 1968 and the release of the XJ. That year a 13-year old Callum submitted his first-ever car design to Jaguar, inspired by the XJ. But where Sir William Lyons’ timeless design gave Callum an icon to strive towards, Jaguar fell victim to the XJ’s brand-eclipsing success. “The sixties was where it stopped,” says Callum of Jaguar’s Lyons-era styling heyday. “I always ask myself ‘what would Sir William have done?’”

But don’t confuse Callum’s mission to recapture the spirit of Jaguar’s golden moment with anything retro. “When Lyons was designing cars, heritage would only have referred to racing,” he explains. Jaguar is fundamentally “a sexy car company,” which meant rebirth required “throwing away the rulebook.” The only rules for designing Jaguars are proportions, he says. Purity of line and a sense of length were the only givens in designing the new XK, XF and XJ.

This open-ended opportunity to imagine where Jaguar would be if it had stayed on the cutting edge of design for the last 40 years required immense discipline. “Cars are dictated by generic dimensions,” says Callum. “Good design is about pushing the boundaries of physics and legislation, going for a milimeter every day.”

Appropriately, Callum’s first Jaguar was the XK sportscar. With echoes of Callum’s most influential design, the Aston-Martin DB7, the XK marked a distinct shift from his previous Jaguar concepts, the curvaceous R-Coupe and segment-busting R-D6. From there, a far greater challenge came in the form of the XF, Callum’s first sedan for Jaguar. “XF was a hurdle,” he admits.

“We can’t do an E class and a CLS,” he says, referring to Mercedes’ approach to luxury market segmentation. A true CLS-style four-door coupe “was too much of a package compromise, so we had to get both.”  The result was a car that convincingly translated the XK’s aesthetic to the four-door format, and created a blueprint for the car that would bring Callum’s experience with Jaguar full circle: the first major restyling of the XJ since 1968.

According to Callum,the new XJ started with the profile of a mk. 1 XJ coupe (a body style he says he’d love to reimagine as a modern Jaguar). Like the original, the new XJ’s design had to be low and long, anchored by the coupe-inspired stretched side window profile. The interior would exhibit the kind of “cheekiness and indulgence” Sir William appreciated. “He might have found it too assertive or overly bold,” concedes Callum, “but you have to put it into context. You have to stand out in today’s world. It’s an agressive, assertive world.”

And in this world, Jaguar won’t be able to sit still, a reality Callum embraces with gusto. “if someone came along and said we’re going to make my XJ for the next 40 years, I’d be pissed,” he says with a grin. “We have to keep changing.” Although there is a sense that the core of Jaguar’s rebirth is complete with the new XJ, Callum can barely restrain his enthusiasm for new models that may or may not be under development. Besides mentioning his desire to create a new XJ Coupe, Callum refuses to deny that an XF wagon might be under development. He even admits that, as a trustee of the independent Jaguar Heritage Trust, he has heard- and approves of- rumblings that modernized C- and D-Type Jags might be developed outside of the Jaguar brand.

But ask Callum what car he’d most like to design, and he’ll tell you that “for purely selfish reasons,” nothing would make him happier than to design a mid-engine supercar. He’s a huge fan of Chevrolet’s Stingray concept, freely admitting that he wishes he’d designed it. Which might come as a bit of a surprise until Callum reveals himself to be an incurable American car fanatic, with a ’32 Ford and ’57 Chevy in his personal collection. During a three-hour visit to GM’s Heritage Center, Callum positively swooned over everything from Chevy Nomads to the Buick Y-Job, and it was impossible to not see parallels between GM’s attempt to reverse a decades-long malaise and Callum’s personal challenge at Jaguar. Both firms reached a zenith of style and prestige in the late sixties that overshadow everything they have accomplished since, and both are desperate to recapture that lost magic.

Whether Jaguar’s masters approve a mid-engine supercar project remains to be seen, but Callum is convinced that Jaguar “has a right” to play in the rareified air of the supercar market. “Not every company has the right to be there,” he says, “but for Jaguar it’s a natural evolution.” Having revived Jaguar’s natural evolution after 40 years in the deep freeze, Callum knows what he’s talking about. The only question left is whether the magic of the late 1960s is a portable phenomenon: something that can be reanimated outside of its specific historical moment. As Callum wanders through the relics of GM’s glorious past, you can almost see him capturing the elements of that magical period, and translating them to the modern context of plastic grilles and shared-architecture hardpoints. If these, and the thousand other mundanities which separate us from the lost glory of the late sixties can be overcome, Callum’s the guy to do it.