Category — Automotive

“Since the rise of middle-class prosperity after World War II, cars have been an extraordinary window into the country’s culture and mood,” writes Paul Ingrassia in a Wall Street Journal excerpt from his book, Engines of Change (4/20/12). That window opened in a big way, of course, with the 1950s appearance of tail fins, which were both inspired by fighter planes as well as “powerful totems of America’s peacetime bounty.” The fin-wars escalated between General Motors and Chrysler, peaking with the 1959 Cadillacs, which “had the tallest tail-fins ever appended to a vehicle that didn’t fly.”

Fins became progressively smaller after that, “and disappeared entirely by 1965. By then, extravagance in car design had spawned a backlash. Volkswagen was selling some 150,000 Beetles a year in the US by the mid-1960s,” and became an icon of “the 1960s counterculture.” Another icon of a different sort — the Ford Mustang — “debuted in April 1964, just as America’s first Baby Boomers were coming of age. The car caused a sensation, even though it was built on the chassis of the dull and dowdy Ford Falcon.” Seymour Marshak, Ford’s marketing chief at the time, compared the Mustang’s lines to those of a woman.

The 1970s saw the introduction of the AMC Gremlin, which was “designed on the back of a Northwest Airlines airsickness bag and launched on April Fools’ Day, 1970″ … and was perhaps was a metaphor for the ensuing decade. The 1980s gave rise to yet another Baby Boomer icon, “the revolutionary Chrysler minivan,” which “quickly became the preferred vehicles of ‘soccer moms,’ who were becoming a formidable force in America’s political landscape.” The minivan led to SUVs as well as renewed interest in pickup trucks,which are political icons in their own right, most recently in Scott Brown’s 2010 campaign to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat (link).

"More than a dozen flying cars are in development," reports the Economist (3/3/12). One of them, the Transition, will soon launch as "the first commercial model." Priced at $279,000, it is a small plane that "has been designed to be legally roadworthy. Push a button and the wings fold up, allowing the pilot to start driving it like a car." It runs on gas and has "a range of 600 miles on the ground or 400 miles in the air. Around 100 aircraft have been reserved."

From a technology standpoint, the Transition is "made possible by the availability of modern engines, composite materials and computerized avionics systems," but it also takes advantage of a new class of "Lite-Sport" aircraft approved by the FAA in 2004. The FAA wants to promote flight, but "getting a license is difficult and time-consuming." The Lite-Sport category is designed to make flying more accessible. In fact, it is possible for "someone to get a Lite-Sport license with just 20 hours’ flying experience — less time than many people spend learning to drive."

In part this is because GPS and other technologies make it easier to learn how to fly. However, Chris Malloy of Hoverbike, a $50,000 motorcycle/airplane, says he doesn’t seek a general market. "Most people can’t parallel park, so I can’t see most people owning one of these without killing themselves." Ken Goodrich of NASA thinks the solution is to get the planes to fly themselves, with some human guidance. Rob Bulaga of Trek Aerospace, another "road car" maker, predicts that "we could have a practical flying car within five years."

“Radical changes” in automotive design are set to “change the nature of driving more than anything since the end of the hand-crank engine,” reports L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal (3/5/12). Gordon begins by citing a recent speech by Bill Ford at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, who said: “Now is the time for us all to be looking at vehicles on the road the same way we look at smartphones, laptops and tablets: as pieces of a much bigger network.” More specifically, Bill addressed the future of “semi-autonomous driving technology,” or cars that operate without a human driver.

Within a few years, “cars will automatically be able to maintain safe distances, using networks of sensors, V-to-V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communications and real-time tracking of driving conditions fed into each car’s navigation system … This will limit the human error that accounts for 90% of accidents. Radar-based cruise control will stop cars from hitting each other, with cars by 2025 driving themselves in tight formations … This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. The electronics in high-end cars already run 100 million lines of computer code — more than the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.”

Google’s driverless car is, after all, already a reality. “Google engineers describe automating driving as just an another information problem: With enough sensors and detailed digital maps of roads, algorithms should be able to make the computer-driven cars safer than human-driven cars.” If this sounds scary, Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, offered a different perspective after riding as a passenger in Google’s auto-automobile: “After a few minutes the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting and other vagaries of the humans around us — including the weaving driver who struggled to film us as we passed.”

