Simply the Best: 2010 Ferrari 458 Italia
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The last Ferrari I drove was also red with a tan interior and looked like sex on wheels. I am older and supposedly a little wiser these days, but the sight of the first new Ferrari since the Enzo that didn’t look like a pastiche of 1960s design cues still snapped a frisson of desire through my synapses as I strode up to it, ignition key in hand. And two hours later, after a 90-mile blast along one of my favorite California backroads — a writhing, empty ribbon of tarmac I save for special cars like the Porsche Cayman S, BMW M3, and Corvette ZR1 — I was quite prepared to declare the new Ferrari 458 Italia the best sports car I have ever driven.
The 458 Italia does away with the machismo nonsense that great sports cars must somehow be tamed. For years I read road tests where writers waxed lyrical about the click-clack of metal on metal as they worked a Ferrari shifter through that iconic metal gate. What they were really telling you was how good a driver they were, because they had mastered the difficult art of getting a Ferrari through a fast second-third gear-change. The 458 Italia has buttons and paddles and two pedals and can mooch around town like a Buick, with the transmission computer deciding which of the seven ratios it should be using. But find a quiet canyon road, switch the Manettino to Race mode, start working the paddles, and… oh Lordy! You’ll be half a mile down the road while the click-clack guy’s still trying to find third gear.
The 458′s new seven speed dual-clutch manual transmission delivers virtually seamless full throttle upshifts; with the 557-hp, 4.5-liter V-8 screaming to its 9000-rpm redline behind you, and the upshift warning lights strobing across the top of the steering wheel, it’s like you’ve borrowed Fernando Alonso’s company car for the weekend. And like Fernando, you can grenade the brakes with your left foot as you fan the left hand paddle on the entry into a tight corner. The massive carbon-ceramic rotors will have the seat belt digging into your chest as the engine bra-bra-braaaps on the downshifts as fast as you can tug that paddle.
The front end lunges at the apex the moment you pull the steering wheel off center, and the linearity of the system is such that you can place the 458′s front wheels with millimetric accuracy. The feedback through the steering wheel rim is constant and deliciously detailed, too; it’s almost as if you’re gently brushing your fingertips across the tarmac. After a few miles you also realize you can get on the gas much earlier than you expect coming out the turns, as the electronically controlled differential cleverly vectors the torque between the rear wheels to not only deliver maximum traction, but also help rotate the car. The way the 458 comes out of turns — and the way you can also feel exactly what is happening where the rubber meets the road at the rear of the car — is quite unlike any other mid-engine, two-wheel drive sports car I have ever driven.
The 458 shrugged off mid-corner lumps and heaves that demanded the occasional stab of opposite lock in the ZR1, and even had the M3 skittering across the road at times. You can keep the shocks in the softer setting, even in Race mode, which helps deliver the remarkable ride and generous grip even on indifferent roads. It’s a beautifully composed chassis; calm, well-mannered, and deeply communicative.
As I headed back to town, I discovered that screaming V-8 would pull cleanly from as little as 1400 rpm in seventh gear. I discovered, too, an unexpected swell of torque around 5000 rpm that meant I could short-shift and still maintain momentum. I almost schmoozed the 458 along the road, and was effortlessly cleaner, neater, quicker than I had been in the Porsche Cayman S along this same road a couple years earlier.
The 458 Italia surrounds you so completely with its talent, it almost feels an organic extension of your senses. With the Ferrari 348 I was bitterly disappointed to learn Maranello’s magic was mostly myth; that I’d been seduced by Glenn Close rather than Elle MacPherson. With the 458 Italia the magic is real. Because this Ferrari turns mere mortals like you and me into driving gods.
The Happiest Happy Hour: Chauffeured around Manhattan in Exotic Supercars
After the initial media day at this year’s 2011 New York International Auto Show, I was invited to an informal happy hour hosted by Signature, an up-and-coming exotic car rental firm from New Jersey. The kicker: We would be chauffeured to appetizers through the streets of Manhattan in the coolest way possible – coddled in the seat of one of six exotic supercars in Signature’s fresh fleet. Ride in a hand-built chariot to drinks and food? Ah, YES PLEASE. (Sure, a drive of the cars would have been best, but considering the mix of light libations, hellish NYC potholes/construction zones, and low-slung carbon-fiber bodies, being chauffeured seemed the better choice.)
