DESIGNING A BODY.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 42, 28 May 1935, Page 2

DESIGNING A BODY.

MUCH DETAILED WORK,

Few motorists know of the vast amount of detail work that lies behind the beautifully-moulded bodies gracing the latest new cars. Car bodies were formerly designed practically on a blackboard, but the importance of body lines has brought about a totally new method of designing in those overseas centres where car body fashions are evolved. The up-to-date process consists of making a full-sized plaster model, leased frequently on data gained from wind-tunnel tests with small plaster models. The full-sizea model is carved or shaped into exactly the form designed, and is mounted on a frame with wheels and plaster dummy bonnet and mudguards, thus making it possible to visualise the whole car. When the modelling of the plaster of paris body is complete, it is smoothed, painted and polished, so that the lustre will bring out the highlights. Thus can the efr fects of lights and shadows be studied from every angle. When satisfied with the plaster body, the designers make a perfect copy of the body, bonnet and mudguards in soft wood, usually mahogany. This wooden form is subsequently used in sections in the foundry, where casts are made. From each section a pair of dies is cast, so that when they are brought together, in huge hydraulic presses, a fiat sheet of steel is moulded into a perfect reproduction of the plaster model. These sections are subsequently welded together by an electric process, and thus assembled into a complete unit of great strength. It is contended by designers that the body-lines of a car have largely disappeared since the introduction of streamlining, it being claimed that the pbserver of a modern car does

not really see lines, but only the highlights which are reflected from the curved surfaces of the moulded body. It is the highlights which accentuate and give life and character to the up-to-date car body, and it is stated that the handling of the highlights is one'of the most critical and important features of the creative work associated with the .design of new bodies.