Working my broken crayon nubs (I asked Torch for some new Crayolas, but Tracy spent all the budget on lawn ornaments Utes) over some scrap paper, I gave you a few “thumbnail” sketches of a new Austin Healey to mull over with your tea and crumpets. Normally, when a new model is released, the OEM might show some “design sketches’”– amazing images that look like a slightly stylized version of the actual car. Don’t be fooled. These are done after the actual design is finished as part of the marketing story and build up. They’re drawn over a fully visualized 3D model with a designer flourish, and take a lot of work. You would never do development sketches to that standard, simply because of the amount of time and effort it takes. Our actual thumbnails sketches are the workings out on the back of an envelope – the rough notes of where the design could go.
Ideally you want to capture the feel of the original car while updating it. I had envisioned going in a slightly blockier, more faceted (i.e. more edgy and blocky, with straighter flatter surfaces) direction for our Healey. However most of you felt that we should stay truer to the source material and stick with curves and the oval grill. It’s a tricky needle to thread – carry over too much and you end up back where you started. It’s always a balance between what to leave out and what to leave in. The Dodge Challenger is a masterclass in how to get this right – really it’s only the lighting and the general shape that call back to the 1970 car. One of the classes that transportation design students take at Art Center as part of their Viscom (Visual Communication) studies involves being given an animal or a cartoon character and turning those into a car – something that allows Hot Wheels to turn out those Star Wars cars because a lot of their designers are Art Center grads.
Another class that all car design students must take is “Stance the Shit out of It 101,” which includes a field trip to the flourishing country of Stance Nation. We’re taught to over-wheel our designs or face a spanking by matron.
I had labored long and hard in the broom cupboard trying to make wire wheels work, decided they didn’t and looked too old fashioned, and slapped another wheel on. Consensus was our Healey should have wire wheels, which illustrates some of the tensions that arise during the design process. So I came up with the diamond turned alloy design you see above which mimics the pattern of a wire wheel.
Generally, this is how it works in the studio. In the initial sketch phase a designer will just stick a generic wheel on their sketches, the actual wheel designs to be used coming much later. Coming up with wheel patterns is time consuming; it’s the sort of thing designers do if they have a spare afternoon – knock out a couple and leave them in a “wheels” folder on the server to be used as and when.
As you can see our unapologetically ICE Healey has offset frenched-in exhaust openings which were popular, and I really like. They would be a nightmare to productionize, as exhausts have a massive operating envelope – i.e. the amount of clearance they need around them to allow for movement (as exhausts are not rigidly attached) and heat expansion. So some visual trickery might be required – maybe painting the muffler and visible pipe black so it blends into the opening.
So there you have it. Is our Austin Healey something that makes you want to stock up on mustache wax, silk scarves and say ‘tally ho!’ as you head to the local hostelry for a pint of warm beer and an afternoon spent watching a baffling sport called Cricket? Let me know in the comments below, and remember matron is watching.
Now comes the part where we figure out where to go next! Which one of these is most exciting to you?
QuizWiz
The version you linked above is great, no doubt about it, but the original new-retro design was horrible.
Honestly, the worst thing I saw at Jalopnik was people being asses to each other in the comments (yes, that was worse than articles that had nothing to do with cars) Considering that David and Torch want this place to become a community, that type of posting isn’t really compatible with a sense of community. So how about you take your comments on who is a moron and who has ignorant takes and go think about it for a while?
You don’t change the sheet metal these days until a new model comes out. It’s too cost prohibitive. They’ve got no need to update the Challenger – it’s selling more now that it ever has done since it’s introduction.
Also, the blue is too modern a hue. A render in British racing Green would be great.
Frenched exhausts can be done, banish the bean counters from that review meeting!
The accountants don’t got] to the meetings, but the program leader does and he controls the budget. Normally when they want to push something through it’s the designers who get left off the invite list…..
Love the front. Like the rear. Both are too bulbous and plain, missing details. Maybe round turn signals on both ends, but definitely in the rear, and round or at least oval taillights. I would add some creases suggestive of bumpers and bumper overriders to improve the visual interest.
Between the tires, I don’t like it so much. Well, actually not at all. The original was a very shapely but somewhat slab-sided car. The classic Austin Healey two tone paint job seems to have been an expert camouflage element to hide that fact and enhance the beauty of the car. This throws all that out the window in favor of a Hot Wheels style that doesn’t look mature at all, much less Austin Healey mature. There’s way too much fender flaring here where there should be virtually none at all.
