Concept cars are generally the evanescent dreams of designers. But, every so often, the bean-counters take a handful of edibles, and some marketing person discovers a emergent psychographic niche of buyers that they believe would be willing to pay a premium for something distinctive, and these fantasy vehicles are turned into something consumers can buy and drive on public roads. Huzzah!
The history of architectural imagery, according to Demeulmeester, is replete with “designers who understood that combining cars with their buildings makes the image more dynamic and strong.”
Witold Rybczynski has owned 15 cars in his life, and all of them make an appearance in “The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car” (Norton, $29.99). In fact, the book is something of a paean to the famed design and architecture writer’s vehicles, which tended toward the utilitarian.
It looks poised to attack, consume your face, and then lunge off, cackling, in the direction of its next victim.
Bruno Sacco, the legendary Mercedes-Benz design chief, died on September 19 at the age of 90.
Sacco believed that Mercedes design must express the brand’s technical excellence and could never be used to mask or make up for a lack thereof. His work excelled not only in restraint and elegance—a representation of the product’s pinnacle positioning—but timelessness.
Check out my essay on his reign, and our slideshow of nine of his greatest Benz designs, and his one unmitigated (self-admitted) flop.
“The electric car is infrastructure-based technology. And the introduction of technology that is infrastructure-based is normally, for whatever reason, speed-wise, overrated, while the depth of usage is normally underrated.”
My latest Stars & Cars story, with Aaron Paul, has so many improbable plot points–a first date, a missing car, stunt driving a Koenigsegg, a Las Vegas residency, being locked in a car trunk in the New Mexico desert, mezcal, caviar, and truffles–that it could be it’s own Aaron Paul movie.
A Preservation Class vehicle won the prestigious Best of Show award for the first time at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This is a big fucking deal.
Spot all nine, and win the Gold!
While I was in France last week, I visited the National Motor History Museum, which has a collection of over 400 cars, including 80 Bugattis (!!) and many others that are Bugatti-adjacent.