I’ve heard some recent quotes from celebrities that were huge in the fifties and sixties, and I’m embarrassed to say that my first response had nothing to do with the things that they said. No, unfortunately my initial reaction was “they’re still alive?”. Horrible, I know.
In the automotive world there are equivalents to this. You know the Tesla Model S? When this luxury EV debuted in 2012 it was nothing less than a game changer in a world where “electric car” conjured up images of Ford Fairmonts filled with lead acid batteries. The Model S put Tesla on the map as a serious contender; it set the template for the high-end electric sedan and influenced virtually all of the lesser Tesla models that followed.
You might already know this, but today I learned that the Model S is still being sold as Tesla’s largest and most prestigious non-truck product. Sure, the styling has been “refreshed” over time (in particular losing the fake radiator grille on front) but the fact is that the basic car is thirteen years old. This is an unheard-of length of time for a modern car to remain available, particularly for a range-topping car. Hell, even the 1979 Mercedes W126 S-Class only lasted a little over 11 years, and people thought that was a long time three decades ago.
My kid came into the world about the same time as the Model S, and now he can (illegally) drive a car. That’s kind of like the C3 Corvette- it was released around the time I was born and it was still being produced when I was getting ready for high school. Boy, were we ever ready for the C4 ‘Vette to be released as the The Next Big Thing, and it did not disappoint.
I’ve seen renderings of what illustrators think the next-generation Model S will look like; none are showing The Next Big Thing. Some are portraying it as the yet-to-be-released Tesla Roadster stretched out to the proportions of a sedan with cutouts for four doors. Others have tweaked it to look sort of like a Porsche Taycan. I would hope that these speculations aren’t anything close to accurate. If nothing else, Tesla as a brand needs its products to be cutting edge (even to a fault), and playing me-too won’t do it any favors. Seriously, offer me a Taycan and a look-alike Tesla at the same price and why wouldn’t I just get the Porsche?
No, the next Model S needs to be radically different from the current model and, frankly, anything else on the road; a quantum leap like the Corvette C4 was. The Cybertruck certainly stands out, sort of in the same that wearing a fez in public does. Still, I think I’ve found the inspiration for something that might work to capitalize on the Cybertruck visual language but do it much better.
Not Really Straight Lines
As a kid, heavy metal and hip hop might have gotten into your consciousness because of questionable pop acts like Poison, Quiet Riot, or Vanilla Ice. You might have loved this stuff, but if you despised it hopefully you didn’t write off entire genres because of such MTV-era dreck. I’d like to think that your interest was piqued and you moved on to discover artists that had the skills to do these categories right like, say, a Ronnie James Dio or Eric B. and Rakim.
In a similar way, the Cybertruck has been a double-edged sword for superfans of angular styling like me. For everyone infatuated with the Tesla pickup design’s embracing of once-popular straight lines, there are two (or three really) that can’t stand these “sharp-edged cars”.
Sadly, they’re basing their hatred of the return of the “folded paper” school of design on the Cybertruck, which frankly isn’t a shining example of the genre. It is, at least in my opinion, pretty bad.
What makes the Cybertruck so unappealing to me, and many others as well? Well, as a kid did you ever grab your ruler out of the Trapper Keeper and try to use it draw some of the cool, angular automotive designs of the time like Ital Design’s Lotus Esprit or even the late Marcello Gandini’s Lamborghini Countach? Your drawing looked awful, right? You didn’t realize until later that those Italian designs have few true straight lines or flat planes on any surface. Looking more closely at those disco-era masterpieces reveals that they are made up of very subtle curves and slightly concave panels, and these nuances make all of the difference in the world.
Look, for example, at the wheel arches on the Countach and compare them to the Cybertruck. The ones on the Tesla pickup could be made from Home Depot rain gutter material:
While I more than welcome the return of sharp-edged cars, using edges so sharp that you literally cut yourself is not the way to go. Can’t Tesla redeem itself by giving us something that does justice to angular cars while still separating themselves from the pack with a nearly timeless design?
