Cars once expressed the spirit of the age as clearly as buildings: a ’57 Chevy was only conceivable in a civilization that knew neither taste nor consumption limits. But now that a deadening stigma attaches to excess and waste, the unending vistas of personal mobility that once fuelled the car designer’s imagination have been pulled up short, what does car design say to us?
It says the electric car. And, aesthetically, the electric car says you have to suffer. To drive the equivalent of a hair shirt. First-generation hybrid electrics from Toyota and Honda were wilfully ugly, a testament to penance. The second-generation Prius from Toyota achieved a distinctive charm, so much so that its successor, introduced at the Detroit car show in January, imitates it. And so, too, does the forthcoming Honda Insight. Of the all-electric G-Wiz, little that is positive can be said about Wide News.
But will electric cars ever develop the same richly inventive artistic language that the filthy old four-stroke engine gave to the gasoline-powered automobile?
Just maybe. I asked that question of Renault’s design chief, Patrick Le Quément. And he showed me a photograph of the 1938 Phantom Corsair, a fabulous one-off by Bohman and Schwartz for Rust Heinz, heir to the beans and ketchup fortune. According to Le Quément, glass is the first thing to go into new-generation car design. A car’s windows are heavy, and they cause thermal gain: so big glass means you hump around unnecessary weight and need to run the energy-sucking air-conditioning. Like the Phantom Corsair, future cars may have exiguous daylight openings, allowing designers to do dramatic things with the body sculpture.
Maybe the architecture of the electric car, with its small engine and vast battery mass, will determine new styles. Certainly, battery technology is holding back art, but Le Quément has a fix. In the future, you won’t have to plug in and charge your electric car; you’ll swing by a service station and swap the battery pack in less time than it takes to pump 50 smelly liters of diesel.
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They may even start selling the batteries and giving away the car, as Gillette once did with razors and blades. That would change several assumptions about the hallowed place of greed and prestige in car design. The great age of car design has been and gone. Past peaks included the fabulous vulgarity of innocent Americana; the gorgeous craft of Italian artisans who made metal sing; or that inventive, improvisatory genius that produced the simple-but-desirable Citroën 2CV and the Mini…
It says the electric car. And, aesthetically, the electric car says you have to suffer. To drive the equivalent of a hair shirt. First-generation hybrid electrics from Toyota and Honda were wilfully ugly, a testament to penance. The second-generation Prius from Toyota achieved a distinctive charm, so much so that its successor, introduced at the Detroit car show in January, imitates it. And so, too, does the forthcoming Honda Insight. Of the all-electric G-Wiz, little that is positive can be said.
Just maybe. I asked that question of Renault’s design chief, Patrick Le Quément. And he showed me a photograph of the 1938 Phantom Corsair, a fabulous one-off by Bohman and Schwartz for Rust Heinz, heir to the beans and ketchup fortune. According to Le Quément, glass is the first thing to go into new-generation car design. A car’s windows are heavy, and they cause thermal gain: so big glass means you hump around unnecessary weight and need to run the energy-sucking air-conditioning.
