Part 1 of this series was a review (okay, a grumpy critique) of James Cannon's list of the most beautiful cars. Cannon never stated his selection criteria, so the reader was left with dozens of examples of "what" without any discussion of "why". But industrial design, like architecture and music, is a body of knowledge, and it might have helped if we'd had a discussion of how that knowledge was reflected in the cars.
Cannon made a good choice in picking Gordon Buehrig's design for the front-drive 1936 Cord 810, and mentioned the hidden headlights. But the 810, and the 812 that followed in 1937 (the red car above) was as significant for what it lacked as for what it had. Along with hiding the headlights behind streamlined fender flaps, Buehrig got rid of running boards and the traditional vertical radiator grille fronting most cars. Instead he wrapped horizontal chrome louvers around the nose, leading the eye around the side of the car, where it was confronted with clean flanks and teardrop fenders devoid of decoration. On the supercharged 812, Alex Tremulis added chromed exhausts exiting the Lycoming V8 through decorative oblong vents (barely visible on the red Sportsman above) and this was a distraction from the purity of the original. On the 810 sedan below the simplicity stands out. Where details on the 810 occur, they serve to enhance, rather than distract from, the overall form. Buehrig's instrument panel design was justly famed for the way if offered information and identified controls, as well as for the way it reminded us that the automobile is a machine. Note also the simplicity of the flush circular tail lights, the way the roof curvature is carried into a trunk that is a simple unadorned opening, and the circular slots in the hubcaps.
The same year the Cord 810 showed up in Indianapolis, over in Paris Joseph Figoni designed a teardrop coupe on the sporty, short-chassis Talbot-Lago T150SS. As with Buehrig's Cord design, details are conceived to emphasize the theme of the overall form. In this case, oval grilles offer engine cooling and hide the headlights, oval side windows echo the reverse curve of the teardrop front fenders, and bumpers are reduced to thin-section chrome wing shapes that probably protect the design theme better than they protect the metal...
At the rear, we see the teardrop roof shape stated in elevation, section and plan, and restated in the half moon of the backlight, with its curved lower corners. Rear fenders repeat the teardrop theme, their shape underlined by chrome edging, and the subtle chromed deck fin appeared on later Figoni & Falaschi bodies. The Museum of Modern Art identified this teardrop coupe design as a masterwork in its landmark Eight Automobiles exhibit in 1951, and the Cord 810 showed up there too...
A decade after that Figoni coupe, Pinin Farina designed and built the landmark coupe body below on a chassis built by the Cisitalia firm, which had formed after World War II to offer single-seat racers and sporty road cars powered by modified Fiat engines. Despite the modest power offered by its 1100cc inline four and its high price, Cisitalia's 202 coupe attracted attention as one of the first visual statements of the design idiom that would become known as the Italian Line, with simple, unadorned contours to attract the eye and cheat the wind. Note the way the ovoid grille shape repeats the downward curve of the hood, with the fender tops standing well above the hood surface, a very unusual feature in 1946...
The rear view shows how the roof form is carried through the deck, and how the rear fenders are formed to avoid the slab sides of some early-postwar cars, but are still integrated into an envelope body form, unlike the teardrop-fendered Cord and Talbot. One thing the Cisitalia shared with those designs, though, was that MOMA selected it to appear in their Eight Automobiles show...
As with Bertone's Lamborghini Miura showcased in Part 1, the Mercedes Benz 300SL coupe that first appeared at the February 1954 New York Auto Show was a landmark example of integrating body design with chassis design and mechanical layout. Here, Friedrich Geiger adapted the somewhat tub-like form of the Le Mans-winning 1952 racer to a production car* by extending the high door openings down so they just cleared the tubular frame along the flanks, which meant that as on the racer the doors were hinged at the roof, leading to the "gullwing" nickname that stayed with the car. The leaned-over, fuel injected overhead cam inline 6 inspired the twin blisters in the hood. The aero blisters over the wheel openings may have been there to smooth air flow. Along with the functional side air vents, they certainly led the eye along the form and made the car look lower. You've probably noticed the '63 Corvette coupe lurking in the background; Cannon had that car on his list too. The reason we didn't quite agree is a story for later on...
