When Giovanni Michelotti Might Have Been Inspired by Detroit

Giovanni Michelotti was a prolific Italian stylist, as is attested here.  In the 1950s he teamed with Enrico Nardi, helping to create two Lancia-based and Vignale-built concept cars, both named Raggio Azzurro (Blue-Ray).  Some information regarding the second car is here.

What I find interesting about both the 1955 and 1958 versions is how much they were influenced by American concept cars and styling fads of the time.  Not clear to me is how much Michelotti actually contributed in the way of design features.  That is because the American-inspired details are largely out-of-character for him.  I suspect that Nardi greatly influenced the completed designs.

Both Raggi Azzurro were on display at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, California when I was there in March.  Below are some photos I took.  Their quality is hampered by the fact that the cars were jammed close to others and because the lighting in the gallery consisted of many small spotlights that are reflected by the cars' surfaces.

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The 1955 Raggio Azzurro as seen in a photo found on the Internet.  Conspicuously American features include the greenhouse, the two-tone paint and jet fighter inspired rear fenders.

Here is the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car featuring the twin-bubble canopy theme that Michelotti seems to have borrowed for the greenhouse.  I have no information as to when in 1955 the Raggio was first displayed, but the Futura was announced around February (the March issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine, on news stands in February, has photos of it).  So there appears to have been time for the feature to be borrowed.

An interesting feature is the large headlamp mounted in the center of the grille.

The jet fighter (or space ship?) theme for the rear fender area is clearly seen here.

The bubble-type greenhouse viewed from the rear.  Note the right-hand drive, a feature of European luxury cars that was rapidly falling out of fashion in the 1950s.

The 1958 Raggio Azzurro probably photographed when nearly new.  No central headlight here; in its place is a Lancia shield.  The two-tone paint theme is close to that of the 1955 car, as are the character line above the rear wheel and the shape of the front fender.  The panoramic window is similar to those found on 1955-56 Chryslers.

Another early photo of the '58 Raggio Azzurro showing greater front end detail.

The '58 Raggio Azzurro has left-hand drive, making for easier driving in Italy and America.

The rear fenders are much more restrained than those of the 1955 car.  What we see here are fin-like extensions, yet another American cliché.

The main science-fiction aspect of the design is shown here.  I forgot to check if the apparent air vents at the rear of the B-pillar are functional.

1955 Oldsmobile 88 Delta Concept

What were called dream cars were exciting back in the 1950s.  Usually General Motors' annual traveling cars and entertainment show, the Motorama, could be expected to have a good crop of them.  As far as I'm concerned, 1953-56 were the best years for Motorama.

It's usually not wise to evaluate the significance of a dream or concept (today's term) car when first shown.  It can take five or more years before the concept design can be compared to features appearing on production cars.  The 1955 Motorama is long gone, so I thought it might be interesting to put one of its dream cars into a proper context.

The car I have in mind is the Oldsmobile 88 Delta, a hardtop (pillarless) coupe, a popular body type back then.  I last mentioned it here when writing about odd dream car wheel openings.  Oldsmobiles were redesigned for the 1954 model year and due for a 1957 restyling.  The 88 Delta was probably designed during 1954 when the production '55 facelift was largely established and the basic body forms (though not all details) of the redesigned 1957s were known.

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This is a 1955 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Coupe, the model current at the time of the Motorama.  It shared its body with Olds 88s, though details varied slightly.  The top has a large-radius curve above the side windows, the grille opening is close to being oval, and the wheel openings are wider towards the rear, having a half-teardrop shape.

And here is a publicity photo of the 88 Delta.

Its grille is not not oval, but the headlight assemblies are.

The roof is very similar to that of the 1955 production car, though the A-pillar is vertical instead of slanted.  The hood is lower relative to the fender line which has a dip where it passes the passenger compartment.  The car's design has a theme of roundedness, something appearing on other '55 Motorama cars such as the Chevrolet Biscayne and Pontiac Strato-Star.

The rear of the 88 Delta continues the rounded theme.  Exhaust pipes are part of the bumper ensemble and are oval like the headlight assemblies.  If the too-large Olds ringed-planet symbol was eliminated, this would be a tasteful design.

Compare this view of the 88 Delta to the car below.

