Motor Trend - USA (2020-02)

S

ome moments you never

forget. Seeing my bride

walk down the aisle

toward me at our wedding.

Driving my first car home. And

now, in a somewhat distant

but still significant third place:

my initial glimpse of the new,

industry-changing Tesla

Cybertruck electric pickup

in a clandestine September

meeting at the automaker’s

design headquarters just

outside of Los Angeles.

Few outsiders have ever been

allowed inside the top-secret

Tesla Design Studio, nestled

away next to the sprawling

SpaceX factory, a Falcon 9

rocket, and a scale replica of

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop in

a corner of the Hawthorne

Airport. Elon and his right-

hand man, chief designer Franz

von Holzhausen, invited us to

be the first journalists inside to

see the automaker’s most hotly

anticipated debut since the

Model 3: the Tesla pickup truck.

Leading up to the truck’s

public unveiling, MotorTrend

got behind the scenes with the

Tesla team, provided feedback,

and watched the Cybertruck

go from a life-size clay model

to a (purportedly) bulletproof

working prototype.

As we enter the studio, Franz

scans his key card and holds

open the door as Elon leads us

into the repurposed airfield

hangar, where the first, radical

Northrop flying wings took

shape. Now serving a much

different purpose, the well-lit

design studio nonetheless

sports an equally revolutionary

machine today.

Like a Zumwalt-class

destroyer meets a leftover Blade

Runner prop, Tesla’s truck looks

like none I’d ever seen before.

Its design is deceptively

simple. Its profile is diamond-

like, with five simple lines. Its

nose is wedge-shaped, its sheet-

metal quickly merging with a

single massive pane of wind-

shield glass—“bulletproof,” Elon

says (with hubris, as it turns

out). Just as quickly as that line

rises, it drops back down, with

the truck’s sail panels (which

will include built-in storage

in the production version)

and garage/tambour door–

style roll-up tonneau cover

completing its faceted physique.

Its head-on view is equally

arresting; a cyclopean single

LED flows across the nose

to join the fender flares, and

a second off-road-oriented

lightbar lives at the top of the

windshield. Its polished, stain-

less steel sheetmetal has a few

creases to define the tumble-

home and curves toward the

rear of the truck’s 230.0-inch

length—roughly the length of a

conventional Ford F-150 crew

NEWSI OPINIONI GOSSIPI STUFF TREND I 02.

WORDS CHRISTIAN SEABAUGH

12 MOTORTREND.COM FEBRUARY 2020