Mark Rechtin
Reference Mark
NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF@markrechtin
W
hen Tesla Motors rolled out its original Model
S sedan in fall 2011, some folks (self included)
were a bit underwhelmed by the rather
restrained styling of Elon Musk’s opening
salvo in the electric vehicle wars.
To me, it looked like a next-gen Mazda6, which wouldn’t
have been a reach—given that Musk had poached Mazda
U.S. chief designer Franz von Holzhausen with barely
enough time to pull out his sketch pad before needing
to design Tesla’s franchise sedan.
When I asked Franz about the Model S styling, he
patiently swept aside my thinly veiled critique about his
design and said the conservative approach was intentional.
“People need to think really hard about taking this leap
into uncharted territory,” he said at the time. “I didn’t
want to alienate people by creating a vehicle that was
awkward and weird. We wanted to create the cornerstone
from where the brand is going to build.”
In other words: One thing at a time. Make the transition
from gasoline to electric as seamless as possible. Don’t
make it hard on early adopters by making
them explain to their neighbors not only their
decision to go electric but also why they were
driving some goofy-looking vehicle.
Then Franz added a kicker: Expect tradi-
tional styling for the first generation of cars.
Let Tesla get established. Then look out.
Guess the second generation has arrived.
The Cybertruck concept that Elon rolled out in the
wake of the L.A. Auto Show is anything but goofy looking.
It is seriously radical, like something Arnold Schwarz-
enegger will emerge from in the next Terminator movie.
No one will look at a pickup truck the same way again.
In silhouette, the Cybertruck looks like the collision of
two doorstops (thanks, Ed Loh, for that vivid description).
Head on, or from an offset perspective, it’s all hard angles
and aggression. The testosterone levels are off the charts.
Musk already ( jokingly?) tweeted about a “pressurized
version” for when he and his crew of interplanetary
voyagers need transport on Mars.Tesla’s Retro-Futuristic Cybertruck:
Pickup, stealth fighter, or Mars rover?
.In purely automotive terms, the Cybertruck may
pay homage to exotic ’70s concepts like the Maserati
Boomerang, Ferrari Modulo, and Lancia Stratos Zero,
but that’s where the disco-era tribalism ends. Line it
up against all the trucks currently on sale, and they all
look ancient. Forget the 2002 Thunderbird, this is what
J Mays was searching for when he dropped the term
“retro-futurism” a few years back.
To the unpracticed eye, the lines of a Cybertruck may
look basic, like a kid’s Tangram puzzle spilt on the dining
room table. But it actually owes more to very complicated
modern-era military design—from the F-22 stealth
fighter to the Zumwalt-class destroyer.
“People will argue that this is overly simplistic. I call
it un-design,” Franz said in a recent interview. “Erasing
the normalizing of design out of our heads was a long,
drawn-out process. We started out with a shape like this,
then we had to go all around the world to come back again
to this. It’s so foreign from what we’ve done.”
Let’s get to the construction: Seriously, 3mm-thick
stainless steel as the body panels? The last
stainless steel car was the DeLorean (although
Ford and Allegheny Ludlum steel conspired on
a limited promotional run back in the 1930s
and again in the ’60s). But the Cybertruck
reimagines its use in the pickup truck domain.
Another cool thing about stainless steel: It
gets stronger as the temperatures drop. You
know the average temperature on Mars? Minus-80 Fahr-
enheit. Talk about protecting your design for the future.
In the 1990s, when Nissan rolled out its first lozenge-
shaped vehicles like the Altima and Infiniti J30, the late
Jerry Hirshberg, then-head of Nissan Design Interna-
tional, referred to his new design as breaking from “the
tyranny of the wedge.” Not long after, the entire industry
followed suit with their own slippery suppositories.
With the Cybertruck, Franz von Holzhausen has
broken Tesla away from the tyranny of the lozenge. The
wedge is back. Q24 MOTORTREND.COM FEBRUARY 2020