Were we deprived of an entire generation of shite? Serious automotive history debate invited

[Junkman]

Beginning ca. 1970, the leading car stylists unleashed a plethora of concept cars on the unsuspecting public

that represented a completely new school of design hitherto unseen.

 

These concept cars are characterised by a fairly rectangular plan view, pretty incoherent beltlines and sides

that were a great deviation from the up to then 'chiseled' look to a shape that was slightly convex, like taut skin,

with prominent wheel openings but no, or very vestigially sculpted wheel arch lips.

To illustrate what I mean I give you the Pininfarina Ferrari 512S

 

 

Vauxhall SRV

 

 

Nissan 126X

 

 

There are countless others.

 

This kind of shape was translated onto some saloon concepts, like the Ford Granada Altair

 

 

the Bertone Jaguar XJ12

 

 

and various others.

 

 

This kind of styling made it onto some selected supercars, like the inaugural Lamborghini Countach:

 

 

 

The septics translated it into Kansas Citean with the Chrysler Cordoba Del Oro:

 

 

some stunning Marshall Teague designs for AMC

 

 

and not least the very Italinanesque proposals Bill Mitchell did for the 'downsized' '77 Caprice

 

 

 

 

I hope you understand what I mean.

 

Admittedly this kind of styling would have put cold sweat on the foreheads of the production managers,

or let me put it this way - you wouldn't have wanted your car in black!

 

Be it as it may, this kind of styling never really made it to the production line, with very few exceptions, like the Peugeot 604 and the first Renault 5.

Instead, we got ever so half arsedly facelifted 1960s cars festooned with black plastic grilles and bigger taillights until they were replaced by revolting blobs

like the Renault 14 and Ford Sierra, which ruined automotive styling forever.

 

I would like to know why this kind of styling was stillborn.

Does anyone of you have some historical knowledge, or can point me to some literature explaining this?

[warren t claim]

The Ford Granada Altair never happened due to straight lines becoming unfashionable.

 

I think cooling and ease of maintenance killed off the rest.

[garethj]

I've no idea about your answer, but manufacturers should stop pissing around with modern headlights that are stretched back to the A pillars and make a Nissan 126X or AMC with an electric powertrain.

 

Thinking about it, did something more commercially safe and acceptable come along instead?  Giugiaro's stuff was picked up by many manufacturers and you can see why - all those swage line creases make for a lovely stiff body panel which you can make cheaply.

[Rocket88]

The Bertone Jag ended up as a De Tomaso Deauville....................

[Timewaster]

I like the Altair concept.

Shame Ford decided straight lines weren't "in".

Then they introduced the blobby Sierra that took two years to outsell the Cortina.

 

Actually, that concept reminds me of those cool 70s BL concepts that turned into the turds that they actually produced like the early Allegro sketches.

 

Although that Altair looks like what a Talbot Tagora was supposed to be.

[Sir Snipes]

 

Corvette that was never to be. It's all a bit Joe90 for my tastes though.....

[garethj]

 

Corvette that was never to be. It's all a bit Joe90 for my tastes though.....

 

Yep, I'm not seeing a downside either

[Asimo]

I think that aerodynamic realities killed those high, sharp fronts. Some of those beautiful outlines do look like they would fly. Aero became important for stability reasons long before fuel consumption became significant. (And then had to be discovered again, ie Ford Sierra, Audi TT)

 

If you don't have a copy of this, get one!

 

 

[Tamworthbay]

Looking the pics you have selected I would guess, and it is just a guess, that cabin space could have been an issue. If you think of a mini as the ultimate two box maximum space for footprint design, these are the opposite to that. Shame as they are bloody gorgeous to my eyes and the AMX concept is one of my favourites cars of all time.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Some designs did make it off the designers easel:

 

 

But I think the reason this radical styling never caught on is exactly that, it was too radical.

The general public were not ready for such sleek lines and sharp edges. Joe Bloggs just wanted his practical seating, reliability and fuel economy. He didn't care what shape the door handles were or whether they popped out of the body work. He was happy with his Cortina or his Marina.

 

Another problem was the car companies. Why invest millions on a flash design when you can spend pennies on somthing bland that will still sell like hotcakes?

Building a car that rode well and ran smoothly was more important to the big manufacturers.

They spent their money on engineering, not style (except BL, who spent it on tea).

 

Business men in suits and blokes in sensible shoes are the reasons these cars only exist on paper and in the hands of the rich and famous.

