Annals of Design: Worst Car Designs Part 6----Jaguar 00 vs. Tesla Cybertruck

Some political types, including a U.S. President with his own social media company, recently took time off from planning (or more likely, failing to plan) a war to denounce a Jaguar ad campaign for being "woke".  Apparently this was because a commercial featured multi-ethnic people of sometimes undefined gender wearing bright, high-fashion clothing that looked a bit to this writer like balloons. Oddly, though the commercial referred to a new Jaguar EV that "copies nothing", it failed to show any shots of the car.  When we got a look at the new Jag 00 (that's zero zero) we understood why...

The new all-electric concept car promises a thousand hp, and designer Gerry McGovern claims it was inspired by Jaguar's E-Type, a car that first appeared in April 1961.  Back in that era, in the back pages after the end of a paperback novel you'd see ads that might claim if you liked "All Quiet on the Western Front" you'd enjoy something from Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series, or that if you appreciated "Ship of Fools" you'd go for "Valley of the Dolls."  McGovern's claim to have been inspired by the E-Type seems to fall into the same category of fabricated links.  Just in case you weren't around for that new model intro in 1961, here's a shot of an early E-Type coupe to jog your memory...

Fail to see the resemblance between the E and the 00?  Apparently you have to squint really hard.  Or maybe take some kind of psychedelic medication...

The minions of Jaguar Land Rover have even gotten rid of the time-honored Jaguar type font on their concept car, along with the "leaper", the famous leaping cat symbol.  This may be part of an effort to get potential purchasers to lower their expectations, because the makers have also seemingly hit the delete button on any awareness that a car, even one with a thousand horsepower, must pass through the air.  Back when Malcolm Sayer designed the E-Type, he'd kept that in mind.  By contrast, the bluff-fronted 00 looks more like an escapee from a design studio full of truck mock-ups.

Ian Callum had aerodynamics in mind when he designed the F-Type, a very belated follow-up to the E-Type which began production in 2013 and sold nearly 88,000 copies over its production life of eleven years.  That's more cars than the E-Type sold over 13 years of production.  It all ended, though, in June 2024, when Jaguar stopped production of this and other car lines to prepare for producing a line consisting entirely of electrics with higher price tags.

The 00 designer Gerry McGovern is best known for his work on the latest Land Rover Defender, which is not a paragon of aero thinking, and has managed to revive running boards, along with an odd floating square of what looks like painted metal running over the C-pillar into the side rear windows.  Like just about any SUVs in the current market, it seems to be selling well.  But you don't need to be very old to recall what happened to SUV sales back during the great recession, when gas prices peaked in 2008.  

If there's something on the road that shares any design themes with the flat-fronted Jag 00, it could be Tesla's Cybertruck.  Despite being in the environmentally-friendly category of EVs, the Cyber manages to look as hostile as the 00.  Apparently in an effort to manage the difficulty of forming stainless steel, the designers went with flat panels.  This led to sharp edges all over the place, and with panels flying off some early examples.  The resulting form looks like it was designed to kill whatever it hits, and the nearly 7,000-pound vehicle has not been authorized for sale in the European Union.

Even wheels and tires, which are, after all, unavoidably round objects, are framed by crude looking angular cutouts. 

Who knows, perhaps the fashion for sharp-edged, angry-looking vehicles will go the way of other fashions like bell bottom jeans and waterbeds (they're gone, right?).  Fashion, in any case, has always been a mystery to this writer.  During an ominously warm winter of repeated wildfire alerts here in the West, it's appealing to remember that the best industrial designers are usually concerned with maximizing efficiency and avoiding waste, with the aim of getting the most from limited resources.

*Footnote:   The Jaguar E-Type has been featured in our posts before, on 8-13-17 ("Racing Improves the Breed") and  5-31-19 ("Buy an Old Jag; Save a Marriage"), and most recently on Sept. 30, 2025.  Previous posts in the Worst Car Design series appeared on 7-28-2016, 7-31-2016, 8-3-2016, 8-11-2016, 8-1-2017 and 6-20-2021. 

Photo Credits:

Top, 2nd & 5th from top:  Jaguar Land Rover

All other photos are by the author.

Roadside Attraction: The Boulder Theater

Walking north along Boulder's 14th Street from the Pearl Street pedestrian mall, it's hard to miss the Boulder Theater, a surviving landmark from the depths of the Great Depression, and one of the best examples of Art Deco architecture in Colorado...

When Kansas City architect Robert Boller of Boller Brothers (founded by older brother Carl) was selected to turn the 1906 Curran Opera House into a palace for showing motion pictures, his design went beyond mere renovation to replace the old Curran with a new structure, auditorium and facade to reflect contemporary design themes.  During the Curran's nearly 3 decades of service, it had also hosted orchestral concerts and also some silent films, which presaged the flexibility it would need to survive later in the century.

