The future is going to be flavorless, according to car designers
It's like peeling the layers of the onion to get to the core of the flavor, but by doing so they lost most of it.
You probably know that we like to say that cars were ahead of their times. Especially when looking back at daring designs like the BMW i3 and i8 for example. We didn't get them when they came out, but now we do. And now we exclaim that the designers had a great vision of the future, of the (car) world we would all be living in.
That perfect 20-20 hindsight made me thing about the cars we are being presented lately. The Jaguar Type 00, the Ferrari Luce and the Audi Nuvolari especially. (not the Cybertruck, because fuck that thing) They're halo cars that are supposed to do what the BMW i8 did years ago. The design of the things have to somehow also show us a world they would fit in. Designers have to think about that. They have to envision the future in which these kind of cars will fit.
Now I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm having a hard time to imagine a cool future in which the Jag, Ferrari and Audi would fit. The design of all three cars doesn't really tell us a lot. Does that mean the future will be as bland and shapeless as the cars that we're going to be driving in that future. Or is it that even the designers can't think of a future, because the current times are difficult enough and there is no clear path for the next five years, let alone beyond that?
If that last part would be the case, then all what the current designs are screaming is 'give me attention'. They are meant to shock, because there is no future attached to the design. There is no meaning to it. It's just about getting as much eyeballs your way in the right now.
To me, this makes sense. I don't believe any designer wants to make a bland looking car. I've spoken to enough of them, that I think they have an inherent need to do much more with the lines they draw than simply grab the attention of a few TikTok-influencers to get as much outreach as possible. I think they deep down want to create something beautiful, lasting, daring and something that somewhere, somehow touches people on a deeper level.
Of course I could be very wrong here. It could all be true that the designers of these cars truly think the future in which they should fit, will be what the design tells us. It could very well be that, in the age of AI, they all see cars that are bland, over optimized and very much minimalized to the point they loose all they soul. In the end it's what all the designers of all these cars have said. They all wanted to remove the noise to focus on what truly matters.
The question then becomes: what does truly matter? And that is where all of the above comes off the rails. There is no argument to be found or to be told through the design of these futuristic cars that can point to a thing that truly matters to us. If the designers are having a hard time pointing to the specific thing they are trying to convey, how the hell are we supposed to find it? I for one couldn't tell you.
To me it's like the designers all used the same flawed philosophy to just scratch things out in an effort to get to the core of what a car could mean. Which in essence would be fine if you used the scratching of things as a means to an end: to get to a great car that tells its story clearly. But if there is no story to tell, or there isn't one being identified from the start of the project, then the minimalization just becomes a means without an end or a direction for that matter.
It's like the designers were lost or had to work with a flawed brief. The only answer they could find is to try and subtract their way to a story, to a soul. It's like peeling the layers of the onion to get to the core of the flavor, but by doing so they lost most of it.
In other news:
Mexico is officially the producer of a cheap EV. It will cost around 7.800 euro's and will be able to hopefully, maybe, in optimal conditions, get you around 100 km further than you started. Thanks to a 14.7 kWh LFP-batterypack. It looks a bit fun, but mostly cheap and very, very practical. Give me one for my groceries runs and maybe for one for my wife, who can use it as a very practical storage space for all her horse gear.
Peugeot has given us the E-208 GTi at the 24 hours of LeMans. 278 hp, 5.7 seconds to 100 km/h. Still to much wrong with this brand. Don't believe the numbers and the steering wheel is still in the wrong place, or the dashboard is. Either way, don't want it. Don't look at it, and maybe it'll go away.
