Readers may have come to notice that we love cars. Cool cars. Fast cars. Concept cars. Today there will be some odd cars. Usually our fancies tend to revolve around German performance cars or American concept cars of the 50’s and 60’s. Sure there are exceptions.
Scenic Designer and recent Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts MFA graduate Daniel Krause noticed. He forwarded a link to this post on the Pink Tentacle Blog featuring Japanese Concept Cars of the last 50 or 60 years or so. It seems that the Japanese vision of the future was very similar to the American vision of the future. Pity how the future, that would be now, has generally produced some mundane automobile design. And today’s concept cars look less cool and more like either the Batmobile gone wrong or something you would drive into battle, not to the office.
All in all some pretty cool stuff, interesting door ideas. You know doors that aren’t just like every other door.
At about the same time, the Newspaper of Record published an interesting article on the small cars of Europe. Complete with a slide show. Of course, the particular specimens of which they write are in a museum in Georgia. Georgia, USA, of course. Fascinating design work, much of it simply ingenious. Of course, we like the scale, we have two small cars. Not this small, but small. These are perfect for old cities and other urban environments. Fuel conscious as well. Something to think about.
The mash-up I would like to see would involve fuel efficiency, emissions control, scale, and good design. In the meantime, I have to look at the past to envision the future..
—Kevin Lee Allen
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