January 5, 2010
Bono, musician, activist, and New York Times columnist recently compiled a list of ten ideas of the next 10 years. Surprisingly right at the top is a pretty frank manifesto for the auto industry. He is calling for the return of the automobile as a sexual object.
How is it that the country that made us all fall in love with the automobile has failed, with only a few exceptions, to produce a single family sedan with the style and humor and grace of the cars produced in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s? Put aside the question of whether those models were male (as in longer, lower and wider, Dr. Freud) or female (as in fender skirts, curvy belt lines and, of course, headlights). Either way, they all had sex appeal. (In Ireland in the ’70s, it was the E-Type Jag that made sense of puberty.)
This sentiment is surly backed up by the fact that the collector car market has been dominated by vehicles from these three decades and manufacturers are starting to try and play off the nostalgia with revived classics like the Mustang, Camaro, and Charger. But performance cars aren’t really what Bono is taking issue with. It is more the multitude of same looking minivans, sedans, and SUV’s.
Are aerodynamics to blame? Economics? Or that most American of inventions, design by committee? It hurts me to say this about democracy (and I know because my band is one), but rarely does majority rule produce something of beauty.
Bono offers a bit of advice. Stronger creative leadership and bring more risk takers in. Not a totally new idea, but he does name names.
That’s why the Obama administration — while it still holds the keys to the big automakers — ought to put some style fascists into the mix: the genius of Marc Newson … Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive from Apple … Frank Gehry, the architect, and Jeff Koons, the artist. Put the great industrial designers in the front seat, right along with sound financial stewardship … the greener, the cleaner, the meaner on fossil fuels, the sexier for me. Check out the Tesla or the Fisker Karma car, designed by the same team that gave the world the Aston Martin.
[via autoblog]
[image via William West/AFP/Getty]
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