Diatribe: A cure for insomnia: designer descriptions

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When attending automotive press conferences, I get the opportunity to listen to car designers describe their inspiration for, and what they hoped to accomplish with, their particular project. What I’ve been able to deduce after decades is this: These folks are awfully scary.

Before I go into the psyche behind my amateurish evaluation I want to point out that these people are among the most talented, creative and brightest people I’ve ever met. Having said that, think twice about leaving them alone with your children — no matter their age. My kids are in their 40s and I would make sure they were all carrying automatic weapons before being left in a standing-room-only crowd at the Super Bowl with these people.

The first thing to realize is that when a designer is describing his creation, he’s doing so out of love and pride. The second thing to realize is that, should the opportunity present itself, turn around and run. The farther they get into their description of their product, the more it sounds like they’re defending a thesis at Dr. Ruth University. It’s mesmerizing yet creates insomnia at the same time.

Auto designers will run their hands over the lines of their vehicles while they get that look in their eyes like the guy in the Dracula movie who was below decks talking about eating spiders and bugs. And I don’t think any of these guys could be heard in an anechoic chamber. They’re voices are soft, totally in contrast to their pulse rate, which must be in high three-digit territory.

Another scary thing is when they reveal what inspired a particular design cue. They may talk about a walk through a lovely wooded area that inspired them to create a dashboard made entirely of redwood. Truth be told, they probably walked trance-like through a forest loaded with poison ivy and the red berries looked like a taillight to them. Half of them look like they’re totally high on AutoCAD.

By contrast you never hear engineers describe their inventions with the same faraway look you see in designers. I’d like to hear the discussions of engineers and designers for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The engineers would talk about tolerances they had to adhere to in order to ensure the weapon fit into the bomb bay of a B-29.

Even scientists are straightforward about their work. In this case they’d probably describe the fusion when the firing pin clicked against the charge that released uranium 235 to the rest of the bomb core. I assume a description of the bomb by a designer would go something like this: “When I was first inspired to design ‘Little Boy’ I thought of a Bomb Pop I once bought from the Good Humor man. It had such smooth, aerodynamic lines and they flowed down through the stick to where the base stood out like little fins. Matter-of-fact, they were fins. I then envisioned these fins attached to a projectile-like metal tube that would flow through the air like the wind through the wings of a robin or a crow. And I could foresee this beautiful, round cylinder as it left its mother’s shiny aluminum belly with her bomb bay doors wide open.”

Good Lord, do you believe such pap? And to think that somebody once felt this same passion for the Pontiac Aztek.

I often wonder whether the senior executives of auto companies, who are responsible for signing off on these designs, need an interpreter or bottle of flavored water when they’re hearing presentations from designers, who would probably kill themselves should any facet of their creation be criticized.

Years of attending these previews have given me an idea for a side business. Instead of using white-noise machines to treat insomniacs, why not just get a good set of headphones, a digital tape recorder and play back tapes of designers describing their concept? Just make sure a good, loud alarm clock is set because otherwise nobody would ever wake up.

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. E-mail him at vinikour@comcast.net.