Page 51 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell

Illustration 12
It can be considered, therefore, in the author’s opinion, fairly certain logically that the next line of big development will be a car designed on lines as shown on the following slide. Not only does it provide for exceptionally good streamline formation on both plan and elevation, but by tucking the engine away at the rear, the floor of the driver and passenger compartments are unencumbered. (Illustration 12)
How long it will be before the public are ready to assimilate such a design, it is hard to say. Ten years, at least, probably more, in the author’s opinion, and there is a psychological reason for it, that may not occur to every designer. Drivers and passengers have, for so long, been used to having first the horse, and then the engine, in front, giving them, perhaps subconsciously, a comforting feeling of protection in the event of a collision, that it is going to take a long time to accustom them to the rear-engined car, which leaves occupants sitting ‘so near the accident’.
To show how comparatively slow is this acceptance by the public to anything new in motor car design, a German named Jaray1, as long ago as 1922, 1923 and 1924, obtained patents, which appeared to consist of two streamline shapes, one superimposed upon the other, to produce a complete body shape. The author believes he is right in saying that the Airflow Chrysler and rear engined eight- cylinder Tatra, and the English designs by Captain Fitzmaurice, were, and are, constructed under licence from Jaray. And here is a patented design, 15 years old, still not wholly acceptable to the public taste.
It is interesting to try and analyse out why this is so, quite apart from any possible psychological reason suggested. Surely it is because the average speed of cars is not yet sufficiently high to justify such shapes, and that the appreciation of this fact is subconscious in the minds of the motoring public!
Having dealt with this subject in a general sense, let us get down to everyday matters and review the motor car design of today.
Immediately one does this, there emerges to confront the designer – in the artistic sense – horrible limitations. Wheels, headroom, back axle, spare wheel, large luggage space, driving visibility, manufacturing costs considerations, sacrifices to accessibility, short wheelbase, ad infinitum. Shackled hand and foot, the poor artist designer is expected to produce an eyeable symmetrical- shaped body, harmonious in line, with commodious interior comfort on a mechanical structure we call a chassis which, if the body had been evolved before the chassis, we should have laughed at it. A structure that limits the height and position of our seats, determines the height of your floor, allowing to the necessary necessity of having what we engineers call a ‘propshaft’ and a ‘diff’ cluttering up the floor space.
Then there is a tendency to push the engine forward, and create an aldermanic touch to the design. Small wheels upset all sense of proportion.
1 Author’s note: In fact Vienna-born Jaray was of Hungarian origin.
Appendix 2: ‘The Trend of Aesthetic Design in Motor Cars’
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