I have visited New York’s bustling urbanscape a few times. I’ve seen the city’s innumerable monuments and picturesque, movie-set-like panoramas. But never have I experienced some of these sites while strapped into a deeply recessed bucket bolted into a snarling Lamborghini.For this event, Signature blocked off its top rides: A Ferrari California, Aston Martin DB9 Volante, Maserati GranCabrio Sport, Ferrari F430 Spider, Bentley GTC, and Mercedes-Benz S550 all joined the party. Despite the hordes of taxis and pedestrians passing within inches of our expensive metal, the group stayed close and in line during our 30-minute tourist drive. You can only imagine how much the Lamborghini Effect was compounded. (A few NYPD officers flashed their emergency lights just to get beside us to look closer at the six-figure sports cars.)
From the Javits Center, our exotic lineup ventured along the Hudson River’s shore on 11th street to West Street. We passed Ground Zero, then slowly cruised further south to State Street past the Charging Bull onto Water Street. After cutting further south to East River Drive, we headed north to the South Street Seaport where our destination — a homey New Zealander restaurant called Nelson Blue — awaited. Everything outside became more appealing when looked at from inside a supercar. Then again, maybe it was the extremely low perspective, which gave even the lowest of passing curbs extra clout.
When the angry bull was subdued at a stoplight, I spoke to my driver, Hamed Zolghadr. Though only 25 years old, the slick-haired, smiling driver was an industry veteran who gained experience and made valuable friends while working at a local Lamborghini dealership.
“I started off washing cars,” he explained. “Then after a few years, I worked my way into the service department and became a technician. During my time there, I met Marcello and the rest of the guys, and now I’m here helping our business grow. We have some big plans in the works and we can’t wait to see what happens.”
He said Signature’s business is still going strong despite the economic downturn.
“Thankfully, we are doing very well. We’re constantly adding new cars, and we’re going to open a new 5,000 sq-ft. showroom near Newark Airport soon. Now we’re pursuing new outlets for exposure. Our customers are happy, and we love to make them that way.”As for the folks filling their cars, the gamut is wide.
“We get all types of people renting cars from us. From ones just wanting to experience a supercar for the first time in their life, to the wedding couple wanting a cool ride, to the one person who just wants a fast car to flaunt for a night. The variety is huge. There are also the well-off ones that want to test drive new cars. For them, we offer our membership program.”
With the Murcielago parked, our group headed inside Nelson Blue for delicious Kiwi grub. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by this restaurant. Like the food and drink, the ambiance is superb and laidback. I got to meet Marcello Bommarito, Signature’s CEO. He used to run the Lamborghini dealership Hamed worked at, but he grew up loving and respecting Ferrari.
“My father has worked for Ferrari for decades, and I used to do logistics for them, too. So you could say I have a thing for the brand,” said the Tifoso in his distinct New Jersey accent.
Nowadays, he loves all exotics. They are the bread and butter of the business he started with good friends only a year ago. I asked him what separates Signature Car Collection from its many competitors.
Unlike other exotic car rental firms, Marcello said Signature handles everything it can in-house, in order to pass appropriate prices on to their customers.
“We have a body shop in-house. We do all maintenance on our vehicles at our headquarters, too. We are a one-stop shop.”
Everyone on payroll is also a real car guy or girl. Lastly, Signature is family owned and operated, meaning Marcello’s team is tight-knit, knowledgeable, and dedicated to making the customer experience the best it can be.
“We love seeing that smile on their faces,” Marcello said. “One wedding story in particular was a fun one. The bride-to-be rented our LP640 for the wedding, but the groom didn’t know. Yep, he was a diehard Lamborghini fan.