Here is a 1957 Oldsmobile 98 four-door hardtop with one of the redesigned GM bodies that did not sell well.  The A-pillars are thin like the 88 Delta's, but retain the slant of previous production Oldsmobiles.  The grille opening is even more oval than the 1955 model's and wheel openings are in the same spirit as before.  Another carryover from the 88 Delta is a low hood, and the car seems a  little more rounded looking than the '55 model.  But it also seems that the 88 Delta did little in the way of anticipating restyled 1957 Oldsmobiles.

This makes me wonder what the point of the 88 Delta dream car design was.  It wasn't way-out futuristic, one of those styling staff showoff jobs.  Instead, with some changes to make it street-practical, it was basically what a future GM production car might have been.

Perhaps it, the Strato-Star and some other '55 Motorama dream cars represent a direction Harley Earl had in mind as his final designs before his 1958 retirement.  Such cars would have appeared in the 1959 or 1960 model years.  But the taut, finned, commercially successful 1957 Chrysler Corporation line provoked a rebellion in Earl's staff and GM styling took a direction different from that of the 88 Delta.

Felice Boano's Classic Lancia Aurelia B20

I am far from alone thinking that Italian automobile design was at its zenith during the late 1940s and most of the 1950s.  One fine example is the Lancia Aurelia type B20 coupé built 1951-1958.  (Italian Wikipedia entry here -- you might need to have your computer translate.)

Styling was by Felice Mario Boano (1903-1989) whose career is dealt with on this Italian Wikipedia page.  As best I can tell, he was associated with Ghia at the time the B20 was designed, but since series production was planned, Ghia personnel were not involved beyond the prototype stage.  Before long, production was handed over to the Pininfarina firm.  Some minor modifications were presumably made later by Farina and not Boano.

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This is Boano's 1951 prototype B20.  A nice, trim Italian design that nicely blends the traditional vertical Lancia grille with the modern, "envelope" body.

The later 1951 Pininfarina pre-production prototype looks the same from this front three-quarter angle aside from the Farina badge on the front fender.  Some tail light details were changed from the Boano version.

Side view of a 1953 B20 berlinetta GT 2500.  The side window profile is yet another demonstration that BMW's famous shape was far, far from original.

Front view of a 1953 B20 berlinetta GT 2500.  The turn indicators are too close to the auxiliary air intakes that, in turn, should not have been so rectangular.  The edges of the openings nearest the grille should have been angled to match the grille's curves nearby.  The turn lights could then have been made square and placed at the outer edges of the intakes to form a unified composition.

Rear three-quarter view of what looks like a 1953 vintage B20.  What we see is basically a fastback design.  However, it ever-so-slightly flows in the manner of 1941-1948 Chrysler Corporation cars.  Very subtle: a unitary-curve fastback would have made the car look heavier if the trunk height at the rear was the same as shown.

Lexus NX = Toyota RAV4 Huge Facelift

Toyota's Lexus Brand has done well for many years with its RX series crossover SUV.  But management felt there was room in the brand's lineup for a smaller, less-expensive crossover.  Voila!! the 2015 Lexis NX crossover (more information here).

In order to create this new model economically, Lexus went to Toyota's RAV4 to form the basis for the NX body.  The result is a SUV with the same wheelbase as the RAV, but slightly longer, wider and higher.  Also, as many of Lexus' new styling theme details as possible were crammed onto the RAV's basic structure.

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Two NXs are shown here sporting the spiky, angular look Lexus deems necessary for brand identification.  I find it an overly-contrived visual mess of superficial detailing.

This is a 2013 Toyota RAV4 posed almost the same as the NX in the previous image.  The windshield and cut lines for the hood, front strike panel and front door are the same or very nearly so for both cars.

Here we see various creases and cut-lines converging on the tail light assembly.  This is a sensible way to tie design elements together, but I think there are too many of those elements.  The side treatment of the tail light assembly is well into cliché territory, looking very similar to that of the current Nissan Maxima, for instance.  Sculpting on the trunk panel repeats the double-L (for Lexus) theme of the grille, an especially awkward bit of styling.

The additional length and height of the NX, as compared to the RAV, can be seen in these rear views.  The RAV has less overhang and its roofline is more curved.  The NX has a higher belt line, resulting in smaller side windows.  Rear doors and the gas filler doors are in the same positions in both cars, though cut lines differ.

This NX side view features the sheet metal folds and planes that catch and emphasize light originating above the car.  Because there are so many of these light-catching details, the overall impression is busyness.

The RAV4 looks dull by comparison, and could have used a higher belt line anchor at the front and perhaps a horizontal character line about two-thirds up the doors.  Otherwise, it's a superior design to the frantic NX.

