Yesterday’s gone, and with it the notion that a low-profile, wedge shaped car looks futuristic. Now it looks as ’70s as a double-knit polyester leisure suit or feathered Farrah hair. But, man, for a while there the world’s car designers wore out the straight-edges and triangles faster than they did the French curves.
Car folk still have the production cars of that era on our radar screens and in some of our garages: the DeLorean DMC-12, the Lotus Esprit, the Triumph TR-7, the BMW M1, the Fiat X1/9, and, of course, the Lamborghini Countach. We’ll touch on a few more as we move along here, but consider the concept cars, the one-off dream machines whose job it was to forecast the future.
Our own Davey G. Johnson made a case here recently—an extended, forceful and informed argument —that it all began in 1968 at the Paris auto show with the Alfa Romeo Carabo concept. Designed by young Marcello Gandini at Bertone, the Carabo made a sharp-edged break with the notion that sports cars had to look voluptuous, with bulging curves like a Shelby Cobra, Jaguar E-type, or Ferrari 250GTO.
Here, we’ll celebrate the examples that appeared as concepts at auto shows between the late 1960s and well into the 1980s. First, note that Gandini’s Carabo wasn’t just a design trick. It reflected contemporary thinking in aerodynamics: Get the nose low to keep excess air from going under the car and slant the top surface to pile up some air pressure and push the chassis into the road for grip. Wedges had their moment in the racing world just before the wings took over. A 1967 Can-Am car still had some bulges, but the wedge profile was what the smart designers were after. The exemplar must be the Lotus 56, the turbine Indy race car from 1968. On the racetracks and the roads, the thin edge of the wedge split the end of one era from the beginning of a new one.
1967 Lamborghini Marzal
Here's Marcello Gandini at Bertone, tipping his hand in a design study shown at Geneva in 1967. The four-seat Lambo idea evolved into the Espada. The Marzal, though, used an inline-six—essentially one bank of Lamborghini's 4.0-liter V-12. It's perhaps most notable for serving as the pace car for the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, driven by Princess Grace.
1968 Dodge Charger III
Not quite a real wedge and also not a real car in that it was a design study that never had an engine in it (although the company claimed that any of its V-8s would fit), the 1968 Dodge Charger III lacks only the truffle-hunting, nose-in-the-dirt stance. Influences from the Corvette and the Cobra Daytona are evident, but the edges are getting crisper.
1968 Dodge Charger III
Slant the windshield down enough and getting in and out of a car becomes a challenge. This Dodge concept's cockpit-style opening represents a solution many wedge cars would use in the ensuing decade. This is the same car as in the previous image; changing colors between shows was a common practice in the era, creating the illusion that more than the one concept car existed.
1968 Alfa Romeo P33
Pininfarina's Paolo Martin rolled this one out at the 1968 Turin show. The wedge profile is prominent but the rounded front fenders mark it as an evolutionary step toward the all-in transformation that would come from Bertone. It was based on Alfa's T33 platform, a designer favorite in this period. Mounting the engine aft or amidships works much better for wedge-shaped cars.
1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo
This is it, the Marcello Gandini trendsetter that heralded Bertone's place at the forefront of the doorstop school of car design. Special glass that could for the first time in history be bent sharply and remain sturdy and transparent was an enabler. The scissor-opening doors have small porthole windows—the Italian designers said they were for toll booths because fast-food drive-thru service was barely a thing yet even in America. Based on Alfa 33 mechanicals, the Carabo marked a sharp departure from the 33 Stradale that came from Bertone's studio only two years earlier.
1968 Bizzarrini Manta
The Manta was the first concept car from Giorgetto Giugiaro's new firm, Ital Design (two words at the time). Developed on a Bizzarrini sports prototype racing chassis with power from a mid-mounted Corvette V-8, it put the driver in the center with a passenger either side and slightly rearward. The door windows are fixed. It was first shown in green, later in bright orange with black and white accent stripes, but ended up silver, as in this photo. The silver livery makes it easier to see the resemblance to roadgoing wedges that would come from Giugiaro's pen, such as the DeLorean DMC-12 more than a decade later.
1968 Bizzarrini Manta
This is the color in which the Manta first appeared, at Turin in 1968. Rather than "wedge," the more frequent reference was to a "one-box" design, a term that persists, although it later seemed more appropriate for minivans than exotic concept cars.
1969 Ferrari 512S Berlinetta Speciale by Pininfarina
Pininfarina produced this Speciale concept car pointing toward the upcoming Berlinetta Boxer with its mid-engine, longitudinally mounted flat-12. We believe the woman in this image is there to block some of the sun pounding down into what is essentially a glass roof. Climate-control engineers pulled a lot of overtime making the A/C function adequately when similar shapes found their way into production.
1969 Ferrari 512S Berlinetta Speciale
Shot in-studio without the distractions of the bright yellow paint or the woman clad in leopard skin, you'll note that the shape also makes doors a problem--the solution was again a one-piece canopy like that on the Dodge Charger III, but hinged on the front and opening forward. Packaging in general was a major headache, one reason wedges made better concepts than production cars. Fitting passengers and a drivetrain inside the envelope just didn't come easily. We can tell you firsthand, though, that these designs were perfectly suited to our 1/24-scale slot cars.