Architectural historians think that Boller's design for the Boulder Theater building owes a bit to the Boulder County Courthouse, completed in 1933 to the design of local architect Glen H. Huntington.  It's right across 14th Street, and when you walk around to look at the courthouse facade facing Pearl Street, below, you see what those historians mean. The theater facade echoes the stepped, symmetrical facade of the courthouse, with its highest parapet over the central entry.  The courthouse is faced in sandstone from a dismantled railroad building, an early example of recycling building materials. Boller's theater facade contrasts with the restraint of the WPA Moderne courthouse, though, with exuberant Art Deco patterns of brightly colored terra cotta surrounded by stucco. That facade, protected by a legal easement sponsored by Historic Boulder, was restored with the help of a grant from the National Trust for Historic Places, and completion was celebrated on November 5 of this year.

The theater was one of the first in the country, and likely the first in Colorado, to feature a sound system with woofers and tweeters. In 1935, the year it was under construction, MGM's Shearer Horn amplifiers were released, a 2-way system with woofers for lower frequencies and tweeters for higher ones. There were also special precautions against fire.  Unlike many theaters with heating systems located below the stage floor (usually wood), the Boulder Theater located its heating unit in an adjacent building. The projection room walls were fireproofed, important in an era when the film used was highly-flammable nitrate.  And after consulting with Boulder Building Department, architect Boller increased the number of exits to 10, with 3 from the balcony area. 

The north and south walls of the auditorium display murals set within giant circles. The murals were designed and painted twice by local artist Earl Tryon.  When viewing his initial mural designs (of which we* could find no photos), he decided they didn't relate well to the themes of the new theater design...

So Tryon painted over those images with these colorful trees and flowers, which may have held symbolic meanings for the original inhabitants of this region. In Boulder Valley, the indigenous people were the Utes, who moved west into the mountains when the Southern Arapaho tribe moved into the valley. By 1858, Arapaho Chief Niwot ("left hand") was suggesting that gold-seekers leave the area.  Some seeking gold moved on to try their luck in California, and Chief Niwot now has a village with a nice downtown 9 miles north of Boulder named for him... 

By 1980 Boulder Theater was losing its movie audience to the Crossroads Mall multiplex, and Historic Boulder moved to purchase the building, securing landmark status and the facade easement that saved it from demolition and replacement with a parking lot. They also played an important role in the recent restoration of the facade with current owners, who have been offering concerts in the building for 30 years.  Both Boulder Theater and Boulder County Courthouse* have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980 as part of the Downtown Boulder Historic District.  As a result of Historic Boulder's heroic effort to save Boulder Theater from demolition, it also gained status as a National, Colorado and Boulder Historic Landmark in 1980.

*Footnote:  A big thanks to the staff at Boulder's Carnegie Library for Local History, who helped find newspaper articles from 1936 covering the design and construction of Boulder Theater during my visits there. 

The County Courthouse was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2024, not for its architectural style, but for its historic significance as the site where the first same-sex marriage licenses were issued in 1975. 

Photo Credits:

Top, 2nd & 4th from top:  the author

3rd from top:  Historic Boulder

5th from top:  On the Boulder Reporting Lab website, sourced from Boulder's Carnegie Library for Local History.

6th + 7th & 8th (adjacent mural shots):  Barry Trester

Bottom:  the author

Annals of Design: Most Beautiful Cars, Part 2

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 around 3 hundred pounds heavier than a late 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.

Annals of Design: Best Car Designs Ever? Well, Maybe Just the Most Beautiful...

Someone named James Cannon at something called Rush Experts recently posted an essay on the world's most beautiful cars.  Even though he claims expertise he got the photos wrong.  First off, he showed us a Series 2 E-Type Jaguar roadster, the one with the under-bumper tail lights that look like something from J.C. Whitney.  Then he compounded that error by claiming to show us a Series 1 E-Type coupe, but gave us a shot of a 2+2, with its high roof & long wheelbase, and compounded his mistake by choosing an early 2+2 with its too-vertical windshield.  For the sake of correcting the record, above and below are shots of the Series 1 E-Type roadster and coupe as designer Malcolm Sayer wanted us to see them...

Mr. Cannon praised Jaguar's XK-SS without noting that it was just a road version of the D-Type racer, here shown without the bumpers and full-width windscreen added for road use on the XK-SS, and with that famous stabilizing fin the XK-SS lacked.  

Not bad for something that appeared in 1954, a good seven years before the E-Type, and with 4-wheel disc brakes too.  Our experts could have noted the similarities between D and E, including the oval shapes repeated in plan, section and elevation, in the air intake and even in the shapes of the wheel cutouts.  This seems an almost hypnotic display of reinforcing an overall form with attention to detail.  

Our experts at Rush Experts wanted to tell us how much they admired almost 3 dozen cars for their beauty, but seemed to be in too much of a rush to tell us why.  Ferrari's GTO (Giotto Bizzarrini's design) apparently grabbed their attention because of its long hood and vents...

But several production model Ferraris like the GTB below have long hoods and vents too,  here with arguably a better integration of window shapes into that sloping roof. The GTO has the unsentimental directness of a racer, though, and gets more publicity when one sells for eight figures at an auction...

