Worst Car Designs Ever, Part 2: Plastic Promise, Plastic Peril

The late 50s and early 60s were transitional years for car designers.  It became clear that tail fins were on the way out, but only the initial, pre-Nader success of GM's Corvair provided a ready-made template that could be applied to cars of different sizes and even power plant locations in what was still an era of growing popularity for rear-engine designs (see "Getting Over the Corvair" in these posts from 3/16/16).  There were signs of life, however, including that 1960 Corvair, Elwood Engel's 1961 Lincoln Continental (see "When the Sixties Really Began" from 11/18/15) , Malcom Sayer's E-type Jaguar from 1961, and the Studebaker Avanti delivered by Raymond Loewy's team about a year later (see "Lines of Influence" from 2/17/16).  One of the trends in this period was the increasing popularity of fiberglass to lower tooling costs and get designs into production more quickly. Examples include Corvettes, the Jensen 541, the Avanti, and Colin Chapman's first attempt at a GT car, the Lotus Elite from 1957. The elegant simplicity of Peter Kirwan-Taylor's sketches (he was, ironically, Chapman's accountant) was translated into the production prototype with the help of aerodynamicist Frank Costin.  This was the first use of fiberglass as a structural material in a unitized body-chassis, here reinforced by a steel subframe for the engine and front suspension, with a roll hoop around the windshield to which the door hinges attached…

It was an ambitious project, and early cars suffered from warping and cracking (solved on later bodies built by Bristol), while all Elites were somewhat noisy because of the proximity of the rear suspension uprights to the cabin.  The Elite was produced through 1963, and was much more successful as a race car than as a practical road car. But we're lingering on its design for a moment because it shows what some resourceful and talented people could do with fiberglass…  

You won't find an unflattering angle anywhere on that original Lotus Elite.  But one of the perils of fiberglass reinforced plastic was that you could form virtually any shape you could dream up.  And the fact that you could often translated into the notion that you should, even when your dreams drifted into nightmare territory.  When reviewers at Road & Track first saw the 1960 Lea-Francis Lynx, they complained that the result was what could happen when you gave Englishmen unrestricted access to fiberglass… 

In 1960, England's Lea-Francis, which had not made a car since 1954, attempted to revive its automotive fortunes with this Lynx, which was based on a tubular frame design from 1948, updated with 4 wheel disc brakes and a Ford Zephyr six instead of the old Lea-Francis four. While the name Lynx implies nimble, catlike grace, it appears the uncredited designer may have had the Goodyear blimp in mind instead.  Indecision shows in every detail, from the superimposed circular and oval grille shapes, to the billowing balloon flanks which are oddly subverted by the sagging embossed molding at their center, to the way the whole theme is abandoned at the rear for some halfhearted almost-fins which allow the economy of using what look like Standard Vanguard tail lights.  The usually diplomatic British auto journalist  William Boddy said that the prototype Lynx had a "truly hideous fibre-glass body."  Subsequent accounts by the Lea-Francis Owners Club have claimed that at least 3 prototypes were built, and that steel was used for the body panels on some of these, with alloy doors etc.  Perhaps Boddy and the scribes at Road & Track were hoping it was fiberglass because that material could be easily be remodeled, or even erased...

For reasons which might have ranged from overconfidence to bad lighting at the design studio, the minions of Lea-Francis seemed reluctant to tamper with this masterwork.  All three prototypes had the same styling.  Even the catalogue illustrator, given a priceless opportunity to elongate the stubby proportions, relax the too-vertical windshield angle, and straighten out the saggy trim, left everything exactly as it was.  He (or she) might have taken inspiration instead from contemporary American car ads, where Wide Track Pontiacs looked two lanes wide, and embarrassing details were occasionally hidden by shrubbery.  At least he avoided the color scheme of the original show car, which was mauve with gold trim.  The effect of this road-going trial balloon was to euthanize the Lea-Francis automotive operation, while the company did manage to sell some garden tractors in 1961.  Enthusiast Barrie Price bought the name and a trove of spare parts in 1962, and tried again in 1980 with a Jaguar-engined 1930s-styled retro-car called the Ace of Spades.  But that wasn't really a Lea-Francis, any more than the Bugattis made by Volkswagen are real Bugattis…

Photo credits:

Lotus Elite:  Lotus Cars

Lynx front:  telegraph.co.uk

Lynx rear:  only-carz.com

Lynx catalogue:  classiccarcatalogue.com