| Issue #27, September 29, 2006 |
Classic Cars With Bob Gelber
A few weeks ago, while road-testing the new Dodge Caliber, it dawned on me that a lot of new cars, both American and imported, are slaves to style. I’ve always admired the principle “form follows function.” This axiom has brought the world some truly beautiful shapes, like the WWII North American P-51 fighter plane, the 1949 PininFarina Cisitalia coupe and the Guggenheim Museum. However, today many new cars are designed on the principal that form follows style.
The Dodge Caliber is a good example of style as more important than practicality. Its major aesthetic weakness is the fact that the windshield is too far from the driver. The new retro Volkswagen Beetle suffers from this same malady which I pointed out several years ago when the Beetle was introduced. I call this failure of design the “Driving Miss Daisy syndrome” because, with this windshield forward design, the driver feels like he or she is driving the car from the back seat. What this also does is produce an exceptionally long dashboard surface, akin to looking out over the deck of an aircraft carrier. It’s wasted space that gets heat soaked on a hot summer day.
My main complaint about this design is that it takes away from the driving experience by making the car harder to place on the road, especially curvy ones. When I’m driving, I like to know exactly where the ends of the car are and not see acres of dashboard. The Dodge has a severely raked windshield, which looks cool, but causes that long exaggerated dash. The current Volkswagen is stylistically forced into the large dash because it is built on a Volkswagen Golf chassis with a water cooled engine in the front, not an air-cooled engine in the rear like the original Beetle. The newer windshield has to be forward in order to cover the engine. Conversely, the original Volkswagen had a windshield that was, if anything, too close to your face. I will say one thing for the original VW, visibility was so good out front that you could place that little bugger on a curve as well as you could a Porsche 356.
Speaking of Porsches, part of the great popularity of these P-Wagons is their great forward visibility. It is no accident that all Porsches ever built (with the exception of the 928 and 944) have front fenders that are placed much higher than the front hood, so one can see the front corners of the car. Of course, having a sloping front hood is mainly due to the fact that the engine is in the rear, but the driving experience of the 911 is stellar partially because of its great visibility out of the windshield.
Speaking of form following function, here are two prime examples of beautiful cars. Both the 1949 Jaguar XK 120 and the 1963 Jaguar XK-E series of motorcars had impressive views over their windshields. Like the Volkswagens of that era, you were actually sitting too close to the steering wheel and the windshields with the 120s. The long nose, required to cover a rather long straight-six-cylinder powerplant, was visually impressive, because it too had dramatic flowing front fenders that were noticeably higher than the hood. Just sitting in a 120 and looking over that sculptured mass of frontal metal made any serious car enthusiast eager to drive this car. However, because of their mass and heavy steering, 120s were not easy cars to place on a narrow roads.
After the aesthetic success of the 120, Jaguar hit another home run with the XK-E hood that was actually longer than the 120s. When I first drove the car in 1963, I found it quite awkward to tool around Manhattan with that long nose leading the way. I do consider the XK-E to be the most beautiful mass produced sports car ever built. Like the 120, just sitting in the car was a visual delight. You could actually see the aluminum valve covers of the engine through the large hood louvers. Speaking of 120s and XK-Es and Manhattan. On a hot summer’s day you were best advised not to get caught in city traffic, both cars were guaranteed to overheat. Maybe it’s something to do with the British, liking boiling water for tea.
Currently, many cars sacrifice practicality for style. Look at the silly rear side doors on the new Toyota FJ Cruiser, the Honda Element and the Mazda RX-8. First they are really small, and second, you can’t open them unless you open the front doors. Sure they look cool, mainly because they aren’t noticeable, but if you’re going to make rear doors, at least make them so humans, not only small dogs, can fit through them.
My biggest complaint is what seems to be the proliferation of plastic engine covers on virtually every new car in production. Why? Most buyers don’t know diddly about engines so why cover them with faux deco plastic pieces. The folks that do know about engines, the mechanics, look at them with disdain because of the extra work it takes to remove them, find a safe place to put them in the workspace, then keep them clean and undamaged as they are reinstalled. What are designers trying to do, turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, or an old outdated engine into a high tech visual masterpiece?
Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com
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