Pinin Farina's Lancia Florida 4-Door Hardtop

For better or worse (for sentimental reasons, I'll side with "worse"), automobile styling is now pretty much internationalized.  That is, nowadays design students can cross borders for training by faculty members from several countries.  Styling studios usually employ designers from other countries along with native-born stylists.  Even design directors might be from elsewhere.  In addition, some car companies maintain styling studios in more than one country.

The internationalization process began in the 1930s when General Motors and Ford sent Americans to work at or manage design studios in some of their European subsidiaries.  But the phenomenon I'm thinking about actually started seriously at some indefinite time around, say, 1970.

Now consider the years around 1950.  Aside from Ford and GM subsidiaries and a few Detroit-influenced designs such as the Volvo PV 444 and Peugeot 203, cars tended to have a national look.  That is, French cars usually seemed French, English cars English, German cars German and Italian cars Italian.

But even in those days there were hints of internationalized designs to come.  This post's example is the Lancia Aurelia B56 "Florida" prototype cars of 1955 (short reference here).  It was designed by the Pininfarina carozzeria, but I'm not sure if Battista "Pinin" Farina himself was the designer or if the work was done under other hands.

Although the Florida is very much Italian-looking, it has some important features that are distinctly mid-1950s American.  These are (1) a wraparound windshield, and (2) having a four-door hardtop convertible body type.  The term "hardtop convertible" was used in the USA for cars with conventional steel tops, but lacking a passenger greenhouse B-pillar and thus having the breezy appearance of a convertible coupe with the canvas top raised and side windows rolled down.  For the 1955 model year, General Motors introduced four-door cars with the same feature, and other brands joined in as soon as they could.  B-pillarless cars left the market when strong rollover-related safety regulations appeared.

The first link above mentions that four Floridas were built.  Three had four doors and one was a two-door hardtop.

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Four-door hardtops were previewed at General Motors' 1953 Motorama by this Cadillac Orleans show car.  Like the later Lancia Florida, it features a wraparound windshield, four doors and no exposed B-pillar.

A poor-quality image of the Orleans seen from the side.  The rear doors are hinged by the C-pillar, but there seems to be a stub B-pillar to anchor the door latches.

As mentioned, production 4-door hardtops began to appear in 1955.  The example shown here (click on image to enlarge) is a Buick Special.  Unlike the Orleans, the rear doors are hinged on the stub B-pillar.

This is a four-door Lancia Aurelia B56 Florida from 1955.  It seems considerably larger than production Aurelia B10s and B12s, though the stretched B15 might have been about this size (though with a longer greenhouse and shorter hood).  An odd feature is the collection of lights at the front, especially those smallish ones on the fenders.

Side view.  The wheel openings are not classically rounded and remind me of those found on the 1954 Motorama Oldsmobile Cutlass and F-88 show cars, not to mention the production '54 Buick Skylark convertible coupe.

Interior view.  Note the complete lack of a B-Pillar.  Also the right-hand drive steering wheel position, a feature shared with production Aurelias.  As in France for many years, even though cars drove on the right sides of streets and roads, many luxury cars featured English-style right-hand drive.  A prestige or snob feature, I presume.

Rear three-quarter view.  The modest sail panels at the rear of the greenhouse blend into rear fender top-ridges.  This is emphasized by the two-tone paint scheme, yet another Detroit-influenced characteristic.  Those large tail lights suggest 1950s America and not Italy.  The recessed backlight is serviced by two wiper blades.

This is the sole two-door Florida.  Despite those major and lesser American touches, the overall design retains an Italian feeling.  Contributing factors include the basic proportions and the simplified major surfaces.

Corvair Insurance: 1962 Chevrolet Chevy II

The 1960 model year found each of America's "Big Three" automobile makers introducing "compact" cars (in the American sense at the time) in light of increading sales of smaller imported cars such as the Volkswagen Beetle as well as American Motors' Rambler and Studebaker's Lark.

Chevrolet's entry was the Corvair, which I wrote about here, a radical (for the USA) design featuring a rear-mounted air cooled motor.  Shortly after it was introduced, Chevrolet management realized that Corvair sales would be eclipsed by the conventional Ford Falcon.  So, as this Wikipedia entry reports, a crash program was started to produce a car that could compete with the Falcon.  The entry quotes stylist Clare MacKichan regarding how rapidly the design had to be productionized ... a matter of around 18 months instead of the usual three or four years.

