car design thread | Page 436 | FerrariChat

car design thread

Discussion in 'Creative Arts' started by jm2, Oct 19, 2012.

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  1. Igor Ound

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  2. Igor Ound

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  3. boxerman

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    I think it was pininfarina maybe 10 years ago did a jag coupe that was modern but spot on jaguar. Made the Jag designed look made in Korea, which they do.
     
  4. boxerman

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  5. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    Loved that design/car!
    Unlike Bertone usual style.
     
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  6. Peter Tabmow

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    #10883 Peter Tabmow, Oct 1, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2020
    That was a genuinely good-looking car, John, and a bit of a breakthrough for American cars in terms of proportions and volumes – Chrysler's contemporaneous cab-forward designs were more of a near-miss in this respect, suffering from a certain awkwardness.
     
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  7. Jeff Kennedy

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    The second generation Miata had a bigger trunk because of the need to carry golf clubs. It may not have been retail consumer but the Japanese Mazda execs that were avid golfers.
     
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  8. Jeff Kennedy

    Jeff Kennedy F1 Veteran
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    Mitchell was only allowed to recommend his choice but the GM Board. Mitchell wasn't even allowed in the room when the dirty deed was done. His recommendation was Chuck Jordan but the board, in all of its infinite wisdom (ha!) selected Irv instead.

    When Mitchell new he was dying he had Jordan do his funeral arrangements. A specific directive from Mitchell was that Irv was not to be invited.

    Mitchell had made enemies during his reign and there was no Sloan, like Earl had had, that was so unassailable that no one dared cross him.
     
  9. Jeff Kennedy

    Jeff Kennedy F1 Veteran
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    I remember clearly Chuck Jordan talking of GM of those days. GM Design was looking forward, they knew where they going and didn't worry about what the others were doing. Ford copied GM and Chrysler was always futzing around.

    Nowadays, as far as I am concerned, no one has a real clue with some of them even worse as they wander utterly in the wilderness. But, I do and will continue to place a lot of blame for this in none of the companies actually wanting to have a truly strong leader of Design. The companies may say they do but they don't really mean it. I can keep hoping that someone, somewhere as the CEO/Board will wake up and let this sink in but. Unfortunately for that to happen would also mean a repudiation of too much of everything in the current corporate mentality.
     
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  10. Texas Forever

    Texas Forever Seven Time F1 World Champ
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  11. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    Thank you! What a nice thing to say.
     
  12. bitzman

    bitzman F1 Rookie
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    Anybody got opinions on the Mangusta Design?
    I' hoping more behind the-scenes stories might com out bout the car from readers....here's my opinion:


    I remember the first time I saw one, in roughly 1968-'69, before the Pantera, in Michigan outside a car museum, in Hickory Corners. The owner was crawling underneath it to adjust the transmission with Allen wrenches. I later learned it was a car not without problems but to me it remains an inspirational deign.