“So while the couple was taking wedding pictures outside of their hotel, my team drove by, as if to tease the groom. During the photoshoot, he stopped the photographer and pointed the car out to his fiancee. We drove by a second time, but this time we stopped, jumped out, and handed him the keys nonchalantly. He was ecstatic!”After only a year, Signature has grown from a one car-operation (starting with the Ferrari F430) to one of the busiest rental firms of its kind in the Northeast. Luckily for the team from Lodi, their next decisions deal with what colors their future Italian cars will be painted, not how they’ll struggle to stay afloat. (Expansion plans include opening offices in Miami and Chicago.)
Food in belly, it was time to head back to Midtown. I was the last to leave.
“We saved the California for you,” Marcello said smiling. “The open top gives the city another flavor.”
How fitting — the born-and-bred Californian entering the New York City night in Ferrari’s most advanced topless grand tourer to date. Another car, another of the city’s many tasty flavors. Yes, this was my happiest happy hour ever.
Why Gasoline-Blooded Enthusiasts Will Learn to Love Hybrids
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Motor Trend was recently asked to present a keynote speech at the Society of Automotive Engineers' annual Hybrid Vehicle Technologies Symposium, and I was tapped to deliver it. I decided to take the true outsider's view -- that of a car-guy horsepower freak who isn't the least bit interested in hybrids, and talk about what it may take to win my ilk over. Of course, in real life I do kind of enjoy driving hybrids, but only in a geeky, hypermiling kind of way. But there's a lot going on in the aftermarket and the motorsports arena that could win the unabashed speed freaks among us over to the hybrid cause. I presented these developments as a roadmap to the car-nut's heart.  Of course, for starters there's a plainly obvious mathematical attraction to hybrid vehicles. In a 35-mpg CAFE world, selling four milquetoast earth-hugging nine-second-0-60-mph Malibu Hybrids allows the sale of one fire-breathing 3.3-second Corvette ZR1 without incurring any fines for Chevrolet. That magic ratio will certainly be even lower for plug-ins like the Chevy Volt and Cadillac Converj concept, although we won't be able to do the math on those cars until NHTSA and the EPA figure out exactly how they're going to test them (and I'm eager for them to announce some sort of plan so the shade-tree plug-in hybrid fringe players can stop advertising these wild 200-plus-mpg claims that get the hoi paloi so riled up.  Okay that first point was kind of a cynical cheat, because the hybrids themselves don't directly engage the enthusiast, though I suppose it's fair to interject here that great looking, dynamic designs like the Cadillac Converj will draw enthusiasts no matter what's under the hood. And as cars like this, and the Fisker Karma (if it ever actually materializes, which I'm not overly confident of), and even the Tesla are getting the word out that an electric drivetrain doesn't have to deliver golf-cart/sensible shoes driving. And the range-extended electric concept certainly opens the door to a much wider range of auxiliary power units. I fully expect to see a turbine-powered generator serving as the range extender in one of these vehicles soon, as that solution is arguably better suited to the task than a reciprocating piston engine, and turbines can be made to run on a variety of alternative fuels. And a jet-powered hybrid certainly sounds sexy, no?  The automotive aftermarket primarily exists to serve the enthusiast, and if this past year's SEMA show in Las Vegas was any indication, the players in this $37-billion business foresee a market for green gear-heads. This year an entire section of the show was devoted to "Making Green Cool." A123Systems was on-hand showing off its Hymotion kit that converts any 2004-2009 Prius into a plug-in hybrid. At the heart of this kit is a 5kW-hour L5 Nanophosphate lithium-ion battery pack weighing 187 pounds. It mounts in about three hours, with everything fitting beneath the trunk floor in the spare tire well. The system plugs into the Toyota's power grid with no modifications to the stock controller. Because of the way the Hybrid Synergy Drive planetary transmission works, the engine simply must be used at certain vehicle speeds, and most regenerated energy goes back into the stock nickel-metal-hydride battery, but the plug-in battery gradually discharges, increasing the amount of time the car can operate at low speeds in electric mode. It recharges in about five hours when plugged into a conventional 115-volt outlet. Priced at about ten grand installed (plus shipping), buyers get more in the way of bragging rights than they do future economic benefit, but I suppose the same can probably be said of many of the products featured at SEMA.  