If you’re thinking about visiting an art and design exhibition, simply being in South Kensington is enough to get you in the mood. Turning around as you leave the Underground, the station’s sign is an Art Nouveau treat, and on reaching Exhibition Road there is the very best Victorian architecture. The Science Museum is purely Classical, while the Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum present two different takes on the Romanesque.
We shall pass through the V&A’s colonnade and cross the courtyard, heading for the new exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World. The purpose of this is to examine the social and cultural role of the motor-car through time. Before we’ve entered the building we can see, glistening in the atrium, a blue E-type Roadster. An obvious choice, really – the E-type is so ‘iconic’ (as a lazy mainstream journalist might say) that it is relatable even to non-car enthusiasts, and should bring them flocking. Let’s take a closer look… Oh, no, what’s this! Those aren’t standard 1960s sealed beam headlights! I don’t know what they are, but they’re not right. I’ve been deceived. This isn’t a real E-type, is it, but a hollow shell concealing some wretched electric motor!
The exhibit sign confirms my fears. It is no more than a well-preserved carcass with the lifeblood sucked out of it, the same vehicle which the latest royal couple drove away from the chapel in. You remember that, don’t you? Not content with the electric conversion, Jaguar slapped plastic reflective plates on the car tackily displaying the date of the wedding, and those ultra-shiny chrome wire wheels – on my life, no more! Ignoring this cheap stunt, I turned my back on the sorry abortion and entered the exhibition proper.
That’s better. Past the box office, the first thing we see is nothing less than a road-burning missile, the General Motors Firebird I concept from 1953, cockpit ajar to reveal its Whirlfire Turbo Power gas turbine engine. Not only a terrific exercise in space-age design, being effectively a grounded imitation of the supersonic Bell X-1, there was also a scientific purpose to the Firebird as never before had the practical possibilities of gas turbine power been explored in America. As it turned out, it was downright impractical, but what a sight such a car would be on the road!
Playing alongside the car was GM’s 1956 Key to the Future film, an amusingly awful reminder of American kitsch at its worst. How the actors managed to deliver their dialogue and keep a straight face, I have no idea.
With the Firebird, the exhibition takes a look at the various ideas for a car of the future imagined at different times and in different countries. Beautifully illustrated mid-century magazines such as Popular Science and Russia’s Tekhnika Molodezhi imagine everything from lozenge-shaped pods to jet-powered flying cars. In 1962, Italy’s La Dominica Del Corriere proposed a dystopian vision for future transport, wherein urban hordes forsook walking for ugly, one-man mobility scooters. The Japanese vision for Tokyo in 2061 was characteristically crazy, with hover cars, spaghetti highways and everyone milling around in Spandex superhero suits. Strangely, an African artist’s digital collage from 2013, imagining Lagos in 2081, predicts that the Nigerian city will be dominated by rocket-shaped skyscrapers and have spaceships patrolling the skies, yet the traditional street market will survive, 1980s vans will still be in service and there’ll be a resurgence in popularity for the 1950s demob suit. We’ll see, won’t we?
A collection of concept models included entries for the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild’s national youth design competition. We can spot similarities, I think, between the white car and the Ford Gyron (give or take a couple of wheels) and, strangely, the blue coupe is reminiscent of the Marcos Xylon GT. I was most taken by the red coupe with its wonderful scalloped buttresses. Norman Bel Geddes’s automotive visions, presented for the Futurama exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair, were depressingly bland bubbles devoid of flair. Georgii Krutikov presented an even less attractive concept for a ‘Mobile Living Cell’ in a diploma project entitled The City of the Future: The Evolution of Architectural Principles in Town Planning and Residential Organisation. Given his basic lack of aesthetic function, I sincerely hope Krutikov was never given any actual responsibility for town planning or residential organisation.
Moving on, I was delighted to come across the 1888 Roger-Benz Patent-Motorwagen. You will all have seen replicas of the 1885 Patent-Motorwagen, but this was the real thing. After the 1885 prototype, the Patent-Motorwagen entered production and it is the No. 3 model, with minimal bodywork and weather protection, that we have here. It was in the same model in which Bertha Benz undertook her famous 60-mile drive to prove the capabilities of internal combustion, carrying out her own roadside repairs on the way. The Roger of the name indicates that this example was built under license by Emile Roger, a Parisian Benz agent.
Much of my delight stemmed from the fact that I have known of this car for a long time but have never been able to see it. Believed to be the oldest petrol car in Britain and the fifth-oldest commercially-made car in the world, the Science Museum purchased it for £5 in 1913 but for the last couple of decades it has been squirrelled away in some distant warehouse. It entered the Veteran Car Run in 1957 and 1958, suffering an unfortunate accident due to waterlogged wooden brakes in the first year, but finishing successfully in the second. Between then and now, I know nothing of its history. C. F. Caunter, who was in charge of the museum’s transport collection in the 1950s, was a great enthusiast. Sadly, there appears to be no equivalent in the staff today, so all its motorised exhibits have remained static for at least two decades and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Passing a historic, Grand Prix-winning 1937 Delahaye Type 145 that is the motorsport aspect taken care of, we come to a 1937 Tatra 77 representing the pinnacle of Art Déco and airline styling. Coinciding with the widespread uptake of commercial aviation, the new principle of streamlining proved irresistible to designers in all fields, so we see sweeping curves and simulated airflow streaks built into such items as the Airline chair, Airflow fan and Streamliner meat slicer.
