Interesting site, like the fact that you can look by year. I was able to locate the Lancia Stratos HF Zero concept car. I remember the incredible response it got when it came out in 1970. It's so low to the ground they were able to drive it under the entrance gate to Lancia!
There's a YouTuber, Casey Putsch, who runs Genius Garage (offering on hands experience for students) and he's building an almost exact replica. In this video he tells how he's risking burnout and how it's kicking his butt to replicate the car.
It's Italian car design history. But it's really just a bunch of confusing bubbles that makes me feel slightly dizzy. Not so dissimilar to some of the cars actually!
I’ve long wanted something like this. I’m fascinated where the common elements of contemporary car design come from. Why does every car have a hard lateral crease? When did it originate? It wasn’t on early cars or carriages.
I look forward to studying this carefully
Creases seem to me to suggest the way cloth folds or ripples, or possibly muscles. Both of which were features of sculpture before cars.
There's also the sharpish edges of air intakes, or fake intakes, due to the association with race cars and fast motorcycles. Sometimes creases make intakes look more integrated in the body.
For a reason, well, people used to complain about contemporary (when that meant 90s) cars being blobby or ovoid. The survival of exotic car companies probably depended on being strikingly attractive and different from mainstream cars. I assume that when you say "hard lateral crease" you would agree that a late 90s Ford Taurus, or a Porsche 928 did not have one.
I think the air intakes are overdone these days and don't like fake ones any more than tailfins. There's something wrong when even the top of the line trim doesn't have all of the intakes functional.
What I thought of when I saw this was not the bodywork of Italian cars, but the rest of the engineering that you don't see until you look underneath.
I was really struck by the chassis of, for instance, 90s Ferraris, when I first saw a picture. They look so primitive, like something from the 60s or earlier, compared to a vehicle made by one of the big Japanese or American companies.
My impression is that until recently, the really prestigious brands that made super expensive cars were paradoxically impoverished themselves, so had to make severe tradeoffs in engineering and development. The only way to compensate was by racing and making beautiful sheet metal. I watched a Doug DeMuro video on an 80s Lamborghini and up close, it was just weird, almost like a kit car.
Nowadays, Ferrari is an expanding public company, and probably suppliers can give small car makers parts that are more on the level of the big companies.
I assume that Lamborghini no longer has to use Nissan headlights due to lack of resources to develop their own.
> I assume that Lamborghini no longer has to use Nissan headlights due to lack of resources to develop their own.
Note on this, Lamborghini is now owned by the Volkswagen/Audi Group, so while they don't use nissan parts any more, basically every component bears a VW or Audi logo
It was pretty common in the 1960s, 70s and 80s for the supercar makers to freely use parts from Alfa Romeo or Lancia or Fiat. Door handles, switches, rear view mirrors, vent outlets, headlights, interior lights, sometimes even tail lights and indicators although these were sometimes disguised. The door handles on a Dino were designed for the Alfa Spider.
Its only in the relative recent past that Ferrari or Lamborghini created their own minor bits and pieces.
One thing that highlights for me was just how stylish prosaic Italian cars could be. Nobody would ever want to reuse a door handle from a Ford Fairmont for anything, but Alfetta door handles ended up on exotica.
You are hard pressed to guess which country modern cars are designed in, but it used to be easy to tell.
Great work! I was going to ask if there is any specific reason you stopped at 1976, but I see from your About page that you plan to go further. I reckon that Italian car design peaked in the mid-80s, so it would be cool to reach 1990 or so. Afterwards there were some interesting designs in mass-produced cars but the top range is fairly bland (with Lambos just being Lambos).
In Seattle, there's a weekly get together of exotic cars at the Redmond Town Center. They have a list of makes and models of acceptable cars you can bring, that fit their definition. There's a gatekeeper at the entrance to keep the riff-raff out.
Under "Ferrari" it says "any model". Haha
I love how Ferrari has totally won the marketing game.
It's probably more fair to say that as far as "exotic" brands go, Ferrari has never deviated and produced a boring sedan or suv based no some other companies car.
Maseratti, Porsche, and Lamborghini are good examples of companies that make supercars that also make some pretty pedestrian models. To make it worse, those are usually built on an existing car platform from another manufacturer. Not to say those cars are bad, they just don't belong at an exotic car meet.
The Masseratti Ghibli, the Porsche Macan/Cayenne and whatever the Lambo SUV is called all fit this mold.
Including Bertone's design study of the already existing Mustang (which was designed internally at Ford) is quite misleading without clarifying, and I wonder how much else also omits information.
rmason|4 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHPqe4khs90&t=94s
There's a YouTuber, Casey Putsch, who runs Genius Garage (offering on hands experience for students) and he's building an almost exact replica. In this video he tells how he's risking burnout and how it's kicking his butt to replicate the car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbVgJ7zQhIA&t=4s
FridayoLeary|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
dang|4 years ago
syx|4 years ago
jibbit|4 years ago
perl4ever|4 years ago
There's also the sharpish edges of air intakes, or fake intakes, due to the association with race cars and fast motorcycles. Sometimes creases make intakes look more integrated in the body.
For a reason, well, people used to complain about contemporary (when that meant 90s) cars being blobby or ovoid. The survival of exotic car companies probably depended on being strikingly attractive and different from mainstream cars. I assume that when you say "hard lateral crease" you would agree that a late 90s Ford Taurus, or a Porsche 928 did not have one.
I think the air intakes are overdone these days and don't like fake ones any more than tailfins. There's something wrong when even the top of the line trim doesn't have all of the intakes functional.
perl4ever|4 years ago
I was really struck by the chassis of, for instance, 90s Ferraris, when I first saw a picture. They look so primitive, like something from the 60s or earlier, compared to a vehicle made by one of the big Japanese or American companies.
My impression is that until recently, the really prestigious brands that made super expensive cars were paradoxically impoverished themselves, so had to make severe tradeoffs in engineering and development. The only way to compensate was by racing and making beautiful sheet metal. I watched a Doug DeMuro video on an 80s Lamborghini and up close, it was just weird, almost like a kit car.
Nowadays, Ferrari is an expanding public company, and probably suppliers can give small car makers parts that are more on the level of the big companies.
I assume that Lamborghini no longer has to use Nissan headlights due to lack of resources to develop their own.
King-Aaron|4 years ago
Note on this, Lamborghini is now owned by the Volkswagen/Audi Group, so while they don't use nissan parts any more, basically every component bears a VW or Audi logo
smackeyacky|4 years ago
Its only in the relative recent past that Ferrari or Lamborghini created their own minor bits and pieces.
One thing that highlights for me was just how stylish prosaic Italian cars could be. Nobody would ever want to reuse a door handle from a Ford Fairmont for anything, but Alfetta door handles ended up on exotica.
You are hard pressed to guess which country modern cars are designed in, but it used to be easy to tell.
WalterBright|4 years ago
vsdlrd|4 years ago
toyg|4 years ago
WalterBright|4 years ago
Under "Ferrari" it says "any model". Haha
I love how Ferrari has totally won the marketing game.
davewritescode|4 years ago
Maseratti, Porsche, and Lamborghini are good examples of companies that make supercars that also make some pretty pedestrian models. To make it worse, those are usually built on an existing car platform from another manufacturer. Not to say those cars are bad, they just don't belong at an exotic car meet.
The Masseratti Ghibli, the Porsche Macan/Cayenne and whatever the Lambo SUV is called all fit this mold.
Phrodo_00|4 years ago
porphyra|4 years ago
objektif|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
emc3|4 years ago
Looks good. Reminds me of Prezi.