    THE ORIGIN
    Alejandro DeTomaso was an Argentine building cars in Italy, partly supported by his American wife Isabelle (Haskell) who came from a family of entrepreneurs who bankrolled their son in law in buying Ghia carrozzeria.
    They were both race drivers and involved with OSCA until DeTomaso wanted to make a mid-engine OSCA and the Maserati brothers said "no" so in '59 DeTomaso and his wife started their own auto company
    At some point possibly 1965, DeTomaso started building a spine framed mid engine car, the P70, with Carroll Shelby, a race car designed by Shelby's Wunderkind designer Pete Brock. This car, the 70P, would have been a competitor to Can am cars. Ford was not supporting it though employing Shelby to shape up the Ford GT for LeMans. But Shelby didn't keep up with his half of the investment and in a fit of pique DeTomaso introduced it as a DeTomaso car, said it was designed by Ghia and didn't give Brock credit. But Brock had his drawings and eventually was recognized as the designer worldwide.
    The Mangusta came about when DeTomaso realized his first production car, the Vallelunga, was too small and with four cylinders not respected the same way as a Cobra. He realized how cheap an off the shelf Ford pushrod V8 was and recognized the worth of the ZF transaxle used in the Ford GT. He knew he could build a car that could make profit at $11,000, about two thirds the price of a v12 Ferrari.. He had hired Giorgetto Giuguaro at Ghia Carrozzeria and tasked him with putting a body design for a road car over the 70P chassis.
    At first his name for the Mangusta was "DeTomaso 5000" at a major auto show but soon afterward, recalling how Shelby reneged on his part of the P70, he called it "mongoose" explaining "it was the only animal in nature that could take on a cobra,"
    Here's my take on the design,
    FRONT No bumpers. The bumper laws must not have been created yet. Giugiaro's original drawings show rectangular headlamps probably CIBIE from France, but Americans are used to the quad round lamps and CIBUEs were not legal in the US.,(As t was DeTomaso, through some legislator probably a friend of the Haskells, got an exemption to some 17 vehicle requirements on the basis it was a low volume manufacturer) The biggest mystery on the front is why there were holes, along the bottom valance panel under the headlamps, maybe for bumpers never mounted? Probably for cooling? There was a scoop dropping down from the front undertray to get more air to the radiator,
    SIDE The car was a pure fastback and the small rear 3/4 window made it more practical than the GT40 as a road car. The car has a dominant crisp edged beltline that divides its side view into two halves. Having its own wheel design helped distinguish it from other cars say which wore Borrani wire wheels. The original pale gold prototype had rubber trim on the side windows but for production chrome was added, The original gold prototype also had more dramatic deeper dish wheels.
    REAR It has been criticized for having Fiat 850 taillamps but the prototype a had large taillamps created for it, but looking back the smaller Fiat lights are better because they make the car look wider. The grate between the taillights was a stroke of genius for cooling but the crowning touch of the back were the engine compartment hot air vents below the rear backlites . By being carved out of a flat surface they complement the design making the body look strong and sculptural.
    The split rear window is clumsy like the doors on an underground tornado shelter, but DeTomaso waned good engine access and gullwing center hinged doors gave him that. And it looked dramatic when you opened gullwing engine hatch.
    INTERIOR The dashboard was close to the Ghibii, designed by Giugiaro--a row of gauges and toggle switches. The prototype had a non opening sunroof. The bucket seat were almost on the floor and had short backrests, good for a short man like DeTomaso but not 6-ft. tall Americans. If a 6-footer sat at the heel his forehead was only 2: from the windscreen.
    IN SUM Though the rear has barely useful bumpers, the car is a seminal design that even sports cars designed 50 years later can't match. It turned out to be too low to the ground (a speed bump can break the transmission case) but if driven with caution it can benefit from the sleek profile. Mechanically it was a oversteerer but reports are that working on tires sizes and spring rates can reduce that.

    FORD CONSIDERED IT
    Eugene Bordinat, the design chief t Ford owned one and thought it would make a good exotic for Ford to import. Henry Ford II was in his "Italian period" then and wanted Ford to have an Italian car in their showrooms, Maybe he was still mad at Ferrari for refusing his buy-out offer of a few years earlier. But after an engineer and a designer went to inspect the Mangusta being built, they decided it was too crude to be mass produced. Ford wanted a car that could be built on an assembly line, ,not hand built. They got it in the Tom Tjaarda-designed Pantera, which was built at Vignale (despite the Ghia badge) met their needs but it was not a ground breaking design like the Mangusta.
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  13. bitzman

    bitzman F1 Rookie
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    Found the Giugiaro drawing used on the brochure cover with full rectangular headlamps, maybe CIBIE,but that being said the quads didn't ruin the purity of the design...
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  14. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    If you are interested in a design commentary of the Mangusta, Dick Ruzzin, a Mangusta owner, wrote a book on his personal car, and recently did a design comparison with a Corvette C8.

    https://velocetoday.com/de-tomaso-mangusta-vs-corvette-c8/#more-123059

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  15. Jeff Kennedy

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    For me I have always thought of the Mangusta as the ultimate design interpretation of what the 66 Toronado is. Longitudinal split line with big accentuation of the rear wheels. The Mangusta has a pure design that needed nothing more not less.