The much more enthusiast-oriented gas/electric SEMA star was Braille Battery's Nissan Altima Hot Rod Hybrid (also pictured at top). Developed and built in conjunction with Universal Technical Institute, its 2.5-liter four-cylinder is tuned to run on E85 gasohol and gets an electric-powered Vortech supercharger that ups combustion output to about 270 horses. The traction motor is also juiced up to produce a reported 440 total-system horsepower. A reworked suspension and fat 40-series low-rolling-resistance Yokohama tires supposedly provide 1.02g lateral grip and quarter-mile acceleration times of 12.9 seconds at 109.2 mph. Its roof is also covered in solar panels, though it's hard to imagine that they could really pay off in extended range or added power even when circulating a high-desert track like California's Willow Springs. (Now that I think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if decals that look like solar-panels didn't become the woodgrain or faux carbon fiber of the hybrid-geek future.) And what about gas mileage? The fuel tank will reportedly last for 35 laps of the 3.7-mile race circuit in Sebring, Florida, as compared with only 20 in a conventional non-hybrid Altima race car. We'll find out how well this hybrid hardware performs when the Hot Rod Hybrid competes in a newly formed Hybrid/electric class of this season's Redline Time Attack series of road-racing-circuit time-trials. It'll also be entered in April's Cannonball Run/One-Lap of America race (with Motor Trend as this year's media parther).  The final SEMA hybrid I'll mention is the RENNtech Mercedes GLK Pikes Peak Hybrid SUV. This entry also gets a souped-up combustion engine (computer upgrades, exhaust headers, new heads and cams), to which is added a mild-hybrid motor/alternator, not unlike those used in the Chevy Malibu/Saturn Aura Hybrids. This bolt-on unit supposedly adds up to 40 pound-feet of twist to the engine, drawing from a motor-generator and a 72-volt battery pack. The SEMA show car used six Optima 12-volt spiral-wound lead-acid batteries located in the spare-tire well, but a nickel-metal-hydride pack capable of being recharged during regenerative braking will be developed before this concept makes its official debut in the exhibition class at the 87th Annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this July.  And while the Redline Time Attack, One Lap, and an exhibition class at Pikes Peak may not draw very much attention, these last two examples are charging down a direct path to the enthusiast's heart: motorsports. Of course, throughout the automotive age, racing has driven such automotive innovations as disc brakes, fuel injection and countless other advances in automotive performance, efficiency, and safety. Nobody knows this better than the SAE, which organized a Green Racing Committee whose task it was to develop a set of Recommended Green Racing Protocols, which was just published last October. SAE started by holding a number of technical forums to gather input on the topic from manufacturers, motorsports sanctioning bodies, race teams, etc. Then a working group comprised of representatives of the EPA, the Department of Energy, Argonne National Labs, the American LeMans Series (ALMS) and its sanctioning body, the International Motor Sports Association, set about drafting the protocols. The protocols are based on five elements: 1. Use of renewable fuels; The Green Challenge ranking system takes into account the amount of energy each car uses, the greenhouse gases it produces and the fossil fuels consumed-on a well-to-wheels basis (calculated using Argonne's well known GREET analysis). These ranking factors are compiled into a single weighted number representing the car's environmental performance. The first race to include a Green Racing class was the ALMS Petite LeMans race, a 1000-mile high-speed endurance race run on the 2.5-mile Road Atlanta circuit on October 4, 2008. Included in the nearly 40 entries were conventional gasoline engines, direct injection gasoline engines, diesel engines, and-yes-hybrid assist technology. Fuels used include gasoline with 10% ethanol (E10), E85 ethanol made using cellulosic processes, and ultra-low sulfur diesel with a portion of synthetic diesel made from a gas-to-liquid process.  The Corsa Motorsports/Zytek LMP1 Hybrid entry is based on a Zytek 07S carbon fiber/aluminum monocoque chassis and powered by an ethanol-fueled 4.5-liter 32-valve Zytek V-8 producing 625 horsepower and a proprietary Zytek direct-drive electric motor energized by a lithium-ion battery pack supplied by Continental AG of Germany. Unfortunately, teething problems with the inverter, battery, kinetic energy recovery system and attendant wiring, cooling and management systems required further development, and the Hybrid missed its first two potential races. It's still expected to appear on the 2009 grid. The winners of the Green Challenge at this year's Petite Le Mans included a lightweight E10-powered direct-injected Penske-Porsche in the prototype class, and a GM Racing Corvette burning cellulosic E85 in the GT class.  