[Junkman]

I think that aerodynamic realities killed those high, sharp fronts. Some of those beautiful outlines do look like they would fly. Aero became important for stability reasons long before fuel consumption became significant. (And then had to be discovered again, ie Ford Sierra, Audi TT)

 

If you don't have a copy of this, get one!image.jpeg

 

image.jpeg

 

image.jpeg

 

I have that book and many others on automotive styling, also many on automotive history, but not one of them offers a plausible explanation why this kind of styling never made it to the assembly line. Instead they built warmed up 1960s saloons like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and countless others.

 

 

Looking the pics you have selected I would guess, and it is just a guess, that cabin space could have been an issue. If you think of a mini as the ultimate two box maximum space for footprint design, these are the opposite to that. Shame as they are bloody gorgeous to my eyes and the AMX concept is one of my favourites cars of all time.

 

Of course the styling studies had no concern regarding practicality.

But unlike any other generation of conceptual design, not a single styling element made it to the assembly line at all and that I find puzzling.

The 50s concept cars very much influenced mass production car design, so did the early 60s ones. Then the 80s ones again and so on.

Only those 70s ones were almost completely stillborn.

 

 

Some designs did make it off the page

 

 

But I think the reason this radical styling never caught on is exactly that, it was too radical.

The general public were not ready for such sleek lines and sharp edges. Joe Bloggs just wanted his practical seating, reliability and fuel economy. He didn't care what shape the door handles were or whether they popped out of the body work. He was happy with his Cortina or his Marina.

 

Another problem was the car companies. Why invest millions on a flash design when you can spend pennies on somthing bland that will still sell like hotcakes.

Building a car that rode well and ran smoothly was more important to the big manufacturers.

They spent their money on engineering, not style (except BL, who spent it on tea).

 

Business men in suits and blokes in sensible shoes are the reasons these cars only exist on paper and in the hands of the rich and famous.

 

The buying public always was very fashion conscious. I bet they would have flocked to the showrooms if this kind of design would have been available on affordable cars. As an example, the first Renault 5 was a rousing success and considered very chic and fashionable.

[Bren]

We were'nt completely deprived.

Matchbox and corgi modelled many of these concept cars in the very early 1970's.

[MorrisItalSLX]

The buying public always was very fashion conscious. I bet they would have flocked to the showrooms if this kind of design would have been available on affordable cars. As an example, the first Renault 5 was a rousing success and considered very chic and fashionable.

 

Not everyone was so style conscious. Young fasionable people buying cars were, middle aged men buying family hacks were less so.

 

But I think it was conservative and tight-arsed companies who wanted to make money, not pretty cars that was the issue.

 

Why design a new model when you can stick some black plastic and bigger lights on the existing one?

 

Ferarri and Lamborghini were in the business of style, Ford and Vauxhall were not.

[Skizzer]

What an interesting question.

 

I’m not sure we did miss out entirely: Citroen’s DS/ID, GS, SM and CX all had distinctly unconventional side creases, flush wheel arches and sloping noses and truncated tapering tails, the CX and SM in particular boasting some oddball glass shapes worthy of a show concept (concave rear window, anyone?).

 

I would also offer the Lotus Elite and Eclat, which meet your description and exhibit almost all of the themes in your examples, apart from the prominent waistline necessitated by the (clever, novel) clamshell body moulding technique:

 

 

Pininfarina’s Lancia Gamma Coupe and Claus Luthe’s NSU Ro80 also play interesting games with the side graphics and lipless wheel apertures (albeit less so on the Ro80), and are elegantly wedge shaped with almost flush bonded glass:

 

 

 

Finally, I’m saddened that even you, my dear Junkman, have fallen into the heffalump trap of thinking the Renault 14 ugly. For surely it epitomises what you describe: the subtle, complex convex curves of the body wrap smoothly around its frame like Beatrice Dalle’s hips; the rear wheelarch is entirely unadorned; while the front arch merely swells organically from the wing that tapers in towards the narrow, pert and deliciously simple nose:

 

 

I hadn’t considered it before, but it’s perhaps no coincidence that all of these are cars that I own or would like to, which suggests my tastes are influenced by the styling cul-de-sac you’ve pointed out. But luckily some brave pioneers did take us at least a little way down that road before uglier fashions and production tooling expediency hauled us into gaudy fussiness, charmless aggression and unthinking blandness.

