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Love this car. It's beautiful and reminds me of the jaguar e-type. I wasn't even born during this time but I always appreciate a good car. Always amazes me how

Love this car. It's beautiful and reminds me of the jaguar e-type. I wasn't even born during this time but I always appreciate a good car. Always amazes me how they were able to build all these things back when they didn't have cad software. The comments on youtube from fedoras tho...

fit2rule 11y ago
Something I always wonder is just how well they were able to produce symmetry in their designs, when it was all sculpted (usually out of clay) .. before CAD, it had to have been done with pure artistic sensibility, and it worked so well .. I wonder if we've lost something of the minor, subtle imperfections that are seemingly observed at a subconscious layer, and which seem to imbue a degree of affinity for those old designs...
- GeoDeV 11y ago
  I was a car nut long before I became a computer guy...I vaguely recollect something about this. I believe they would have created a series of cardboard templates, mirror images for left and right, about one inch apart along the length of the contour, front to back. And then carved the clay to match the templates. Hope this verbal description is clear enough.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Thanks - and yes, it does make sense. Amazing that we've come so far to produce, essentially the same thing, albeit with higher technology ..
- jerf 11y ago
  I'd submit the answer is actually a firm "no"... it just moved into dimensions you can no longer see. Open up a modern car. See that square latch of stuck-on foil with some padding under it that looks pointless? It kills a sound that you never noticed, because the engineers already killed it for you. Noticed how the modern car runs more smoothly down the road? A lot of that comes from endless days of supercomputer simulation that told them where to place the engine mounts. Those engine mounts look displeasingly asymmetric, you say? Turns out that's a feature, not a bug! Symmetry introduces noise modes. Yes, there are absolutely ways that modern cars shave pennies in the design... my Dad (recently retired test engineer) and I often converse about how to spend $100 more at the factory to get a much nicer car, but in ways that don't or can't affect sales, so they don't happen. But at the same time, they are marvels of engineering that simply blow away what we had 50 years ago on almost every meaningful metric. (Maybe price... for better and for worse, the legally-mandated minimal safe car is pretty expensive nowadays... they'd love to offer you something cheaper but it can't pass safety tests.)

fit2rule 11y ago

Something I always wonder is just how well they were able to produce symmetry in their designs, when it was all sculpted (usually out of clay) .. before CAD, it had to have been done with pure artistic sensibility, and it worked so well .. I wonder if we've lost something of the minor, subtle imperfections that are seemingly observed at a subconscious layer, and which seem to imbue a degree of affinity for those old designs...

GeoDeV 11y ago
I was a car nut long before I became a computer guy...I vaguely recollect something about this. I believe they would have created a series of cardboard templates, mirror images for left and right, about one inch apart along the length of the contour, front to back. And then carved the clay to match the templates. Hope this verbal description is clear enough.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Thanks - and yes, it does make sense. Amazing that we've come so far to produce, essentially the same thing, albeit with higher technology ..
jerf 11y ago
I'd submit the answer is actually a firm "no"... it just moved into dimensions you can no longer see. Open up a modern car. See that square latch of stuck-on foil with some padding under it that looks pointless? It kills a sound that you never noticed, because the engineers already killed it for you. Noticed how the modern car runs more smoothly down the road? A lot of that comes from endless days of supercomputer simulation that told them where to place the engine mounts. Those engine mounts look displeasingly asymmetric, you say? Turns out that's a feature, not a bug! Symmetry introduces noise modes. Yes, there are absolutely ways that modern cars shave pennies in the design... my Dad (recently retired test engineer) and I often converse about how to spend $100 more at the factory to get a much nicer car, but in ways that don't or can't affect sales, so they don't happen. But at the same time, they are marvels of engineering that simply blow away what we had 50 years ago on almost every meaningful metric. (Maybe price... for better and for worse, the legally-mandated minimal safe car is pretty expensive nowadays... they'd love to offer you something cheaper but it can't pass safety tests.)