‘Squeeze the teddy bear by all means – but do it gently’
Some instructors I’ve driven and ridden with call it ‘squeezing the teddy bear’ – that comforting, unthinking squeeze of the brakes that is superfluous to requirements at best, and at worst likely to make taking the upcoming corner harder, not easier. But when you’re rushing at the unknown faster than you’re entirely comfortable with, a little squeeze of the teddy bear can go a long way.
Looking to the past is car design’s equivalent of squeezing the teddy bear. The transition to electric power is a daunting one rich in challenges, and if dressing your new EV up in a fancy-dress outfit that calls to mind carefree years long gone, helping smooth that transition, well, let’s give that teddy bear a squeeze.
Tesla wasn’t transitioning, and had no pre-electric canon to plunder, but the Model S was comfortingly conservative nonetheless – unchallenging, inoffensive. Honda and Renault have gone cute, the former with the ridiculously cuddly E and now Renault with a battery-electric production car set to call to mind the flyaway flimsiness, joie de vivre and pungent sun-on-’80s-upholstery perfume of its once omnipresent hatch, the 5. Ford, while stopping short of piling a battery and motors into an actual ’60s Mustang, has nevertheless liberally shot-gunned Mustang design cues at its crossover-shaped BEV of the same name.
Is this okay? If it works, I guess it is. But it’s also a little disappointing. I always try to imagine how the designers of the original would feel were they somehow rounded up, herded into a time machine and, after a little briefing on face masks and washing your hands, presented with the new car.
A couple of decades ago, when retro was rampant, I think they’d have been disappointed, then incensed. Take the first-generation Ford GT (as opposed to GT40), the 2004 car that first appeared at the 2002 Detroit show. The team behind the ’60s original would, I think, on being presented a full four decades on with nothing more than a facsimile, have asked what the hell Ford had been doing with its time and stormed back to the time machine in disgust. Whereas those same individuals, when presented with the 2015 second-gen GT, would, I think, have been spellbound. Yes they’d acknowledge their car’s design influence. But they’d also be mesmerised by the new car’s carbonfibre tub of unfathomable stiffness, its ruthless aerodynamic eciency born of computational flow dynamics work, and its intriguing powerplant, a turbo V6 far lighter than their V8 but more powerful and infinitely more ecient. And when you told them it’d won Le Mans, they’d have purred like cats in a cream lagoon.
So, squeeze the teddy bear by all means, but do it gently (same goes for the brakes, actually). For gentle use of the past in contemporary car design see Porsche (there’s plenty of 911 in the Taycan, but it’s contemporary 911) and Ferrari – there’s Sharknose ’60s Grand Prix car in the LaFerrari, but the men behind the impossibly pretty racer would be blown away to meet the hybrid V12 nonetheless.
Enjoy the issue.