Return Of The Wedge
Today, fifty years after the heyday of the angular school of car design, some companies are revisiting iconic examples of that movement with a modern twist. Naturally, the works of Ital Design are the ones most are focusing on; not surprising since Ital’s Giorgetto Giugiaro was sort of the Kobe Bryant of this aesthetic.
There’s been much hoopla about Hyundai making a new version of Giugiaro’s 1974 Pony Coupe, a car that even Ital Design’s own website claims was an inspiration for their later Delorean DMC-12.
Dubbed the N Vision 74, the reimagined modern version of this coupe was at one point was actually going to be produced:
Hyundai also showed a more “stock” and far less boy-racerish version of this reimagined Pony Coupe that was closer to the original design and ostensibly more saleable, though the latest reports are that neither version of this car is now moving ahead as a production piece.
Regardless, Hyundai has already embraced this aesthetic with their new, original designs like the IONIQ 5:
Truth be told, with Tesla sedans starting to look old hat and their pickup bearing a strong resemblance to a plywood prop in a low-budget Battlestar Galactica rip-off, Hyundai is doing a far better job at creating cars that look like “the future.”
As the greatest influencers of this angular style, Ital Design are now actually getting into the revival themselves. Last year they revisited a concept of their own from that era: the 1973 Audi Karmann Asso di Picche (Ace of Spades) coupe:
Looking much like Ital’s first generation Scirocco released just months later, the sharply wedge-shaped Asso di Picche never reached production, though one could say that there is a lot of the DNA in the Audi 80 Coupe/UR Quattro.
Ital’s dramatic revival keeps the spirit of the original but with a lower, leaner wedge shape:
The look is taken to extremes as the black windshield blends in with the hood and tops of the wheel arches, continuing down through the grille:
Now this is the way to do modern angular design right. You get all the shock and awe of the Cybertruck but in a much more cohesive and approachable package.
Sadly, you just know that Audi isn’t going to bite on a design that has none of their current brand language as a production car, but I know one company that should: Tesla. Could something like this become the next Model S?
And The Scale Model Can Be Used As A Doorstop
One of the best things about the Model S was that it dared to be a five-door hatchback on the large side of full-size, something notably sales-resistant in the US. Long before today’s rather silly “four-door coupes” or goofier fastback SUVs came on the scene, the hatchback sedan offered sporting appearance with the practicality of a wagon in legendary examples like the ultra-aero Saab 900 Turbo and Ferrari Daytona ripoff Rover 3500 SD1.
Ital Design even proposed a five-door luxury liftback with Maserati in the seventies. The rather large 1974 Medici I and 1976 Medici II concepts were precursors for the Quattroporte III that came a few years later, by which time Maserati had chickened out and made it into a standard three-box sedan.
The side marker lights suggest that Maserati was considering selling the Medici II in the US, as well as the four-shot rectangular lights that, in the silver color, really make this thing look like the car Doc Brown could have converted into a time machine.
What if we took that Ital Design Audi revival and stretched it a bit to be like the Medici to fit our requirements for the next generation Tesla Model S?
Ready For Another 13 Years?
With the disappearance of sedans in general, one wonders if there even will be a next-generation Tesla Model S. I hope there will be, and if so, my guess is that it will set the tone for the aesthetics of more entry-level Tesla cars for years to come. Let’s face it: other than Cybertruck, all of Tesla’s cars are essentially the same thing just squeezed down (the Model 3) or pulled up (Model X) or squeezed and pulled (Model Y). Even the coming-soon Roadster uses the same visual language.
If Cybertruck really is ushering in a new aesthetic for the brand (and let’s just assume for the moment that it is), I’m more than happy to see it as long as it’s done right, and that Ital Audi seems like a good place to start.
