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Automotive Lifestyle
VINTAGE: Art Center Car Show Celebrates Innovative Designs
A wide-ranging spread of history and themes is united by the California school’s alumni who designed so many of them.
A gleaming black 1960 Tatra Tatraplan shows the unique automotive vision of the Czech car company during the Art Center College of Design’s car show. (Photo: Mark Vaughn)
(This story was written by Mark Vaughn, Autoweek’s West Coast senior editor.)
There are themes and slogans at Art Center College of Design car shows, and there are mighty attempts to line those themes up and make them march in lockstep.
The “Innovation in Motorsports” section in the middle of the Sculpture Garden, for instance, represented almost a century of race cars and designers' approaches to them. Steve Tillack brought a 1955 Lancia D50 grand prix car, the one with the gas tanks down the sides like big, strapped-on bombs.
It was parked next to a modern F1 carbon fiber monocoque with mounting points on its side not for gas tanks but for the driver's side impact protection. Fifty-seven years later, the idea of exploding fuel canisters is no longer an acceptable design idea.
“This is cool for our students to learn about technology and how technology is leading automotive design,” said Stewart Reed, chair of transportation design at Art Center, located in Pasadena, Calif.
The section starts out with a beautifully crude 1923 Voison C6 Laboratoire from the Mullin Museum. The profile of the Voisin forms a reverse airfoil, built to counter the Bugatti Tank grand prix cars of the day, which, with a standard-looking wing profile, tended to lift at speed. Voisin flipped the wing around to get downforce.
Past the Voisin was a progression of Indy Cars, from an early monocoque up to the ex-Johnny Unser 1972 Eagle.
Another section with a theme was hard to ID at first: A '61 Cadillac Coupe, '88 Fiero, '64 Corvair Monza Coupe and a '58 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Coupe. We didn't know until Reed told us that all four were designed by Ron Hill, Art Center alum, former chair of transportation design and the guy who penned all four cars. Hill was to receive an award at the show and the cars were brought together to honor him.
There are themes and slogans at Art Center College of Design car shows, and there are mighty attempts to line those themes up and make them march in lockstep.
The “Innovation in Motorsports” section in the middle of the Sculpture Garden, for instance, represented almost a century of race cars and designers' approaches to them. Steve Tillack brought a 1955 Lancia D50 grand prix car, the one with the gas tanks down the sides like big, strapped-on bombs.
It was parked next to a modern F1 carbon fiber monocoque with mounting points on its side not for gas tanks but for the driver's side impact protection. Fifty-seven years later, the idea of exploding fuel canisters is no longer an acceptable design idea.
“This is cool for our students to learn about technology and how technology is leading automotive design,” said Stewart Reed, chair of transportation design at Art Center, located in Pasadena, Calif.
The section starts out with a beautifully crude 1923 Voison C6 Laboratoire from the Mullin Museum. The profile of the Voisin forms a reverse airfoil, built to counter the Bugatti Tank grand prix cars of the day, which, with a standard-looking wing profile, tended to lift at speed. Voisin flipped the wing around to get downforce.
Past the Voisin was a progression of Indy Cars, from an early monocoque up to the ex-Johnny Unser 1972 Eagle.
Another section with a theme was hard to ID at first: A '61 Cadillac Coupe, '88 Fiero, '64 Corvair Monza Coupe and a '58 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Coupe. We didn't know until Reed told us that all four were designed by Ron Hill, Art Center alum, former chair of transportation design and the guy who penned all four cars. Hill was to receive an award at the show and the cars were brought together to honor him.
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