Drive Hard, Play Right
Form following function is fine and dandy - but should include a bit of fun and games, argues Stephen Bayley.
Plastic Lustprinzip (photo © Hasbro)
In 1938, the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga published Homo Ludens, a book which analysed the role of play in culture. It’s a wonderfully scholarly and richly textured study.
Alas, he makes no mention of the automobile. From our perspective, this seems strange, as role-playing, fantasy, risk, surprise, magic and stratagems to release us from the ordinary are all elements of play… and also, of course, of car design.
The best designs often have a ludic aspect, characteristics which make you want to touch and feel them. Bill Mitchell of General Motors knew this and explained this is why a baseball (with its elaborate stitching) is so much more interesting than a billiard ball (with its perfectly smooth surface).
And psychologists know that children enjoy playing with toys which have hinges and doors. Why? Because hinges and doors offer the delights of secrecy and revelation, of manipulation and transformation. These are all very satisfying. If Freud did not write about hinges and doors in his Lustprinzip, he should have done. But then Freud had never seen a Transformer toy.
Hinges and doors are fundamental to one of my favourite design details, the gullwing lockers of the Bristol 404. These hidden storage places appear between the trailing edge of the front wheel-arch and the leading-edge of the door. The nearside is used to store the spare-wheel and jack, the offside to store the battery and fuse panel. Because they are secret, they are a source of keen pleasure. Almost like forbidden territory.
The playful Mr Hobbs’ creation (photo © unknown)
The 404 was the work of Dudley Hobbs, chief designer of The Bristol Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1976. He was essentially an engineer, but unafraid to speculate in matters of aesthetics. It was Hobbs who put a pre-War Carrozzeria Touring design into the Bristol wind-tunnel, and out the other end came the 401 of 1948, one of the finest English cars of its day. Perhaps of any day.
And it was Hobbs who abandoned Bristol’s cargo-cult BMW kidney grille, replacing it on the 404 of 1953 with an aperture more like an aircraft’s air intake. He also added little fins on the car’s tail. Nothing, I think, to do with aerodynamics, but everything to do with gentlemanly style, as understood in the fifties.
But the secret stowage bays are a thing apart. The 404 is not a small car, and there was plenty of space to store the battery and spare-wheel in conventional locations. But that would have been boring and the best in design is always… amusing.
Where did Hobbs get the idea from? The Bristol Aircraft Company was known for its expertise with hinges and doors: in the same year the 404 was launched, there was the first flight of the Bristol Superfreighter. This was an idiosyncratic design, whose sole purpose was to fly twenty passengers and three cars across the English Channel. And access to the hold was via vast hinged doors.
Another matter of surprise and revelation.