A new book posits that a Jewish journalist should get credit for inventing the Volkswagen Beetle, reports Phil Patton in the New York Times (1/20/12). “The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz” by Paul Schilperoord “provides a picture of the automotive culture in Germany between the wars, with many, small, struggling companies.” It also challenges the “standard history — that Hitler hired Ferdinand Porsche … to design and build his Strength Through Joy car.” Instead it tells the story of a “people’s car” thought leader who “was arrested, chased from Germany and nearly airbrushed out of history.”

Paul says that the concept of a "people’s car" in Germany in the 1930s was almost a cliche, not unlike "personal computer" in 1980s America. So, there were lots of people pursuing the idea, including Josef Ganz, who wrote for a magazine called Motor-Kritik and "advocated a people’s car with an air-cooled engine placed at the rear, based on a backbone-type frame and using independent suspension at both ends." He favored a design advanced by a friend, Paul Jaray, “whose shape resembled what is now known as the Beetle.”

According to the book, "Ganz was the only one arguing for a combination of tubular chassis, rear engine, streamlined body and independent suspension — a formula that would produce a light, affordable, family car." Instead of thanking him, the Gestapo arrested him and threw him out of Germany. In 1965, Ganz gave an interview in which he claimed credit for inventing the Volkswagen, however lots of people were working on similar ideas in the ’30s. "The Beetle was an accumulation from many ideas and from so many people," says Paul Shilperoord, "that it is impossible to say one person was the originator of it."

Steve Phelps navigates innovative pathways at NASCAR. By Tim Manners. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey — all are great American pastimes with amazing stories to tell. But it’s hard to name a sport more organically rooted in American popular culture than stock-car racing — popularized, as it was, by bootleggers trying to outrun revenuers in the 1930s and ’40s.

"Oh for the days — not so long ago –when a boy’s world would have fallen to its knees before a new Ducati design," writes Frederick Seidel in the New York Times (11/6/11). Frederick is worried that "motorcycles — even superb and lovely Italian motorcycles from the land of Donatello and Bertolucci" are "being replaced as love objects, as arm candy, by other more contemporary show-off desirables." He is speaking specifically of electronic devices, and even more specifically of those made by Apple.

"The iPhone 4S, the iPad 2, the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air computers — these are the sleek gorgeousness young people go on about, have to have, and do have, in the millions," Frederick writes. "These machines, famous for the svelte dignity of their designs — and of course, far less expensive than a motorcycle — are a lens to see the world through and to do your work on. It’s their operating speeds that thrill. Young people cut a bella figura on their electronic devices." Above all, it is the young men — who used to buy motorcycles before a recession-induced coma — about whom Frederick is most concerned.

Instead of hankering after the latest sport bike — motorcycles that "perform with brio but have no practical point to make" — they are instead "standing in line outside an Apple store, patiently waiting to buy the latest greatness … They are buying a slice of what Apple does — and how it does it — and how it looks doing it. They are buying function but, just as important, they are buying glamour. The device enhances the buyer’s sense of self. It helps the person think and at the same time not think. Once, not so long ago," Frederick writes, "motorcycles did the same thing."

Harley-Davidson is holding "garage parties" to try to get more women to buy motorcycles, reports James R. Hagerty in the Wall Street Journal (10/31/11). "We’re not trying to be everything to everyone," says Harley cmo Mark-Hans Richer. "We’re trying to be our thing to more people." Having been hammered by the recession, during which "jobless bikers sold their motorcycles or lost them to re-possession, creating a glut of used bikes that depressed sales of new ones," Harley definitely needs to be its thing to more people.

So, women are being courted with wine and Harley’s "550-pound Sportster, retailing for about $8,000," and featuring a lower seat that is said to be easier to handle. Some women think that’s still "too bulky" so Harley is said to be working on smaller bikes — but not so small that they "water down its image as a maker of big, powerful hogs." Lisa Ruschman, who once discouraged her husband from riding because she thought it too dangerous, is among the newly smitten. With her kids in college, she’s decided that she and her husband need a hobby.

"I have a new life now," she says. "This is phase two." Of course, persuading more women won’t be enough to return Harley to health. It also must attract "more minorities, young adults and people outside the US." The estimated median age of a Harley owner was 47 in 2007 — the last year for which Harley offered an estimate. To that end, Harley is promoting a "dark custom" look. "It’s not chrome," says Mark-Hans Richer. "It’s not big." Overseas, Harley is moving into "China, India and Latin America" which Harley hopes will account for 40 percent of its sales by 2014, up from 22 percent five years ago and about a third today.