It's worth noting here that almost exactly 10 years prior to last October's Petite Le Mans race, another hybrid running a Zytek electric motor coupled to the transaxle of a Roush V-8 appeared. This Panoz Q9 LMP1 Spyder was affectionately nicknamed "Sparky." Then as now, the idea was that regenerative braking would save wear on the friction brakes while electric boost extended range between refueling stops. But because the weight of the 1998-era battery pack was so great, the car finished 12th overall and never competed again. Hopefully in the months to come we'll find out whether modern batteries and 2009 controller technology-not to mention Green Racing Protocols-can make the hybrid racer competitive.  Endurance racing is a great forum for technology development, but to tap into the serious money and engage a truly huge global fan base, you need to get Formula One racing involved. And that is scheduled to happen this season. Formula One's rules changes for 2009 are the most extensive in years. They're aimed largely at making the series more interesting to watch by encouraging more passing and by making the technology employed more relevant to the fans. A huge part of that is the admission this year of kinetic energy recovery systems, or KERS for short. Naturally, the official KERS regulations are fairly extensive and will be strictly enforced. There are way more, but here are a few highlights: - Maximum power in and out of the system is 60kW (80.46 HP) as measured at the wheels. (This limit may rise over the years.)  There are a squillion safety regs too, calling for status lights and system shutdown protocols, and the like, but there is wide latitude as to the method of energy storage. Almost anything goes that can meet the requirements, be it hydraulic, mechanical, electrical, compressed air, whatever. Hydraulic storage appears to be a non-starter, as 40 liters of oil would be required to store the allowable energy, and that's simply too heavy. Electric storage in batteries and/or ultracapacitors is the obvious approach that most teams appear to be working on, and they're finding it's not a simple matter of scaling up a Prius system by a factor of three. To date several of these teams are still grappling with some fairly serious safety concerns. A BMW-Sauber team mechanic sustained an electric shock while testing in Jerez Spain, and the Red Bull team reported a "smoke and fume" incident at its development center in the UK. Toyota engine boss Luca Marmorini told the German magazine Sport Bild that: "All teams are having problems at the moment. Building a safe system is proving a difficult thing, and for 2009, time is running out."-Luca Marmorini, Team Toyota Other German newspaper reports quote Mark Webber of the drivers' safety union saying: "Some teams are having problems with the chemicals that are used for the batteries. It is important to us that it is safe, when we are driving at 300km/h, or in the event of a heavy accident." - Mark Webber, GPDA (drivers' safety union) And Williams driver Nico Rosberg admitted that: "For the first few races (of 2009), no team will be on the grid with KERS." - Nico Rosberg, Team Williams driver  Rest assured that these hiccups will be overcome. But there is another system that really intrigues me. It's a mechanical energy storage device that stores energy as rotational inertia in a flywheel. Now, if any of you is an avid racing fan, you may be thinking of the last flywheel hybrid racecar that made headlines, Chrysler's Patriot. That Le Mans prototype was electrically powered, with energy coming from a turbine-generator running at nearly constant speeds, with surplus power (and braking energy) being used to spin up a flywheel large enough to supply supplemental power down the long Mulsanne Straight at the Le Mans circuit in France. Safely containing that gigantic flywheel proved impossible, and the project was shelved. But the maximum power permitted by F1 is so much lower that the concept is quite workable now. Flybrid Systems in the UK is developing the flywheel, which is made of long-filament carbon fiber and high-strength steel. It's only 8 inches in diameter and about 4 inches wide, and it spins in a vacuum on special patented hermetic bearings (this is necessary, because at its top speed of 64,500 rpm, the rim velocity would be over mach 3, and the air-friction would be too great). The flywheel weighs about 11 pounds, 22 including the