1969 Autobianchi Runabout
Another Gandini creation for Bertone, the Runabout would become the production-model Fiat X1/9 three years later. The key notion was that you could take a the powertrain out of a transverse-engine FWD compact and create a budget mid-engine two-seater. Revealed at Turin in 1969 and presented as a "beach car" (no top solution was evident, what with the cut-down, speedster-style windshield), this one set a pattern that would later give us Toyota's MR2 and Pontiac's Fiero, both wedgy little numbers in their own right.
1969 Mercedes-Benz C-111
The ever-so-serious engineers who ran Mercedes-Benz could never be bothered with the frivolity of "dream cars." The gullwing-doored, wedge-shaped C-111 they unveiled at the Frankfurt Show in September 1969, then, was presented as a "research vehicle." And they weren't kidding. Besides aerodynamics, ideas Mercedes was testing included fiberglass bodywork and the Wankel rotary engine. After long and serious research over the next four years, Stuttgart's decision regarding the production potential of both fiberglass and the Wankel was the same: Nope. The C-111s (there were several) got diesel engine transplants and set a pile of speed and distance records, some of which stood for decades.
1970 Ferrari Modulo
Pininfarina's Modulo, also a Ferrari 512S (5-liter flat-12) like the previous year's Berlinetta Speciale, was less than 37 inches tall. The forward portion slid as a unit over the nose. Interesting and undeniably cool, but perhaps not so much a wedge as a flying saucer on wheels and not terribly influential on what was to come later. >a href="http://ift.tt/1uWA1Hm" target="_blank">Pininfarina sold it in late 2014 to Ferrari collector Jim Glickenhaus.
1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero
The 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero concept was all form over function. Visually, it's the step between the previous Carabo concept and the production Lamborghini Countach. As impractical as it is, the Stratos Zero is a fully functioning car. Its midship V-4 and transaxle came out of the front-drive Fulvia coupe. And Bertone made just enough room for two seats (the occupants' feet extended beyond the front axle) under a 33-inch tall roof. Entry was via roof-hinged, front-opening canopy, more of a flip-up lid really, and the black front deck ahead of the windshield was designed as a step for people to use while getting in and out.
1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero
"Rearview" mirrors, tiny little things hidden in the side scallops at the front edge of the side window glass, could be supplemented, when the prototype made rare road excursions, with an "interior" rearview mirror that mounted on a pedestal atop the car, at the back edge of the windshield/door. What it needed was cameras.
The Stratos project did not start out as a Lancia commission—Bertone simply borrowed the Fulvia drivetrain because A) it fit the project's packaging needs and, B) it was a sales tool, a calling card to say, "Look what we can do with your hardware." It worked; Bertone got the contract to design the landmark competition rally Stratos, one of the wedgier shapes ever to come off an assembly line. But it was nowhere near as extreme as the HF Zero.
1970 Vauxhall SRV
This "Styling Research Vehicle" from GM-Europe's British arm appeared at the London Motor Show in 1970. One of the most successful applications of the wedge theme to a four-passenger vehicle, it has four doors, the rear ones being handle-less and hinged at the back. This is 1970, long before anyone was doing this on trucks, and decades before Mazda's RX-8. It's mid-engined, with a 2.3-liter inline-four (slanted atop the crankcase/transaxle) ahead of the rear axle.
All of 41 inches high, this gem was designed by none other than Wayne Cherry, whose star would rise all the way to the top of General Motors Design in 1992. Its design is endorsed by no less an authority than Jaguar design director Ian Callum, who recently told Automotive News that "You could put it on a stand today, with bigger wheels, and people would be stunned."
1970 VW-Porsche Tapiro
Giugiaro did this proposal over Porsche 914 mechanicals (hence the VW-Porsche branding, although Italdesign had chosen the Porsche flat-six engine rather than the base VW four). You could be forgiven for guessing it was badged a Lotus.
1970 VW-Porsche Tapiro
If one pair of gullwing doors is cool, how about a second set? The glass over the mid-mounted engine also opens gullwing style, all four panels hinged on a center spine down the center of the roof. The girl? It was 1970. That's all the explanation we have.
1970 Mazda RX500
First displayed at the 1970 Tokyo Motor Show, this rotary-powered Mazda showed that the trend was global and Japan was paying attention. It was presented as a design study in "safety" with multi-colored lights on the Kamm tail that would tell trailing drivers more information than merely whether the car was stopping or turning. That it also showed off the packaging advantages of Mazda's rotary engine and its racing ambitions were just bonuses atop impressing the safety regulators.
1970 Nissan 126X
With a rear-mounted six-cylinder and four-wheel-drive, this was Nissan/Datsun's take on the wedge-car theme, seen at the Tokyo show in 1971. As at Mazda, the corporation spoke dutifully of its many safety features while barely remarking on the styling or performance.
1971 Maserati Boomerang
Less constrained by regulatory and packaging worries than were the production Bora and Merak of this era, the Boomerang was Giugiaro's take on the "ultimate" sports car.