The smaller and cheaper cars become, the quirkier they get, reports Phil Patton in the New York Times (10/14/11). "Personality is becoming a factor in differentiation and marketing," says Joel Piaskowski, design director of Ford North America. "Small cars have to have character," he adds. "For years, there were lots of small cars that were bland, but people bought them because they were reliable, got you from Point A to Point B and retained resale value. But people have moved a way from that … The price of entry to the market is good design as well as quality."

For younger drivers, this can mean cartoonish cars, such as the Nissan Juke, "whose hood-mounted headlights and haunchlike rear fenders make it resemble an aggressive bullfrog." Alfonso Albaisa, the Juke’s design chief, says the look resonates with young people because it recalls rally cars. "Young buyers know rally cars from television and video games," he explains. But the fresh focus on small cars is not limited to youthful buyers, as some analysts say that many buyers are going for cars that are one size down from what they might otherwise purchase during better times.

Ford, which is making a splash with its small but sporty Fiesta and Focus models, "expects small cars to make up 55 percent of its sales by 2020. Other makers are responding with "premium" small cars, like the Mini Cooper, Volkswagen Beetle and Fiat 500. The Mini tries to keep things fresh by offering "a constant variety of interior and option packages that let buyers customize the cars." The Beetle is back with a flatter, longer design that offers more trunk and legroom. Fiat is fashioning its dealerships as "studios" and offering a Gucci edition — complete with a green/red/green stripe and Gucci-patterned upholstery.

A young American designer hopes to raise Saab from the ashes, reports Phil Patton in the New York Times (10/14/11). Jason Castriota grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, but he studied car design at Pininfarina and is applying what he learned to try to cure what ails Saab. "At Pininfarina we were taught to emphasize the volumes, the shapes that make up a car," says Jason. "I learned early on that you don’t design with lines — rather you design by merging forms, volumes and shapes." The philosophy, says Jason, is that "forms should create a dynamic presence without the necessity for superfluous lines."

Jason has since gone on to apply that kind of thinking at Stile Bertone, a Pininfarina rival, before launching his own firm — and is now taking up residence as design chief for Saab. Initially, Jason created sketches "for what could be their next basic car, the 9-3." But Saab opted instead to focus on a concept car, the aptly named PhoeniX, which Jason says could save the automaker. Saab has currently halted production as it awaits a capital infusion from Chinese investors.

The PhoeniX features a "streamlined body" that is "evocative of the first 1947 Saab," with lines that Jason calls "aeromotional." As he explains: "It symbolizes a renaissance of the innovative spirit and passion that drove Saab to build its first car … This design aesthetic will shape and differentiate future models in the Saab portfolio." It’s based, he says, on the Italian design concept of "pura e dura" or "pure and hard," meaning "to seek and value the enduring shape in auto design." Whether the PhoeniX or any other future Saab ever sees a dealer showroom depends, of course, on "pura e dura" cash.

Nascar is saving money and generating revenues by “employing an ambitious set of green initiatives,” reports Ken Belson in the New York Times (9/13/11). This might seem surprising, given that Nascar “celebrates fast cars that burn copious amounts of gasoline.” But that’s all the more reason why Nascar is now planting (if not hugging) trees: “The incongruity is part of what makes going green in this sport so impactful,” says Michael Lynch, Nascar’s director of green innovation. “There’s a bias that the sport is not green and therefore the fans aren’t green.” While Nascar can’t change the nature of its sport, it does hope to change what it can, and maybe teach its fans something about environmental responsibility.

To that end, Nascar hired Michael Lynch in 2008. His challenge was “to figure out how environmental programs could help them cut tens of millions of dollars in costs without imposing too much strain on their operations.” A big part of his solution involved expanding recycling efforts via Safety-Kleen, to include some “225,000 gallons of fluids” as well as “oil filters, fluorescent light bulbs, metal shavings, aluminum and steel.” In partnership with Coca-Cola and Coors Light, Nascar also expects “to recycle about 12 million bottles and cans this season, twice as much as last year.”

Michael admits that such initiatives represent “low-hanging fruit,” but he has also supported “the installation last year of 40,000 solar panels over 25 acres at Pocono Raceway, which “saves about $500,000 a year in energy costs and has produced electricity equal to 324,000 gallons of gasoline.” More controversial is “Nascar’s decision to make Sunoco Green E15 ethanol blend its official fuel this season,” which Nascar says “helps reduce reliance on imported oil.” Nascar also plants ten trees after every race and uses a Toyota hybrid as its pace car “at many races.” Perhaps most endearing of all, “a small herd of sheep graze on the infield to keep the grass trimmed” at the Infineon track in Sonoma, California.” Not baaaad.