See that interesting little oval-framed, out-the-windshield view up there? That’s from a 1959 Renault Domaine brochure, and despite all the wonderfully over-saturated colors and those strange – are they camping trailers? – out there in that little field, and that wonderful turquoise dashboard, there’s something about this image that feels off to me. Can you spot it? It’s kind of tricky, especially in this example?
Do you see it? Here, I’ll tell you: it’s the steering wheel. Because, despite it not having any sort of logo or text on the center hub, it looks like it’s upside down. Let’s see if we can find another picture of the wheel in here:
Yep! It is! For whatever strange human reason, if a steering wheel has an off-center horizontal spoke, that spoke should be more towards the bottom of the wheel than the top in order to look right. I have no idea why this is, and yet when I saw that steering wheel in the top picture, it somehow felt wrong. It doesn’t really make rational sense, but I can’t shake that feeling. It just looks upside down. And if you’re taking a photo for a brochure like this, for whatever reason I feel like the steering wheel should be in its upright and straight orientation. Again, there’s not a coldly objective reason for that, it just feels right, and that feels wrong.
Oh, and Peter always gives me guff if I don’t show the whole car, so here you go. Look at the location of the turn indicators there! One pair of them, just behind the rear door! I wonder how visible those were from the front, really? Also, I like seeing cars doing things like this, getting a fresh haul of wicker from the wicker harbor.
I noticed that the car was on a kamikaze mission to liquidate the other car, and the adorable little cottage with the greenI-don’t-really-know-what-that-is sticking out of its left.
It must be a French thing. This looks odd, but the single spoke design in Citroens is other wordly. Might do a deep dive to see what Peugot, Borgward, etc. look like.
Maybe it’s the Australian market version.
After much research, I have determined that a steering wheel can be rotated to an infinite number of positions. This is just one of them.
The first thing I noticed was the one eyed gaping smiley face dashboard.
Glad I’m not the only one.
and here I thought what bothered you was this seems eerily close to a deer’s eye view right before you and it go ka-pao…
It looks to me like the car is angled downwards, as if the front suspension had collapsed.
Hey were the readers here,can’t we tell Jason what bothers us about your snapshot?
Also the image in the center rearview mirror is very odd. At first I thought it was a window on the caravan, but no, it’s the rearview, showing that there’s a football field behind or something?
That got me first, too, but I knew in my gut it was not what was bugging Jason.
nothing wrong with the wheel being upside down… unassisted, you could do one or two full turns of the wheel before hitting the end of the course.
But for me that picture seems colorized ( a B&W photography where color was added after being printed by somebody that just had vague drections when it comes to the colors of all the artifical stuff on the picture ).
I think it’s strange quality of the lighting. It’s almost like they used a spotlight, so it’s both very bright (bright enough that the sunbeam hitting the dash on the right looks flat) and not diffused (so the steering wheel is casting a unnatural shadow but the bases of the A pillars are still in darkness). It’s also unnaturally harsh, like from a sodium lamp or something. It reminds me of a cop shining a flashlight in your window at night.
EDIT: Looks like @Doctor Nine hit on it before I did, and pointed out the difference in color mapping—props.
I believe that this was done with early AGFA color. It has that bright color saturated look.
I guess the madame couldn’t be bothered to help load the wicker. Also, I just love me a two-piece tailgate. The Domaine was the wagon version of the Fregate which never sold very well and was replaced by, of all things, a license-built Rambler.
We are French people you imbecile! We do shit the way we want, you child of a scrotum sniffer.
Now go away before we taunt you a second time!
I fart in your general direction, several times.
The thing that bothers me about it, is that the shadow of the steering wheel on the dash, shows a clear point source for the interior lighting, that is above and to the right of the camera, with a field focus on the dash, approximately. While the ouside part of the image has a different field focus and tint mapping than the part showing the car interior.
Just a typical poor quality example of low budget marketing photography.
I would have sworn this was an AI generated image, generally odd as it is.