We're glad we ditched the idea of writing about the Best Car Designs Ever (which might've required including virtues like durability and practicality) and just decided to concentrate on beauty like Mr. Cannon  did.  That way, we get to include cars he somehow passed by, like the Lotus Eleven from 1956, one of the last great front-engined sports racers, relying on Frank Costin's aerodynamics and Colin Chapman's lightweight tubular chassis to stave off the mid-engined revolution already happening at Cooper and Porsche.

We can also include the Lotus Elite from 1957, designed by Chapman's accountant Peter Kirwan-Taylor and refined by Frank Costin.  The first car with a fiberglass unit body / chassis, reinforced here and there with steel, but maybe not quite enough...

The Type 14 Elite is another example of using details in ways that reinforce the overall form, like the side windows curving in plan to match the plan shape of the roof.  No, the side windows don't roll down; you add ventilation by removing them and stowing them in protective envelopes.  This shot shows the rear suspension towers that created high noise levels inside, and also what may be the first use of a flat, recessed tail panel for lights and number plate.

The experts admired the proportions of Marcello Gandini's Lamborghini Miura from a decade later, and mentioned the V12 power plant, but didn't get around to telling us the reason for those proportions.  The reason the Miura looks so balanced (at a distance, it's hard to guess where the engine might be) is that the V12 engine is mounted transversely behind the cabin and between the rear wheels.  It was an almost-masterstroke of integrating mechanical with visual design.  

Why an almost masterstroke? Because the Miura shared its crankcase oil with the transverse-mounted transmission, which happened to be a feature of the BMC Mini, a car that inspired it (well, from a mechanical concept standpoint anyway).  In the rear view, the louvers give a clue to the engine location.  Transmission oil was finally separated from engine oil on the last 96 or 98 cars, depending on whom you ask.

The photo below shows how the Miura opened up to allow access to the front-mounted radiator, and to that V12 behind the cabin, with luggage space behind the engine.

The colorful design riot went on inside the Miura as well, with Gandini avoiding the usual flat instrument panel, maybe in an attempt to keep up with (or distract driver and passenger from) the noise from chassis engineer Gianpaolo Dallara's mid-mounted 4-cam V12 engine, which had been designed by Giotto Bizzarrini.  We mentioned him before, right?

Those experts failed to mention the bracingly clean and original De Tomaso Mangusta that emerged in production the same year (1967) as the first Miura, so we will. Giorgetto Giugiaro's body design signaled the mid-mounted engine location with larger rear tires than at the front, and vents behind the rear side windows, with lots of "tumble-home" in the cabin section above a crease connecting front and rear wheel arches, and inward slope to the body section below it, emphasizing the wheels and tires. A Ford V8 sat behind the cabin and ahead of the transaxle.  

Ghia and Giugiaro wisely declined the temptation of front bumpers; the form stands out better that way (until someone backs into it).   None of the wedge-themed car designs that followed this one improved on its proportions or contours...

The experts suggested the BMW 2002 from the late Sixties was one of the world's most beautiful cars.  Hmm, I loved the sharp handling and reliability of mine, but thought the body design was a Corvair knock-off.  The Rush people liked the Turbo version from the early 70s best, but that may be a case of mistaking forward rush for beauty...

The experts scored better with their choice of BMW's M1, a Giugiaro design from 1978.  A more practical car than his Mangusta, but as we're talking beauty here the mid-engined, transverse inline six BMW bodied by Ital Design doesn't get the masterwork rating we'd give the Mangusta.  There are details aplenty, like the side vents, rear louvers, and flat, half-hearted version of the BMW twin kidney grille at the front, but they don't work together to emphasize the form with the same spare clarity as on the Mangusta.

No, if there's a BMW entry in the Most Beautiful lineup, for our money it's Albrecht Goertz's design for the BMW 507 roadster, produced from 1956 through '59.  Here details like the raised ridges extending past the wheel arches, and over the front fender vents, manage to emphasize the car's pared-down, sleek form. The BMW roundel fits into the curve of the fender vents.  The detachable hardtop looks a part of the body shape rather than an add-on.

The old twin-kidney grille received a rework by Goertz; it's now low in profile and vee-shaped in plan, a shape repeated in the shallow air intake atop the hood.  The flanks of the car turn inward below the speed lines topping the wheel arches, allowing the tires to protrude a bit beyond the flanks at the rocker panels.

BMW only managed to build 252 or 253 of this model before production ended; the alloy-bodied roadsters were expensive to make.  That means there are around 200 fewer of the 507 than of the M1.  A good place to end today's critical (okay, slightly grumpy) review.  In Part 2 we'll look at American designs, earlier Fifties designs, and designs from the interwar period.

*Footnote:   Some of these cars have been featured before on this blog. Here's a list, with dates in parentheses.

Jaguar E-Type (8-13-17 & 5-31-19), Jaguar D-Type (7-28-17), Ferrari GTO (11-30-20), Lotus Eleven (3-20-23), Lotus Elite Type 14 (7-31-16), Lamborghini Miura (7-11-17), DeTomaso Mangusta (7-24-23) and BMW 507 (10-20-19).

Photo Credits:

Top & 2nd from top:  Jaguar Cars

All other photos are by the author.