Cannon also selected the original production Ford Mustang from 1964 for his list. As "most beautiful" doesn't need to take into account practicality or affordability, we wondered why he didn't just pick the mid-engine Mustang I* show car from 1962 with its predictive side-mounted radiators. But because Ford actually manufactured over a hundred of its landmark GT40, and even offered a road version for which there were a few takers, this is the Ford we picked. Ford's
mid-engine GT40, so named for its roof height of 40", was launched in
1964 as the centerpiece of Ford's effort to beat Ferrari...
Ron Bradshaw's body design appeared in long nose (above) and short nose (below) forms, on the the GT40 Mark I powered first by Ford's Indy V8 and then by the 289, and on the 7-liter Mark III, and was also offered on the road-going Mark 3 from 1966-'69. Ford repeated the basic forms of this design on the Ford GT revival it began selling to the public in fall of 2004...
The body form by Ron Bradshaw did a good job of managing airflow, and signaled that with the air extractors above the front-mounted radiator, the two side air inlets behind the doors, and the turned-up tail spoiler. The inward sloping section at the roof and tuck-under at the lower body did much to lower frontal area, but nothing to improve cabin space, and driver Dan Gurney had a famous "helmet bump" installed in the roof (into which doors opened) on his car.
And if one argues that a beautiful racing car is one that wins, the GT40 qualifies. The 427-powered Mk. III (with its projecting upper side vents below) took 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966, and a 289 Mk. I won that race in '68 and '69, actually the same specimen car both years. A Ford won in '67 too, but that was a Mk. IV with a different body design...
We agreed with the choice of the Alfa Romeo Type 33 Stradale from 1967, but wanted to talk a bit about why it was such a good choice. The alloy body design of the mid-engine 2 liter V8, a street version of the Type 33 (thus the name) was built by Marazzi to the design of Franco Scaglione*, and reflects his usual themes with its repeat of parabolic shapes in the plan and section of the greenhouse, and his concern for aerodynamics. Doors extend into the roof as they do on the GT40 from the same era, and the "tumble-home" and 'tuck-under" show that low frontal area was a goal. Air intakes are carefully deployed while air dams and big spoilers are not (this was a "street" car). Unlike on later production Alfas, there's no big triangular air intake; the Alfa shield at the front looks like a decorative afterthought...
McLaren made the original "most beautiful" list, but with a somewhat generic-looking supercar from their current lineup. Our pick was the F1 road car, the first series-produced McLaren built from 1992-'98, because the body form by Peter Stevens complimented the chassis layout by Gordon Murray. First of all, the thing was light, only a couple hundred pounds heavier than a 1st-series Mazda Miata. The BMW V12-powered coupe was the first series-produced monocoque body-chassis in carbon fiber. And the Stevens body design was especially compact, with short overhangs. Space efficiency was higher than our other road racer examples, with the driver centered between 2 passengers. The air extractors on the flanks enhance the body form while hiding the lower door shut lines, and provide a visual trademark compared with the current run of look-alike mid-engine exotics. Also, the F1 design proved itself by being the last series-produced car to win the 24 hours of Le Mans, in 1995...
*Footnote: Our other finalist among early Fifties production cars was Bob Bourke's Studebaker Starliner, which got its own post on February 20, 2021 in "Forgotten Classic: 1953-'54 Studebaker Starliner---Sleeping Beauty from South Bend". Ford's mid-engined Mustang prototype was featured in "The First Mustang: Ford's Forgotten Mustang I" from August 26, 2015, and designer Franco Scaglione got a retrospective in "Unsung Genius Franco Scaglione: The Arc of Success", in our archives for December 20, 2017.
Photo Credits:
Top, 2nd & 3rd from top: Mecum Auctions
6th & 7th from top: Gogo Heinrich
2nd from bottom: George Havelka
All other photos are by the author.