Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 47: Generations - a Car Design Retrospective

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 47: Generations - a Car Design Retrospective

The recently concluded Generations challenge gave users the opportunity to compete for points over several rounds by creating a lineup of cars spanning several decades (in some cases for more than a half-century), complete with brand lore (in a separate thread) to provide some backstory, and "sell" the cars in the U.S. market by submitting them at the rate of one car per round. At the end of each round, each user would be scored depending on how well-suited their car is to the segment in which it competes, with the overall winner being the user who scored highest throughout all the rounds.

While I did not enter this challenge for fear of having to expend too much time and resources to develop several cars and their associated lore, it did provide me with an opportunity to analyze the evolution of car design throughout the ages. As for the contest itself, it commenced several months ago with a round set in 1946 and was originally intended to continue all the way to the present day. However, due to work commitments, the host decided to end the series after the twelfth round, set in 1999, with the last four rounds being abandoned altogether. And now that the contest has ended for good, I am ready to take a look back on how car design trends in general have changed over time.

Before we start our discussion of the evolution of car design trends, I'll remind you that this post will only show vehicles which have actually been submitted into the Generations challenge - anything not posted in the corresponding forum thread is outside the scope of this post - and that all credit goes to their respective creators. We'll start off with an example of a late-40s car, the Vermilion Athena. Back in 1946, many carmakers were only just starting to switch their focus from military vehicles to passenger cars, hence the fact that early postwar cars didn't look too different from those which had been introduced just before the onset of war.

Here is what an ad for the 1946 Vermilion Athena would have looked like. Aesthetically, the Athena was little different from any car made just before the outbreak of war due to resource rationing and manufacturers only just having retooled their factories for civilian cars instead of military machinery.

However, the dawn of the 50s saw a surge of diversification in the car market, as the austerity of the war was swept away by a tidal wave of optimism. Manufacturers began putting more and more chrome trim on upmarket cars, and the 1951 LMC Captain Series 6 was no exception. This trend would continue for the remainder of the decade, as rival carmakers rolled out increasingly flashier offerings in an attempt to outdo each other.

The chrome-laden LMC Captain Series 6 embodied the optimistic spirit of the 50s.

For the 60s, carmakers began de-emphasizing gratuitous ornamentation in favor of cleaner, but still mostly curvaceous, shapes. Some manufacturers also began focusing on high performance as a selling point, especially in the American market where petrol was cheap and plentiful. The 1961 Erin Lagana perfectly encapsulated both of these philosophies - nothing in its exterior design left buyers in any doubt that it was a legitimate sports car, in case its excellent performance wasn't convincing enough.

Clean, uncluttered styling, stellar performance and classic GT proportions made the original Erin Lagana a truly iconic 60s sports car.

Later in the decade, muscle cars began to proliferate throughout the American market. These big, boxy beasts projected power and aggression with their high-displacement engines - usually overhead-valve V8s - lurking under their bonnets. They were also offered in vivid colors, such as the lustrous red on this 1969 LMC Seabeast.

With its big, powerful engine, imposing styling and blistering straight-line performance, the LMC Seabeast was a muscle car par excellence.

For 1973, thicker 5-mph bumpers (either integrated, or tacked on) became mandatory on all US-market cars, and the following year, fuel fillers were required to be on the rear quarter panel (for front-engined cars) or the front quarter panel (for rear- and mid-engined cars); the year after that, unleaded fuel and catalytic converters became mandatory nationwide. It was during this time that boxy, angular designs began to take over from the curvaceous shapes commonplace for much of the previous decade, as evidenced by the '73 Kimura Auburn, and they would become even boxier in the years to come - a trend which would not be reversed for nearly two decades.

An ad for the 1973 Kimura Auburn, showing its angular shape and bluff nose.

At around the same time, wedge-shaped, mid-engined supercars really began to catch on with enthusiasts. The LMC Scorpius was a prime example of the breed; its outrageous design, incorporating an enormous rear wing, a low nose with retractable headlights, and a steeply raked windscreen made it immensely desirable among wealthy customers.

Wedge-shaped styling was typical of '70s supercars such as this 1973 LMC Scorpius.

In addition, towards the end of the 70s, more and more cars resembled bricks on wheels, with straight lines, big bumpers and rectangular fixtures being all the rage. The Ardent Sentinel exemplified this design philosophy with its straightforward, but bland, three-box shape.

You'd struggle to find a more generic late-70s commuter car than the '79 Ardent Sentinel.

Wedge shapes and boxy profiles were still common in the early 80s, and it would be some time before they were finally replaced. The 1985-92 LMC Maladus M150 had plenty of straight lines in its exterior design, as did the 1987 RCM Regal, shown below in 4WD Touring Wagon Trim.

Many cars of the 1980s, such as the LMC Maladus M150 and RCM Regal, had very angular styling.

And so we come to the 1990s, the final era for the Generations challenge as a whole. Streamlining made a comeback in the late 1980s, and by 1994, straight lines had mostly fallen out of favor with car designers in favor of organic, flowing curves, as the Erin Scarlet MkII's smooth, almost windswept shape attests. Cars in general hadn't been this curvaceous since the 1960s, but the widespread use of integrated bumpers now made them look even sleeker than before.

The second-gen Erin Scarlet - a classic sports coupe from the '90s, when curves were in vogue for the first time in decades.

By the turn of the century, manufacturers began rolling out bolder, more dynamic designs, with more complex shapes for front and rear fixtures. Higher-end cars in particular tended to have more avant-garde exterior designs, whereas mass-market cars usually had more pragmatic shapes, with less (if any) chrome. The 1999 LMC Maladus M200, with its aggressively styled front fascia, was a case in point.

The turn of the new Millennium saw the proliferation of dynamic, avant-garde designs, with many existing models, like this LMC Maladus M200, being facelifted accordingly to keep up with the times. Its menacing visage would have been quite appropriate for the early years of the twenty-first century.

Unfortunately, this is where the competition ended. Not only was the host struggling to balance his duties of being an Automationeer with increasingly heavy work commitments, but some of the users who had entered simply ran out of company lore and/or were too tired to carry on further. This meant that the last four rounds - intended to be set in 2003, 2006, 2011 and 2016, respectively -  would never come to fruition. Even so, most users agreed that the Generations challenge was a resounding success on all fronts. 

That just about wraps up my design-themed retrospective on this engaging, lore-heavy challenge. Until the next post in my Confessions series comes up, see you next time!