Artist takes inspiration from the ‘Golden Ratio’
Unlike a lot of car-star designers, Frank also worked on “people’s cars.” The new MINI and the Fiat 500, the reimagining of two of the most iconic cars of the 20th century, both came about under his direction.
I first met Frank at the Paris Auto Show in 2000, where the featured unveiling was that new MINI.
He still bristles about how some commentators at the time viewed this car.
“I was really peed off ...” — about as close to swearing as he gets — “when people said it was a ‘retro’ design.
“Of the 15 designs that were proposed for the car,” he recalls, “some looked nothing at all like the original.
“I didn’t want to copy the old one, but didn’t want to throw away all aspects of it either. You need some sort of a family feeling, a link to the heritage, like the way we relate to our parents and grandparents.”
He talks about the “Golden Ratio,” the number 1.618, also known as “Phi.” This ratio is found in nature and in classic architecture such as the Parthenon in Athens.
He points out that great music also follows that ratio. Beethoven figured it out, and he was so deaf he thought he was a painter.
Not surprisingly then, this number is also found in the length-to-height ratio of the Minis, both old and new.
At last year’s “MINI Invasion,” a celebration of the original’s 60th anniversary, I had the rare opportunity to see both cars side by side. Not until then did I really notice how tiny the original was.
But I also could see certain features — wheels at the corners, short overhangs, “floating” roof and, most of all, those “golden ratio” proportions, which show the family resemblance Frank was seeking.
I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, so I am always amazed how designers can toss a few lines on a piece of paper and BAM — there’s a car.
He has an idea for a book called “The Three Lines,” where he would take some of the iconic car designs of history and show how you can express them with just three strokes of a pencil.
“If you can draw a car in three lines, you pretty much have a good design,” he says. “The cars that don’t last have lines going all over the place. There’s too much going on.
“Some modern designs seem intended to shock, and they will age badly,” he believes.
One common concern about car design these days is that cars are all designed in a wind tunnel in search of better aerodynamics, hence, better fuel consumption. Won’t they all start looking even more alike than they already do?
Frank points out that what looks “aero” isn’t necessarily “aero.” “We actually have more freedom now w/r/t aerodynamics than we did before,” he says. “Advances in computational fluid dynamics give us the opportunity to prove that a car that looks aerodynamic might not necessarily be so.
“New approaches to air flow give stylists more freedom than we thought we had.”
Frank Stephenson’s influence on car design is perhaps best reflected in a current webbased voting scheme, organized by whom, I have no idea.
It purports to name the top car designer of all time.
From a list of 64 nominees, such as Harley Earl of General Motors who pretty much invented car design as a profession, Nuccio Bertone of the styling house that bears his name, and Peter Schreyer who brought European design ethic to Korea, Stephenson has reached “The Final Four.”
And, he is the only non-Italian in that quartet, the others being Giorgetto Giugiaro, Battista (Pinin) Farina and Leonardo Fioravanti. Again, heady company. I have no idea when or how the ultimate winner will be chosen.
If it were Frank Stephenson, I for one would not argue.
Jim Kenzie is a Toronto-based writer and a freelance contributor for the Star.