containment drum, bearings and so forth. Flybrid has crash-tested the unit, spinning it up to top speed and subjecting it to a 20g impact. The flywheel survived the crash still spinning and undamaged. A planetary gearset reduces the speed by about 5:1, and then a centrifugal clutch connects the device to a toroidal continuously variable transmission that manages the ratio difference between the flywheel and the geared connection to the car's transaxle output shaft. Torotrak and Xtrac are responsible for this part of the technology. In race conditions the flywheel always spins at between 32,250 and 64,500 rpm, and can reportedly go from zero to full power storage in 50 milliseconds. The entire package is said to weigh just 53 poundsand it only needs half a cubic foot of packaging space. That's believed to be considerably less space and weight than the electric hybrid systems require, which gives teams more ballast weight to work with and leaves them free to put it where it can do the most good dynamically. Not only is it power-dense, Flybrid claims that by not having to convert energy from mechanical to electrical and back again, its in-and-out system efficiency should fall between 65-70 percent, as compared with 35-45 percent for an electrical system.  Flybrid claims the technology can easily be sized, tuned, and packaged for use on road cars and last May the company embarked on a Flywheel Hybrid System for Premium Vehicles project in conjunction with Jaguar. Who knows? Maybe mechanical hybrid systems will turn out to be the best solution for high-performance vehicles-either practically, or from a marketing perspective, if flywheel KERS systems start winning high-profile Formula One races around the globe and energizing the enthusiast base. Recapping my things-to-do list for hybrid engineers to win enthusiast hearts and minds to the hybrid cause: - Boost hybrid fuel economy as high as possible to offset the guzzler hotrods we love |
Shelby Super Snake Prudhomme Edition: The Snake & the Snakecharmer Do a Mustang
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"I pulled $12,000 out of my ass to sponsor Prudhomme, because I felt he really had it. I knew he was going to be great. That was 42 years ago, and we've been friends ever since." -- Carroll Shelby "He was sitting there in a cool-looking blue Lincoln, with a really pretty girl in the car wearing a short skirt, and they were drinking beer and I thought to myself, 'Carroll Shelby is the coolest sumbiatch I ever met.' -- Don "The Snake" Prudhomme  In 1968, a young Don Prudhomme was driving a Ford SOHC 427-powered rail dragster. Ford was behind the effort, in an attempt to take on the mighty Mopar Street Hemi. Carroll Shelby was still building Cobras and Mustangs, and Shelby American was managing all sorts of racing efforts for Ford. That's how he and The Snake first connected. But they never, in all those years, worked together on a car. Until now.  Meet the Prudhomme Edition Shelby Super Snake, a Mustang built to live life a quarter mile at a time, with the philosophy that none of those quarter miles should take more than 10 seconds. I just came back from a gig at the Wally Parks NHRA Museum at the Pomona Fairplex where the car was revealed to the media, Shelby fans, and other assembled drag racing folks.  The car was conceived, designed, and will be built at Shelby Automobiles' facility in Las Vegas. It's a strictly "post-title" program, meaning you show up with your 2007 or 2008 Shelby GT500, fork over $100 grand, and they'll convert it to a Prudhomme edition car for you. Or pay $50K more, and they'll source a GT500 for you and do the same. Just don't expect to buy or lease one at a Ford dealer. The modifications are extensive and focused on making this Mustang work best in a straight line, a decided departure from the usual Shelby mix of accel, braking, and handling aimed at road course or twisty mountain road work. The centerpiece, of course, is the engine, still supercharged and cranked up to produce 800 hp (109-octane race gas and racing tune) or a mere 750 on 93-octane juice with a street tune. Either way, show up to the track, bolt on your slicks, uncork the mufflers, and bracket race your heart out. The scooped intake system that sits atop the huffer is just the coolest thing. And unlike Ford Racing's Cobra Jet supe-stock-style Mustang (50 built, all sold out), the Shelby Super Snake quarter-miler is street legal, although we wonder what happens when you show up at the smog station...  Several other drag-racing legends were in attendance, including Ed "The Ace" McCulloch, plus current competitors Ashley and (dad) John Force, there for the NHRA season-opening Winternationals. The elder Force looks fit and sharp, amazing after the life-threatening accident he suffered a little more than a year ago.