    Now, as a car it has lots of faults. Wally mentions the lack of ground clearance for the transaxle. I remember the series of articles in Sports Car Graphic where their final conclusion was that the backbone chassis was just not strong enough which led to flexing which was the root cause of some scary handling issues.

    As for the comment on the headlights going to 4 round units - at that time there was no way that the US would have approved anything but standard round sealed beams. Not only that, they had to be exposed.
     
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  16. bitzman

    bitzman F1 Rookie
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    I think Mr. Ruzzin reads this site. I didn't read his book but i don't know if he criticizes the car, describes the flaws if he sees them. It's hard to criticize when you're in love with the car! I also wonder if anybody has news on gestation of the fully operational gold prototype? I saw a story on it in a foreign magazine and gathered that someone has rescued the pushmobile (which I saw in the factory as a hollow shell with no chassis or drive train) and put it on a stock Mangusta chassis. This is the one with blacked out trim, black racing pop open cap, deeper than stock wheels with supporting ribs on each rib, pop open hinged 3/4 windows and the taillights like the pushmobile. I wonder if it is worth more or less because it is now not the chassis it made its premiere with?
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  17. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    The Sketchmonkey weighs in on the Beijing Auto Show
     
  18. anunakki

    anunakki Seven Time F1 World Champ
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    Off topic but Im currently consulting for a big toy company. We had a great focused product and then the Corporate Chefs started giving input. Now? I dont see it being appealing to anyone as they tried to make it appealing to everyone.
     
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  19. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    Too many cooks in the kitchen is a recipe for mediocrity and disaster.
     
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  20. jm2

    jm2 F1 World Champ
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    Ford Motor Company is in the process of tearing down their historic Design Center.
    Some great photos in this article.
    I began my career in that building 50 years ago!!! :eek:

    Demolition begins on Ford's Dearborn styling house, the Product Development Center
    By Daniel Strohl on Sep 15th, 2020 at 8:45 am
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    Ford Media photos.

    Less than a year into his tenure as president of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford II announced that the company would no longer design its vehicles here, there, and everywhere else in Ford's scattered empire. One single location, the Product Development Center in Dearborn, would see every North American car and truck - from the T-bird and Mustang to the Bronco and F-series - through from sketch to approved design, a role it has served for nearly 70 years. That era has now come to an end as Ford has begun demolition of the PDC to make way for an expanded Research and Engineering Center campus.
    "This building began as a home for Ford designers – almost like a well-kept secret – with the showroom, courtyard and studios as its main spaces," Moray Callum, Ford's vice president of design, wrote of the PDC in a recently released pamphlet that bids adieu to the center. "I remember first visiting the PDC in the early 1990s, in awe of the size of the facility and the grandiose nature of the showroom. The showroom was built in the golden age of American automobile design. Looking back at old photographs, it must have been a sight to see in person with its wooden floors and mahogany wall panels."
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    Though he announced the Product Development Center in June 1946, Hank the Deuce had actually commissioned the architectural firm Voorhees, Walker, Smith, Smith and Haines of New York City to design the center the year before, choosing an 800-acre tract of wooded land across the road from The Henry Ford Museum. According to the Ford pamphlet, Henry Ford II had three goals in mind with the Product Development Center: the aforementioned consolidation, technological research and development, and consumer research.
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    While the center comprised nine new buildings in addition to several existing buildings, the centerpiece of the complex was the Styling Building, which incorporated a showroom "modeled after the Ford Rotunda," according to Ford's pamphlet. That made for two prominent round showcase buildings in Dearborn at the same time, with the original Rotunda located roughly four miles away. Out front of the Styling Building, Voorhees et al. specified a reflecting pool, ostensibly to provide cooled water for the air conditioner systems of the nearest buildings.
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    Ford dedicated the center in May 1953 and almost immediately put it to use in the development of the 1955 Ford Thunderbird. In addition to all the production vehicles that emerged from the center, it also saw a number of never-built advanced vehicles, including the motorized 3:8 clay model of Alex Tremulis's Mexico, which he claimed would have achieved a top speed of 200 mph thanks to a 0.22 coefficient of drag, and which remained in the lobby of the Styling building for many years, as seen below.
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    (Perhaps not coincidentally, General Motors in 1949 commissioned architect Eero Saarinen to design its 38-building, 710-acre Technical Center campus - complete with reflecting pool - in Warren, Michigan. That development opened in 1955. Dwight Eisenhower provided ceremonial speeches for the opening of both the Product Development Center and the GM Tech Center.)
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    While the Ford Product Development Center has remained a largely unchanged artifact of the Ford postwar years, it no longer allows Ford the flexibility it needs, according to Callum.
    It was a different time when the sprawling research and engineering campus was designed in the 1950s. The space was designed for cars, by cars. A sea of parking spots engulfed Ford’s campus and there were limited walkable spaces. Today, we’re living in a period of personal mobility, and the world is becoming smarter and more connected. Electric cars, autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions are on the rise in response to societal trends.