Suddenly, the fun stops and we’re presented with exhibits about accidents and fatalities. The main exhibit here is a ’65 Ford Mustang fastback, the reason cited for its inclusion being that the accessible, affordable power of the Mustang was criticised for encouraging people to drive dangerously. “Speeding you say, officer? Oh no, officer, it wasn’t me, must’ve been the car. Autonomy? No, I don’t possess any of that. If my driving kills someone you’ll have to take the matter up with Dearborn. I couldn’t possibly be responsible for my own actions, could I?” Idiot Naderite safety lobbyists are nothing new and for that dubious reason did the Mustang appear.
The inevitable Ford Model T is the FoMoCo’s own 1926 roadster. We all know and accept that by making motoring widely accessible, the Model T compromised on skilled labour and top-quality finish. As roads were still largely uncongested by the time the model was retired in 1927, it was all fine, but one wonders if old Henry foresaw the terrible consequences of letting all and sundry have their own car? Mass production, of course, ended up being applied across all industries and the undiscerning masses loved the cheapness and convenience of it all, which is why we mourn for quality manufacturing as everyone else consumes throwaway goods produced by the blood, sweat and tears of wage slaves in China.
The T is displayed next to a model of Le Corbusier’s Maison Citrohan II from 1922, which is quite an attractive house, but Le Corbusier’s underlying philosophy was awful. Le Corbusier believed houses should be mass-produced and prefabricated, describing them as ‘machines for living in’. What a joyless notion. Why not just do away with humanity entirely and replace it with a race of ‘machines for living’, it would be so much more efficient. Anyway, Le Corbusier will be pleased that his vision has been realised, with all the identikit, low-quality Barratt estates now springing up all over what used to be good countryside.
I do not mean to be overwhelmingly critical. There is no doubt that Ford helped the automotive industry to progress in leaps and bounds and allowed thousands of people, who might never have got the chance, to discover the joys of motoring. Without stocks of old Ts, As and ’32s, there would have been no hot-rodding, which itself demonstrated that individuality was achievable even with mass-produced cars. The Model T itself was a blessing, but it’s a shame the worst excesses of commercialism weren’t tempered before they spiralled out of control.
After considering the subject of built-in obsolescence and looking at marketing stunts from the sublime (GM’s Motorama show cars) to the ridiculous (the Dodge La Femme’s vanity accessories), we are whisked far away from the mass-motoring palette to high society, where wealth abounded to create wonderful bespoke designs for turning heads and inducing pangs of envy. How grateful we should all be for economic inequality. Without it, there would have been no Greek Golden Age, no Renaissance and no chance of such objets d’art as this 1922 Hispano-Suiza H6B torpédo skiff by Labourdette. It was apparently bought as a chassis at the 1919 Paris Auto Salon (so I don’t know why it’s 1922) by Suzanne Deutsch de la Muerthe, who must have been a picture of purest beauty in her expensive evening gown and her new set of wheels.
Tragically, mass production killed off the coachbuilder in the years following the Second World War, but some irrepressible spirits still found ways of asserting their individuality. A short film examines motoring subcultures around the world, including the lowriders of Los Angeles. A 1962 Chevrolet Impala convertible named Guardian Angel, a genuine Imperials car, illustrates the style. The Imperials has perhaps been the most prominent lowrider club since the very beginning, and it gave rise to Jesse Valadez’s famous Gypsy Rose ’64 Impala that represented lowriding in a custom car exhibition at the Smithsonian two years ago. A few basic rules governed what the Imperials regarded as a lowrider: obviously, the car had to be lowered or on hydraulics, and it was required to have spoked wheels and narrow-band whitewalls. Small steering wheels were encouraged but not enforced since they drew unwanted attention from the Blue Meanies. On account of these simple rules, many lowriders were fairly simple, practical everyday machines; it’s only in more recent years that elaborate paint and upholstery just for show has become the norm. Guardian Angel was built by Tomas Vazquez as a tribute to all Imperials members who have passed away and features kandy paint, large airbrushed murals and intricate engraving.
Five cars feature in the last hall, some of them tying in with the prevailing theme of oil and the development of highways. It’s impossible for me not to mention the 1924 Citroën Autochenille half-track, one of eight that participated in a 12,400-mile trans-African expedition, but then things start to get depressing as we come to the 1973 fuel crisis, which contributed more than anything else towards sucking the fun out of motoring (unless you popped into Woolworths and bought the Oil Crisis Game, in which case it promised hours of fun for all the family).
That’s a pick of some of the exhibition’s highlights, but if you want to know what else is in store then I highly recommend paying a visit to the V&A to see for yourself. The exhibition is open daily until 19th April 2020 and standard adult admission costs £18.
Post Script
Passing through the exit door, we are hit with a dystopian twist: the randomly punctuated Pop.Up Next by Audi, Italdesign and Airbus. Theoretically, it is electric and autonomous, it can be booked on your smartphone (your what?), and, err, it flies. It also looks quite gormless, and it would eliminate personal freedom of movement as all Nexts would be operated by some covert, faceless semi-corporate/semi-governmental hub. It is today’s distant nightmare, perhaps, but let’s keep fighting the good fight to ensure that it doesn’t become tomorrow’s reality.
https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/03/conquering-the-third-dimension.html#