The first-generation Chevy II (1962-1965 model years) was almost exactly the same size as the Corvair and Falcon.  Respective wheelbases were 110, 108 and 109.5 inches (2,794, 2,743 and 2,781 mm) and overall lengths were 183, 180 and 181 inches (4,648, 4,572 and 4,593 mm).

Back around 1960, entry level American cars were seldom very exciting from a design standpoint.  The Chevy II fit that pattern well, being bland and having no distinct character -- though the same could easily be said about the Falcon as well.

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1962 Chevy II four-door sedan.  The American tail fin era was in the process of winding down, so the design is that of an unadorned "three box" style.  Greenhouse windows are large and the hood and trunk lid are about at fender level, this giving the car an airy look.  The side strip relates well to both the headlight and tail light ends of the fender.

This side view of a Chevy II hardtop provides a better look at the C-pillar that is wider at the top than on its bottom.  This is a subtle touch then helps to give the greenhouse a lighter appearance.  The thin roof is another important contributor to that effect.  That curved character line that passes around the rear wheel opening and finally touches the upper edge of the back bumper is not strictly necessary.

One nice feature of the relentlessly horizontal front end theme is the lack of quad headlights.  So far as I'm concerned, the American variety of quad headlights circa 1957-1970 almost always degraded a car's design.

Chevy II's rear design is simple, but enough in the way of insets and other metal folding details adds interest to what otherwise might have been a visually sterile zone.  Still, the design does not excite.

What Were They Thinking?: Pininfarina's Lancia PF 200 "Jet Fighter"

The saying goes that "even the best of them make mistakes."  Battista "Pinin" Farina (1893-1966), founder of the Pininfarina carrozzeria, is revered as a master automobile body designer.  I, however, tend to think of him as a stylist capable of the very best work, yet who often enough produced mediocre and even bad designs.  While it's likely that others at his firm had a hand in design, especially by the 1960s, Farina the padrone was ultimately responsible for product approval even if he did not do any of the work.

I am not aware of any book-length biography of Farina, so I can't be sure how active he was in the early 1950s when he was approaching age 60.  But my guess is that he was still heavily involved styling the cars his company built.

Which brings us to the strange 1952-55 Lancia Aurelia PF 200 (where PF = Pinin Farina), a Lancia model B52. A little background information can be found here and here.  It is pointed out that the PF 200's styling seems to have been inspired by jet fighters -- the almost-round grille opening looking similar to nose air intakes of the Russian MiG-15, the French Dassault Ouragan, the American F-84 Thunderjet and others.

Farina, it seems, was temporarily afflicted with the same disease as Detroit stylists.  Car design having evolved from collections of discrete items (separate headlights, fenders, trunks, hoods, etc.) to all-encompassing "envelope" bodies (the 1949 Ford, for instance), stylists began looking at jet fighters, science fiction space ships and even insects for inspiration.  At this time, Italian designers tended to treat automobiles as automobiles and not rocket ships.  However, they did stray from time to time, and the PF 200 is a good example of that.  At least only about half a dozen were ever built.

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This is a 1952 PF 200 Coupé.  Its wheelbase is long and the passenger greenhouse is comparatively short because the car only seats two people.  The wraparound backlight assembly seem to be inspired by 1947-52 Studebaker Starlight Coupes.  The trunk lid tapers in a boat-tail manner, though storage space might have been reasonably adequate, given that the sheet metal forward of the lid extends well into the greenhouse.  There is an odd decoration forward of the rear wheel opening.  It is associated with an air intake presumably for brake cooling, though its openings are mere slits.  In summary, the car is poorly proportioned and details are mostly odd and badly located.  What on earth could Farina been thinking?

Here is a PF 200 spider ("speeder," roadster) from about 1953.  The body is about the same as that of the lower body of the Coupé in the photos above.  The spider's windshield is not curved; rather, it is flat and can be pivoted down.  Note the different front protection arrangement (though neither car has more than sketchy frontal protection).

This set of photos shows a 1953-vintage PF 200 Coupé.  Internal grille details differ as does the front bumper arrangement (it's slightly improved).  No rear brake air intakes.

The main difference from the 1952 PF 200 is the treatment of the aft part of the greenhouse.  Rather than the Starlight Coupe- like backlight, we find a nearly-flat backlight nestled between sail panels that extend to the rear of the car.  Quarter window positions are blanked, though there seem to be four louvres to help exhaust cabin air.  The boat-tail trunk lid styling is also gone.  The poor-quality lower photo was taken at the 1954 Paris auto show.