Italdesign showed the Boomerang first as a styling buck at Turin in 1971 and later as a running prototype using hardware from the Bora. That means a mid-mounted 4.7-liter V-8 making just over 300 horsepower.
1971 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Caimano
Italdesign's Alfasud has a huge canopy that opens from the back edge and is hinged in front; it was a full-on-runner with a traditional front-engine/rear-drive layout. See, you can put a wedge on that kind of platform. It just comes out kinda weird. It'd probably also need an air-conditioning compressor bigger than its engine.
1973 4-Rotor Chevrolet Corvette
This 1973 concept aimed to take full advantage of the General Motors Wankel-engine program, which walked right up to the brink of production before the OPEC oil crisis of 1973 made the Wankel's fuel economy a bigger concern than it had been before. It had a less potent sibling with a two-rotor engine, but this one was reportedly Zora Arkus-Duntov's dream for a mid-engine Corvette. We could tell you a lot more, but in fact we already have. Look here.
After the Wankel project was killed, this car was reconfigured with a V-8 engine, renamed Aerovette, and green-lighted for production. But it never made it, sadly.
1973 Audi Karmann Asso Di Picche
Underneath this wedgy shape lies a 1973 Audi 80. What's evolving on the outside is clearly a precursor of both the VW Scirocco, barely a year away from production, and the legendary Audi ur Quattro of 1980.
1974 Lamborghini Bravo
A proposed replacement for the Uracco 2+2 that had only entered production a year before, the Bravo was shown at Turin and is all Uracco underneath. The design shares a familial resemblance with Gandini's Countach. This Bertone studio shot finds the Bravo wearing white but it was mostly shown in a light yellow and, later, a bright green color.
1976 Alfa Romeo Navajo
Based on the T33 sports racing car with a mid-mounted V-8, this Bertone project was a complete departure from the 33 Stradale that Franco Scaglione had designed at the firm nine years earlier. The headlights don't pop up but rather outward from the fenders ahead of the wheels.
1978 DomeZero
Japanese racing shop and accessory maker Dome brought this concept to Geneva in 1978 and said it was going into the road-car production biz. That never worked out. First they couldn't get homologation in Japan, then a scheme to build the car in America and export from there faltered in the way so many great car ideas do. But it's damned handsome and we could wish Dome had been as "successful" in getting a few cars onto the road as was, say, Vector.
The mid-mounted six-cylinder was Nissan's, as used in the 280ZX, and other components came from various Japanese manufacturers.
1978 Ford Ghia Action
Ghia's Filippo Sapino devised the Action for parent company Ford as a design study for a competition car to be powered by the company's Cosworth DFV 3.0-liter V-8, then in ubiquitous use in Formula 1. The sharp-pleated edges seen here were getting rounded off more in production designs, although aerodynamicists still favored the crisp breaks.
1978 Sbarro Challenge
Franco Sbarro, the foremost creator of out-there Swiss concepts, wheeled out this one for the 1978 Geneva show. It turned into the closest thing he got to being an actual manufacturer, with about a dozen built and running around in the world. The one in the photo was the initial concept, though, and how could a story about wedges ignore it?
The concept is Mercedes-powered and relies on a camera in place of a rearview mirror, as there is no rear glass. Most of the roadgoing examples were built atop Porsche 911 hardware.
1980 Citroën Karin
Tell the French to let their imaginations run wild and you get things like the Karin. This was mostly a playful exercise for Franco-Italian designer Trevor Fiore, then the company's design chief, and its only relation to production cars was the SM-style headlight treatment.
Underneath the pyramid was what Citroën dubbed "butterfly-opening" doors (gullwings have too much association with Germans, we'd guess), it's pretty standard production hardware with a front-drive, transverse four-cylinder engine and, being a Citroën, a hydropneumatic suspension. It's less than 40 inches tall, and the driver is situated dead center with the passenger seats to either side moved rearward to get a little headroom under the rear glass, which is less steeply raked than the windshield.
1980 Aston Martin Bulldog
Tested to over 190 mph in 1979 and shown in 1980, this William Towns design stretched the parameters of his 1976 Lagonda sedan. With long, massive gullwing doors and the engine moved the the middle of the car, it was initially a one-off commission for a customer in the Middle East who later had second thoughts and bowed out.
Towns took a unique approach to the headlight problem. The panel seen ahead of the lights rises to create a smooth wedge hood line when illumination isn't necessary. Its 5.3-liter turbocharged V-8 mounted amidships provided 600 to 700 horsepower. Aston Martin claimed a theoretical top speed of 237 mph. Despite suggesting a production run of 25, the project ended with the one car, which was sold into private ownership and still exists.
1988 Italdesign Aztec
The crisp-folded wedges of a decade earlier have softened by the late 1980s. Based on Audi hardware, the Aztec was shown with two other similar concepts, the Aspid, a more conventional coupe, and Asgard, a one-box minivan-like eight-seater.
1989 Ferrari Mythos
Essentially a Testarossa underneath, Pininfarina's Mythos appeared in 1989, marking a blend of both wedge profile and a move back toward more sensually curved shapes.
For now, we'll call it the last of the wedge cars.
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