    To be successful in this fast-paced world, we need the right tools and workspaces. That’s why we are transforming the Dearborn research and engineering center into an all-new modern campus of the future. This includes moving on from the PDC and beginning a new chapter for Ford’s design and product development organizations.As announced last September, Ford worked with Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta to develop a master plan that will transform the area into "a walkable campus of interconnected buildings that could one day house more than 20,000 employees in a flexible, high-tech environment showcasing new mobility solutions such as electrified bikes, scooters and shuttles," according to a Ford press release. "The focal point will be a new central campus building which sits on the site of Ford’s 66-year-old Product Development Center... Future home to Ford’s product development community, initial construction of the new building will be complete by the end of 2022."
    "It’s a bittersweet feeling, the end to a significant era for the company," Callum wrote.
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    While preliminary construction in the area apparently began in early July, demolition on the Styling Building and its rotunda reportedly started earlier this month. The Central Campus and Hub Neighborhood portions of the redevelopment, which will replace the Styling Building portion of the Product Development Center, are expected to be complete by 2025, with the entire project slated to continue another five years.
    UPDATE (17.September 2020): Ford released a pair of videos featuring Moray Callum taking one last tour of the PDC:


     
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  21. Tenney

    Tenney F1 Rookie
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    There are no wrong answers ...
     
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  22. 330 4HL

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    Brought to you by those "who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing"
    Alas, I can empathize with your frustration...
     
  23. bitzman

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    A FEW BRICKBATS AT THE NEW GTO


    Ferrari is in business to make money. A rich guy calls you up and says he wants a special one off car, you damn well better build it.
    But this tifosi wanted a 250GTO kinda car but with all the modern stuff. So they took an 812 Superfast and began adding stuff like say the flush scoops on the hood of the '62 GTO. The 250GTO had three very distinctive ones in the center of the nose. This has two but even three wouldn't have helped because the donor car is so busy.
    And they call it the Omologato which means homologated. Originally Ferrari built GTOs on swb derived platforms and called it "omologato" because they wanted the competition to know it has been homologated as a GT
    car. It was a big lie but they got away with it (The FIA subsequently held up homologation on the 250LM but a used car run by a dealer won LeMans anyway in '65)
    Around back, the rear window of this new one-off has been replaced by a set of louvers, which look like a tacky steal from the Lamborghini Miura of more than half a century ago,
    The 1962 GTO had a small tail spoiler, so does this one. The tailfin looks like the original GTO but is "lost" with all the other stuff of a modern car like the underside aero influencers coming up the back.
    Two tone paint--in this case two colors of red--is also brought back looking like a racing stripe from the side.
    Inside they bring back something I liked in the '50s and '60s, black crackle non-glare paint.
    Overall I find it more gadgeteering than a true homage to the '62 GTO series I. But hey the customer was handing them money to create his dream. GM won't do that with a Corvette--you pick from the catalog, bub. we can't be bothered with specials.
    And Ferrari might have had an ulterior motive in using the name GTO because some replica company managed to win in court against them the right to use the name "GTO," the court ruling Ferrari hadn't used the name GTO in five years, So you can bet every five years there will be another GTO coming out of Maranello .
    I like the drawing though. Think I'll make a painting of it...
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