To work as a five-door luxury hatch, I first need to raise the height slightly, increase the length through both the wheelbase and rear overhang:
The dramatic black hood and wheel arch tops of the Audi will need to go away, but I’ve kept the wedge shape with the side windows culminating in a parallelogram-shaped area for the mirrors. A Cybertruck-like light band headlight caps off the now-taller front (which will naturally provide a deeper frunk than that Audi concept as well). The body-colored cant rails recall the details on all Teslas including the truck. I’ve used wheels that call to mind the covers on the least expensive Teslas, but for some reason I’ve always found this design far more fitting to the looks of the vehicles than the spoked variants the upper models have (on this new S they’d obviously be alloys and not covers).
The hatchback rear is similar to the Audi design but has a red band taillight to give a light signature similar to the Model S’s pickup brother.
There could be rear fog lights hidden in the “diffuser” grilles flanking the license plate, and these could act as repeater taillights if the hatch is opened (since the taillights are part of the opening sheet metal).
Parked next to a Cybertruck, the family resemblance would be obvious, yet the new Model S would be that hotter younger brother of the brood.
She’s A Beauty, Those Tubes
Seventies concept car instrument panels have to be the best of all time for designs that are pure theater. The Ital Asso De Piccho is no different, with bizarre cylindrical “tubes” dominating the dashboard and recesses for switches and digital displays:
The latest Ital reboot used a similar tubular motif in the dash, and so will I for the new Model S. There is a full-width screen below the windshield, and also a second layer of screen below for changing touch controls, separated by a slot where the HVAC vents live. However, Tesla will do a very Tesla-like about-face in my imagined future. After using touchscreen controls in menus to operate everything from the windshield wipers to opening the damn glovebox, this new Model S will incorporate some physical controls on a “tube” shape that runs across the dash and blends in with the door pull handles. Now that they pushed much of the industry to go in one (ill-conceived) direction the pendulum can swing the other way. Thank God.
Rotating sections of the tube include controls for a “twist grip” gear selector, audio volume, cabin temperature, and window controls on the doors. Note that the glove box has a handle with a button hidden behind the grip (locking it is still a screen function, or a touchscreen combination lock below).
None of the screens themselves are as large in a diagonal dimension as the one slapped in the center of the current Model S that Tesla calls “the ultimate for in-car entertainment,” but I really don’t want to base a dashboard design on the ability to watch movies when the car is parked or self-driving (since it will be some time before it can realistically do that).
The Past Gives Us Tomorrow’s Tesla?
The best part about this old-turned-new aesthetic would likely be how well it would translate to other Tesla models. Scaled down and made a bit taller for versions like the Model 3 and Y would yield something that vaguely resembles a modern tribute to a Mark I Golf or Lancia Delta (or for our UK readers, an interpretation of Harris Mann’s Leyland Princess). Turning this new Model S into something the size and proportion of a supercar would result in something very similar to a Lotus Esprit. Musk supposedly owns “Wet Nellie,” one of the cars that transformed into a submarine in the The Spy Who Loved Me, so he’d really like that similarity, if he were still interested in automobiles of course. Here’s some rough scribbles:
Model S, you’ve done good for the decade and a half you’ve had serving us. You made us look differently at electric cars, and you deserve to lead a new generation of Tesla cars. More than that, you need to redeem your brand from the damage the Cybertruck has done to the “folded paper” legacy and the car designers of the seventies who knew this was our future.
Don’t let that funky pickup make you dismiss the good old wedge just yet.
This Is What A Lotus 4-Door Sedan From 1987 Could Have Looked Like – The Autopian
How I Think You Could Turn A Tesla Into The World’s Fastest RV – The Autopian
Hate The Pointed Pyramid Roof On The Tesla CyberTruck? Let’s Chop It Off – The Autopian
“This is an unheard-of length of time for a modern car to remain available, particularly for a range-topping car.” Most recent/current Nissan GT-R