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CLASSIC INTEREST
Hints of the past point to the future
Classic styling cues can give new cars a distinctive design edge
By David Grainger
Thursday, January 8, 2004
I am more of a fan of the art of the car than how well it corners, how fast it does zero to 100 km/h or how many cupholders it has. The truth is, these days most cars are very good at what they do, and often performance and handling differences between expensive cars and relatively inexpensive cars are negligible.
What we are left with is design, and what smart designers do is create luxury and sporting cars that look a lot better than their smaller brethren.
When I first saw an Audi TT on the lawn at the Concours d'Elegance at Meadowbrook Hall near Detroit, I was fascinated by both the car's unusual exterior design and its simple but very dramatic interior. The TT was a precursor of many cars to follow and one of the first non-Chrysler designs to attract my attention. I've been a fan of the Chrysler design department throughout the company's 1990s renaissance and, while never considering myself a radical adherent to any one automaker's products, I found myself owning more Chrysler-built vehicles than anything else. How could you not love the PT Cruiser, Viper and Prowler? Even cars like the Concorde and other family 4-doors had an elegance that had been missing from automobiles for many years.
When Daimler took over Chrysler, many of the corporate heads and designers responsible for these wonderful designs scattered to the winds.
The future looked pretty bleak for a company that had reveled in its own inventiveness and excited the entire automotive world for a decade.
Since the takeover, few fresh products have burst from the doors of Chrysler in Auburn Hills. I'm not even sure that you can say its most recent masterpiece has, since it has Mercedes underpinnings and is built in Europe, but the new Crossfire is indeed a masterpiece of design.
The shape of the Crossfire, especially in profile, is not new. Many coachbuilders in Europe used almost the same lines in many cars such as the Bugatti Atlantique, Aerodynamic Talbot, Delage, Voison and Alfa Romeo. The bulbous back end, when paired with an aggressive hood line and front end, have worked before, and the Crossfire is proof that sometimes a derivation of an old theme can become amazingly fresh and new.
Its basic shape is indeed retro. But, rather than being a copy of an old design, the Crossfire's form is reminiscent of an old style, something Chrysler excels at. Their designs often evoke warm, nostalgic feelings despite their modernity.
Ford and General Motors would be smart to emulate this rather than bludgeoning us with retro copies like the Thunderbird or worse, in GM's case, hanging retro names on ugly new cars.
The Crossfire stayed fairly true to its origins, deviating little from a rather attractive prototype I first saw in front of Del Monte Lodge at the 2001 Pebble Beach Concours gathering. The production car varied in detail but not overall design and, in my view, reworking the front lights in the production version was actually an improvement.
I think producing cars that are very close in appearance to their prototypes is a clever public relations move. Too often auto execs are so busy slapping each other on the back and bragging about a new prototype that they miss an important fact: If they never intend to produce it they are simply annoying people by dangling a carrot that the public can't have.
On the other hand, actually producing a favoured prototype is worth its weight in gold as far as building good karma with the buying public.
Is the Crossfire sensible transportation? No, not really, but who cares? Let's face it, if ego and look-at-me attention weren't involved with car purchases then we would all be driving sensible little alternative-fuel cars.
The Crossfire certainly has a lot of this appeal built in, and what's even better is that it's fun to look at even when others aren't around.
The Crossfire's inherent sportiness is obvious if you compare it to the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. You will notice a lot of very striking similarities in shape and even embellishments, but the Crossfire is one-tenth the price.
The interior is also simple enough to retain its elegance without getting dated, but I wish the seats weren't quite so Teutonic in their comfort level. It seems that all cars of German origin must have seats that are just a touch too hard for my rear end.
I'd like to buy a Crossfire, not to use as a daily driver but as a car on which to do some custom work. A few pre-war trim flourishes, an exclusive colour mix, perhaps a low fin running down the centre of the rear end from the middle of the roof and voilà, it's the lawn at the Concours d'Elegance at Pebble Beach in 50 years.
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