Current car designs are crap. Soulless, generic, bland as vanilla ice-cream. And computers are to blame.
Where is the next great design that will make men gasp and women damp in the downstairs?
Where is the uplifting inspiration that was present in ID/DS Citroen design?
The daring and unconventional lines of the many designs by Virgil Exner in the finified 50’s? The phallic resonance of the E-type?
Basically, where have all the good designs and designers gone? Are they in a cave? With Osama? Has he eaten them? By his thin visage he looks to be subsisting on only the thin gruel in the current the Toyota/Hyundai/GM design trough.
If I was stuck in the cave with Osama, I’d eat his stinky sandal before even thinking to look at next generation Camry designs. Yuck.
Seriously, why can’t any designer use God’s gift of an opposable digit, pick up a pencil and draw something exciting? Are computer mouses to blame? Is the grammatical black-hole who decided that the plural for a computer mouse should be ‘mouses’ to blame? Close but no. I blame CAD, or Computer Aided Design programs.
Like most software, a CAD program can be used for good, but also evil.
I am 100% sure that on every ‘file’ dropdown of every CAD program on every computer in every mainstream car company around the world, there is an option labelled ‘Default Design’.
Pressing this button causes the latest homogenous design blob from Toyfordai to shoot on to the screen like amateur porn.
Such is the reliance on CAD that all designers who use it have more knowledge of mathematics than of artful design. Aesthetics on paper transferred to metal is a thing of the past.
Now, I’m sure in designing a car there are safety and economic controls (loved by those tight-fisted wankers in accounting), but when has a truly great designer ever followed the rules?
I now extend this challenge to any designer who thinks they have the fortitude and talent to be truly worth of me remembering their name. All you have to do is sack up, stab an accountant in the eye with a pencil and then draw the next truly great car design. Easy.
