CARS OF THE FUTURE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33033, 28 September 1972, Page 15

CARS OF THE FUTURE

A periscope will replace the rear-vision mirror in the car of tomorrow. Radio antennas as we know them will disappear. Seats will be bigger, rooflines higher and instrument panels will be more like those of aircraft. And it probably will be impossible to toss rubbish into the street, because of non-opening windows. We can expect safer, if more expensive cars, as a result of more stringent world-wide safety demands. Tomorrow’s cars are likely to be uglier. They will certainly be wider, sleeker and with less emphasis on style. Rash predictions? Not when they come from the elite of the world’s coachbuilders, Italy’s renowned Pininfarina, Carli, Giugiaro and Bertone. The “big four” of the motor design industry give their predictions in “World Cars 1972," a reference book published annually by the Automobile Club of Italy. Nuccio Bertone, who ranks with Sergio Pininfarina, as the most famous car designer of our time, believes the growing world trend to safer cars will be one of the dominant factors behind the shape of tomorrow’s models. He writes: "Following application of the new regulations. little by little the aesthetics of passenger cars will undergo a deep transformation, both inside and outside. "Even today the designer does not have complete freedom in the aesthetic formulation of the coachwork. “As far as the external aspect is concerned, we shall be called upon to work on bumpers quite unlike the ones used today, since they will have to absorb frontal shock up to 10 m.p.h. "Side panels will have to absorb shocks up to 30 m.p.h. "As far as passenger space is concerned, since all the passengers must be given a chance of surviving an accident at 70 m.p.h., a return to the curved lines of

the roof is to be expected, and these will be joined to the side panels without any attempt at continuity. "One consequence of new regulations will be an increase in the over-all height jf the vehicle (giving more headroom and making it safer). “The radio antenna will disappear, the rear mirror will be replaced by a periscope, the windscreen wipers will be completely modified and handles will be completely sunk into the bodywork.” But Bertone predicts that safety standards will be most apparent inside. “The real revolution,” he says, “will be in the interior. The motorist can no longer be jolted or jerked: this means huge seats, anchored to the floor with no possibility of sliding; therefore steeringwheel and pedals must be adjustable. “The use of fixed seats will mean, among other things, opting for fourdoor bodies on anything bigger than a two-seater.” The instrument panel will have to be heavily padded, according to Bertone. There will be a padded, nondeformable steering wheel, more and more warning lights (indicators for closed doors and for latched safety belts, to name but two) and a really effective warmfresh air distribution system made necessary by the non-opening windows. One of Bertone’s most important and startling observations is on the question of style, a vital marketing factor in the past. Bertone rates it of least importance in designing the car of the future, principally because of safety demands. ( Relaxing He concludes: "The new cars will certainly look very different from the ones we are used to today, and some people are forecasting that thev will be uglier. “The concept of beauty has always been more er less relative and is often the expression of the particular historical moment to which it is linked. “I feel that we shall certainly come to accept different aesthetic formulations from the ones adhered to now, but they should be no less fascinating.”

Pininfarina adds these thoughts: “It is difficult to foresee the future of the passenger car. “But the progress of public transport, so far behind the times except in aviation, will leade to unforeseeable developments and thus to the birth of vehicles of a radically fresh concept, hardly to be imagined today.” Pininfarina, like Bertone, predicts that safety — because it dictates precise limitations—will tax the designer’s ingenuity. Giorgetto Giugiaro, most promising of the younger generation of Italian coachbuilders, is also troubled by the safety question. “I am afraid that in a not-so-distant future we shall be obliged to design cars that are all alike, since to the limitations that are already imposed by production costs we shall now have to add, step by step, a whole series of limitations dictated by the new regulations governing active and passive safety. “It will come to a stage when we shall have to build a kind of crash car with huge circular bumpers that will protect it on all sides.” Renzo Carli, Pininfarina’s brother-in-law, is less pessimistic about the coachbuilder’s future, but still predicts dramatic changes in the shape of things to come. “I do not feel that any restrictive regulations can ever bring our actiivties to a standstill,” he says. “But shall we be prevented from making cars as they are conceived today? Very well, we shall make something new, we shall completely change the layout.”