But I do like the overall concept and that you put it out here for discussion. It’s interesting to see a variety of views on how to remain faithful to a classic while still modernizing the design.
My opinion, worth exactly what you paid for it.
Also, I disagree that wheel arch gaps are unattractive. I understand that’s the trend of the last twenty years or more, but I’m not on board.
Wheels are supposed to be dynamic. Take away the arch gap and the wheels look severely constrained and static, which results in a design that doesn’t look very capable at all.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. I feel very flattered to have received a direct reply.
Seriously though, you’re both right and both wrong. If this was selected by the Chief Designer, then those are the sorts of things that get worked out as the design progress. It’s a little hard to really show hood detail in this type of sketch, so you’d either sketch a different view, or screen shot the data (if it got to model stage) and then sketch a load of different power bulge treatments to find one that worked.
With regard to colour, that’s the remit of the Color, Materials & Finish team (although the Chief Designer has the final say). Again colors are not nailed down until much further along. It’s likely two tone could be an option (it’s not hard to do).
My favorite: “Weniger, aber besser” — Dieter Rams (translates from German as “Less, but better”)
Someone talked about BRG for the color – I have to admit I personally think that on a big Healey blue is precisely correct. The two-tone look is attractive and if you match the interior with the lighter color of the two-tone paint it’s a sharp combination.
Very much liking your contributions, keep it up!
I’d love to see some new concept of an outdated car style that makes it fresh and desirable again.
Like maybe the convertible land yacht? Give me a modern take on the 1958 Chrysler 300D convertible, perhaps?
Then I thought about what makes the original Austin Healey so elegant and timeless, why it enjoys nearly unanimous acclaim for being a brilliant design. So I studied the original again. Specifically the profile, the front, and the rear views.
What I found is that the profile has a seamless beauty because the entire shape of the car is composed of only three major arcs. One from the front of the car all the way to the leading edge of the rear fender. A second forms the rear fender itself. And the third arc merely connects the two. Elegant!
The front and rear have similar simplicity. The bulging headlight pods with simple, small marker lights below form the corners, and a soft arc forms the shape of the hood between them. A classically simple grille in front. This is very functional and not busy or fussy.
The rear is also very much designed in a similar form around functionality, with a little flair added by usually putting the taillights in their own mini-pods mounted on the rear fenders, depending on what year car we look at.
The redesigned car completely discards the elegance of the 3-arc profile view, and in doing so, discards the essence of the Big Healey. The front remains the most faithful to the original, which is why that’s the part that I like best. The rear again discards what makes the original so attractive and substitutes something still attractive, but only loosely related.
In summary, I think the redesign would need another round or two of revisions before being called an Austin Healey.
So in reality, you are correct in that these would be put up for review, and then revised, and so on. We’re just having some fun here, and hopefully it gives a small insight into how car designers work and what goes on inside the studio. It’s not possible with this medium or in the timeframe we are operating in to really reflect the actual real life process.
We all love the story of great designs that came from just one person, in one moment of inspiration, but it is rarely true.
One of the reasons good design is not created in a vacuum is because it takes fresh eyes and a different perspective to edit and refine. Quite often the person who came up with idea is a bit close to it and unwilling to alter it too much – this is why I always tell my students to pin their work up so their peers can see it, and they can learn to take direction and criticism.
Overall I really like it. My minor changes would be:
Slightly larger grill. Looks a little too Retro Tbird/sad grouper. But…only slightly larger. Fine line there Still not a fan of the slotted tail lights. Inset round, maybe bullets. Two per side or maybe even 3. Call Torch. Switch the slotted headlamps for proper round lamps. Type doesn’t matter. Ply matron with some sherry and offer up a compromise. Same wheels but taller rubber and set inside the fender.
But, even without those I think it’s a really sweet concept.
And I read somewhere that the people who designed the new Challenger went to look at some classics and were surprised that they didn’t remember it looking like that in person, so they just went ahead and made the one they imagined. Might be true, might not, but I did drink a lot of 30 weight as a child.
Still a really cool concept and I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the subject in the article and in the comments. Please make more.
I’m digging this series. Love to hear about the process behind design.
Also, if you’re taking requests, I’d very much love to see an updated Neue Klasse type smallish angular executive car
But I hate it. It looks like a child’s toy. The original looked fun, but still something a mature, grown-up person could drive without feeling ashamed.
If I sat in your version I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about the region of thinning hair on the crown of my head.