[Junkman]

Beatrice Dalle’s hips;

I find the R14 roughly as attractive as her teeth, but that's probably only me.

 

You are making some valid points though and I won't argue for a second that some cars did pick up on the theme.

But unlike any other generation in automotive history, they are few and far between. Why is that?

[Skut]

Having thought about your criteria kit car manufacturers or specialists seemed to take up the baton more enthusiastically on this expressionistic modernism than mainstream manufacturers.  Shite like this 

 

 

 

 

Cost is one obvious boring reason.  Small GRP manufacturers could handmake such exotic shapes whilst tooling up for them in steel would be much harder. A more interesting reason would be compared to the 50s the world had become more multipolar as far as styling was concerned and there was less drive to have a uniform American style watered down for local consumption.  The downside is that whilst you might get more local outbursts of individualistic style they would probably remain localized and result in fewer overall cars produced in that style. That particular brand of expressionistic futurism was harder to immediately appreciate than say rocket and aircraft inspired tail fins and chrome and it would always be more of a niche style. Abit like modernistic architecture it was also a futurism the public quickly tired of.  I'd say Britain was probably better off than most in this regard as BL was brave enough to try and productionize some of the ideas at least in part.

 

 

 

Although we were denied

 

 

I'm not sure that Ford Grenada concept in an example though. Its much more what Roy Axe would call folded paper school of design.  

 

[Datsuncog]

We were'nt completely deprived.

Matchbox and corgi modelled many of these concept cars in the very early 1970's.

 

True, that.

 

I can still remember my disappointment when I realised my little yellow Datsun/Nissan 126X wasn't a 'real car', and I'd never get to see one parked outside the greengrocer on the Clandeboye Road..

 

 

I cried.

 

I was four.

[Louise2cv]

Isn't that Proton Grenada just a Ford Aeroback lookalikey?

 

I find all the cars listed above pretty ugly, they remind me of "super cars" which have never interested me in anyway because they are all so awful looking.

 

I am much more of a traditionalist I suppose and sticking to cars that loosely follow a simple child's impression of a car. Perhaps I don't like this overstyling, which is odd seeing as I like the weird and wacky designs of Citroen best of all.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Styling is such a controversial thing - a few changes top a basic design can make it yay or nay.

 

Let's take the BMW 2002. What a fucking ugly sack of shit this is. Take the bumpers off and it looks like a speedboat. Everything is wrong with it. BMW, like VW, really needed a decent external stylist. Post 1973 they made it even worse.

 

The E21 3 Series is another Paul Bracq disaster. Look at the sorry, saggy arsed styling - luckily you can't see the back end from here and that really was a disgrace. The E23 7 Series was equally bad but the E24 6 was quite pretty.

 

The E30 was where they finally got it right. It had a subtle wedge shape, looks lean and crisp with lovely detailing. It's finally a pretty car. Looking at it makes it so obvious what was wrong with the bland ill conceived E21. That's why sales just took off like a rocket and BMW sold 8 trillion E30's - it's now a classic whilst the E21 and 2002, well, they're not really. To me they're just an old car that preceded the main event. 

[JeeExEll]

True, that.

 

I can still remember my disappointment when I realised my little yellow Datsun/Nissan 126X wasn't a 'real car', and I'd never get to see one parked outside the greengrocer on the Clandeboye Road..

 

Matchbox 33 Datsun 126X.jpg

 

I cried.

 

I was four.

I did the same.

I was 36.

[Asimo]

Hmmm - possibly important to consider that the cultural and economic background to this was the Seventies. A time of abject defeat for style, popular culture and the kind of optimism needed to either buy or sell beautiful, exciting things.

 

Car design had stopped being led by the ambition of car makers to make good / interesting / beautiful cars** and was now entirely led by the desire to make profit. Any fool can sell "aspirational luxury" which has massive profit margins. So they did.

 

**They had noticed that customers would buy new cars even if they were bad cars just as long as their purchase didn't make customers miserable through unreliability.

[bezzabsa]

I thought this was going to be about the scrappage scheme when i saw the title.....

 

Loving the Granada concept though!!

[quicksilver]

I was looking at the SD2 at Gaydon yesterday. It really is quite an odd-looking thing in the flesh and I don't think David Bache's idea of a scaled-down SD1 really worked. I'm not sure conservative Triumph buyers would have warmed to it, and I see hints of all sorts of other cars in it, mostly bargain basement Eastern European stuff: Citroen BX, Yugo Sana, FSO Polonez, Lada Samara, perhaps a bit of Saab in the front.

