Three designs from 1922, Millford sporting sidecar with fender attached to body, a sleek aluminum body from Montgomery (previous post) and a lightweight sport chair from Swallow.
Three designs from 1922, Millford sporting sidecar with fender attached to body, a sleek aluminum body from Montgomery (previous post) and a lightweight sport chair from Swallow.
Interesting that there isn't a compound curve on the sheet metal of any of these, and they're still attractive.
ReplyDeleteOK, I wasn't looking at the fenders, but still...
ReplyDeleterdguy
fenders don't count:-)
ReplyDeleteRD: Fortysome years ago I read a piece in -- which was the relatively highbrow mag: Cycle, or Cycle World? -- about bike riders as a subdivided consumer group, with one camp favoring flattish or subtly curved, angular sheet metal and another preferring bikes more zaftig, more subliminally suggestive of T&A. The opposing examples I recall were the Kawasaki Z1R and the Yamaha Specials. There were others. The tentative conclusion was that the first subset of riders placed more emphasis on performance.
ReplyDeleteThis may all have been half-assed bushwah, posited without resort to any research. I don't remember whether any was mentioned. Still, bike and car body design does seem to pendulum between jellybeans and, uh, shiriken or something.
That would have been around the time of the oh-so-soft and smooth Audi 5000, and the almost as pillowy Ford Taurus. Shapes that seem pretty stodgy now.
ReplyDelete