#CYBRTRK

Watching the Cybertruck reveal livestream last Thursday night, like nearly everyone else I was...  Astonished.

To say that that barely covers my reaction would be a gross understatement, and even saying that still lumps me in with the majority...

There was much, much more to it than anyone who didn't know me would guess and so, I guess it's time for me to (re-) introduce myself.


First, watch this:

The Tesla Cybertruck is truly astounding.  From the future.  Disruptive as fuck.

But those are things anyone might say.  For me, the moment it rolled up onstage that night meant a helluva lot more.

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How far back should I go here?  All the way?  Fine.

When I was six years old we briefly had a car that was, at the time, more than twice as old as me --- just an old Chevy that couldn't pass inspection.  Except, the year was 1973, and the Chevy was a '59 Bel Air.

1959 was the peak of excess for the American automotive industry.  The Chevrolet Impala, Bel Air, Biscayne, Brookwood (wagon) and El Camino all shared a set of glorious swooping fins and wide cat-eye taillights.  In the summer of '73 I was at just the right height to get lost in the concavity of that rear fender, and my as-yet-undiagnosed myopia kept me close as I studied every surface, running my little hands along the compound curves.  I even had fun running toy cars from the tips of the wings down the trunklid...

From then on I was fascinated with automotive design.  Somehow though it didn't click that it could be a career, until it was too late.

Before I could figure out what to do with my life, suddenly I had a wife and 3 kids.

They're all in their twenties now.

Anyway.  Back in the days of dialup, we had a Hewlett-Packard with a 6GB hard drive, and in the process of trying to come up with a pair of concepts for a Mitsubishi design contest (which I never submitted) I played around with MS Paint and came up with this:

 

Yeah I know, it's pretty goofy.  Not bad though, considering the limitations of the program and the fact that it was my first "sketch" of this concept.

That was 17 years ago.  Actual sketches, with pencil and paper, proved challenging.  I like a good challenge though, and continued to develop this little sports car well past the contest deadline...

Eventually the flat-panel scheme was applied to a wide variety of concepts, becoming my signature design theme.  Early on, I realized how relatively easy flat panels would be to construct, and chose unpainted, brushed stainless steel for obvious reasons...

Over a decade and a half ago.  And I never stopped.  Plus, somewhere around 2007 I committed to designing all-electric.  I did get back to drawing curves for some concepts, but still use flat panels by default.

Along the way I speculated here and there on Tesla designs.  Check this out:

The computer I did that on got too old & slow, and for over 4 years I was confined to an iPad Mini, but the pencil sketches kept flying (in sporadic bursts).  And, especially after new clues from a Halloween 2018 podcast, I kept trying to guess how the Tesla pickup would look.  I used this image of the Peugeot Spinner from Blade Runner 2049 for inspiration:

What never occurred to me was to apply my own signature design style.


Now I'm left just, you know, trying not to be bitter.  It is after all very gratifying to see how right I've been all these years about how amazing a vehicle with absolutely no curves can look in stainless steel.

I've only had this homebuilt Linux desktop running for a couple of months, installed FreeCAD but haven't tried it out yet.  When I have some results, I dearly hope no one will compare my work to Cybertruck (as cool as it is, and as much as I want one).

It should be the other way around.

filsmyth

26Nov2019

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