Top designers offer their takes on classic cars
It’s a fickle thing, retro car design. Frank Stephenson, now head of design at McLaren Automotive, oversaw two huge hits by reincarnating both the Mini and the Fiat 500, each of which went on to spawn an entire model family. Yet even the might of VW couldn’t convincingly score what some might call an open goal with the reinvention of the Beetle in the late 1990s.
Then there’s the likes of Chrysler’s ‘street rod’-inspired PT Cruiser, which, despite gathering a cult following, made others struggle to keep their lunch down. In short, looking backwards to go forwards is a risky business. But few would argue that old timers don’t have the aesthetic edge over their modern counterparts, and we’ve all got personal favourites from yesteryear that make us go helplessly dewy-eyed. Perhaps more than most, car designers feel the same.
Three of the best draftsmen in the business were asked to pick a bygone model that makes them go all swoony and rework it for the modern era. The results were stunning, intriguing, and most of all, surprising...