[John F]

Louise2cv, on 10 Jun 2018 - 11:53 AM, said:

Isn't that Proton Grenada just a Ford Aeroback lookalikey?

 

I find all the cars listed above pretty ugly, they remind me of "super cars" which have never interested me in anyway because they are all so awful looking.

 

I am much more of a traditionalist I suppose and sticking to cars that loosely follow a simple child's impression of a car. Perhaps I don't like this overstyling, which is odd seeing as I like the weird and wacky designs of Citroen best of all.

 

^ This, except for the bit about Citroen.

[Skut]

I was looking at the SD2 at Gaydon yesterday. It really is quite an odd-looking thing in the flesh and I don't think David Bache's idea of a scaled-down SD1 really worked. I'm not sure conservative Triumph buyers would have warmed to it, and I see hints of all sorts of other cars in it, mostly bargain basement Eastern European stuff: Citroen BX, Yugo Sana, FSO Polonez, Lada Samara, perhaps a bit of Saab in the front.

 

It is a bit shonky looking. Messy even. But its a shonkiness I wish I had the option of adding to my life.

[John F]

 

It looks like a Mk 2 Astra that's been left too close to a fire.

[quicksilver]

It does look extremely odd and droopy from that angle. The front is better but that curve in the swage line looks like the designer's ruler slipped.

[RoadworkUK]

The question JM poses is exactly why I have such a fetish for certain JDM cars of the early-mid '80s.

 

The fiercely geometric lines of many '70s concepts by Guigiaro, Pininfarina, Bertone and others clearly influenced a number of Japanese models, such as the Nissan Leopard, Mazda Cosmo and early Toyota Soarer coupes, as well as the better-known Subaru XT and Isuzu Piazza (which, lets not forget, was essentially a Guigiaro concept that made it to the road with very little alteration, on a very unsophisticated mechanical package).

 

A concept's main task is to inspire the buying populace, and whet appetites for the next big thing. The fact that 1970s concepts seemed less removed from near-reality than the more outlandish flights of fantasy that were to come later, stems from the fact that car design and engineering was in something of a transitional phase - nobody really knew what the next big thing would be. In the early '80s, cars like the C3 Audi 100 suddenly demonstrated that efficient, aerodynamic design could be achieved without radically changing vehicle proportions and gratuitous angles, curves and slashes were rendered pointless. Ironically, the Sierra was more aero-styled than truly aerodynamic.

 

Although the vast majority of Japanese designs of the 80s were extremely formulaic, the flagship models tended to be rather more outlandish than elsewhere on the globe because Japan has always yearned to strive forwards - something that can be seen in its electronics and its railways, too - it was racing ahead of the world in those respects, but its cars suffered from a tendency towards complex technology in place of intelligent design.

 

It's interesting to read reviews in which something like a Starion and a 300ZX is compared to a Capri or a Porsche 924 - the former are invariably praised for their sophistication yet criticised for being over-fussy and gimmicky. They had a very high button-count and lots of power, but less feel or driver involvement than their comparatively 'old fashioned' rivals. Their style and technology were only skin-deep, and all-round competency wasn't always top drawer.

 

And that's another point. No matter how technologically advanced they might have looked, the svelte shapes of the '70s concepts would - just as the Sierra did in '82 - likely have concealed rather old-fashioned technology. As fascinating as the idea of a lost generation of cars is, in hindsight the rate at which things actually developed was probably about right.

 

In summary: the tantalising concepts of the '70s were basically clutching at straws.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

I can't agree with JM on this, pretty much all manufacturers embraced the straight edged, wedge profile to some degree, with one I particular creating a complete range of exciting modern cars that a total departure from their 1960's ( 1930's) core design

The first departure, was of course an NSU in disguise.

The smallest started life as an Audi, so as not to take sales from the 1930's car?

 

Apart from the badge on the grille, these cars, all introduced within a couple of years of each other had nothing in common with what had come before.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

A response to JMs post showing 60's throwbacks in 70's colours.

 

1972

I know the R6 ran alongside the 12 until the 14.

Again the 16 survived the launch of the 30 ( and the 20 )for four years.

 

This, incidentally, is my favourite Princess look. Flat bonnet, no vinyl quarters, flat chrome hubcap on slotted wheel and fish bowl lights, don't think it was ever an option, but just looks clean and modern.