BETTER BY DESIGN
‘DESIGN’ IS AN OFTEN MISUSED WORD in the business of developing a consumer product. Everyone wants to be The Designer. A pointless affectation because there are two equally important elements that are crucial to the creation and development of any product: the engineering of the mechanical parts and the visual appearance. The automobile is no different from any other product: it’s a highly complex object that is expected to work perfectly and look better than its competitors.
Appearance has always been a major selling point when it comes to cars. In the early days of the automobile industry the more you paid for a car the better it looked. The very wealthy could have a body constructed to their own design taste from dozens of independent companies. These craft-based makers would clothe whatever chassis the customer decided to buy, and often the body would cost more than the chassis. Coach makers would give their customers a side view drawing of what the body would look like. These were finely detailed pen-and-ink drawings with water colour painted surfaces.
When, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, companies like Budd and Briggs in the United States developed all-steel technologies to replace the slow and costly wooden body