Is there demand for 100 of these limited-edition straight-line Shelbys? It's curious that this car came to fruition at the same time as did the Ford's factory Cobra Jet, although again, those are all spoken for. And the current economic climate might not be right for a $150,000 bracket racer. Time will tell.     http://www.shelbyautos.com/; 702/942-7325 |
The Lohdown: BREAKING NEWS – iDRIVE NO LONGER SUCKS
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It was an idea so simple, so elegant, yet so powerful it was to change the way the world interacted with the automobile. It flew in the face of modern convention, which said more (buttons/switches/knobs) equals better. It was the concept of “one dial to rule them all,” and it was supposed to free up consoles, fingers, and minds. It would not only create a more beautiful and serene driving environment, it would invigorate the drive itself.
 
Next week, "The Lohdown" will be broadcast from the Windy City, for the 2009 Chicago Autoshow. Send suggestions of things you'd like to see (and places where I should eat) to: thelohdownMT@gmail.com. The Lohdown is published on motortrend.com every Wednesday. Please send all suggestions, comments, and spleen venting invective to thelohdownMT@gmail.com. |
Chris Bangle: Iconoclast. Visionary
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The most influential automotive designer of the early 21st century has just left the building. Chris Bangle's departure from BMW will draw cheers and jeers in equal measure from those who remain convinced he butchered the company's cars -- literally: Superstar product designer and auto enthusiast Mark Newson (he owns a DB4 Aston and a Lamborghini Miura) once told me he thought the original Z4 roadster looked like it had been styled with a machete.  Yet Bangle's cloth-covered GINA concept, which features movable elements under the skin that changed the vehicle's surfaces, remains one of the most innovative concept cars ever built. GINA was typical Bangle: an iconoclastic take on something most automotive designers take for granted -- that an automobile's form is, folding-convertible roof aside, immutable.  Ford global design chief J Mays is no fan, but he admits Bangle has been significant in reshaping modern cars. Ford of Europe's Martin Smith talks of him as an instigator of the trend toward "surface entertainment," something Smith himself has used to great effect with his "Kinetic Design" cars. "He's certainly the most talked about [designer]," says Renault design boss Patrick Le Quement. "His designs have a great deal of presence, and they're well proportioned. He's been highly influential."  Bangle's first BMWs -- the E46 3 Series and the X5 -- were relatively conventional. The E46, launched in 1998, was a simple evolution of the previous-generation E36, and I well remember how its conservative looks were a hot talking point among journalists attending the car's launch in Spain. I still remind colleagues who later lauded the E46 as the last of the good-looking BMWs that at the time they thought it was boring and derivative, just another cookie-cutter BMW with predictably cloned design cues from the larger 5 and 7 Series models.
 Those who believe Chris Bangle single-handedly brutalized BMW design should remember his strategy had the full backing of senior BMW management; they signed Bangle's BMWs into production. And that includes BMW product wunderkind and tastemeister Wolfgang Reitzle, who was fired over his bungled attempt to succeed Bernd Pischetsreider as BMW chairman and later distanced himself from the highly controversial Bangle-designed E65 7 Series (pictured), saying he always meant to go back and fix the car once he'd gotten Pischetsreider's job.  "You know, my mind is now somewhere else already," he told my colleague Gavin Green in an interview published in Motor Trend a few years back. "I worry that the industry isn't looking far enough forward. We're closing in rapidly at the end of the current paradigm in the evolution of the car, and if this paradigm lasts beyond 2020, I'll be amazed. After that, cars, as we understand them now, will be different animals." |
