Jason and his Grandmother, parts 3180 - 3183

 3180. Even now, so many years later, I wonder just what it was that afflicted Detroit, and its designers so many years ago. The forms of the automobile had evolved in such a logical fashion from the beginning up until the 1940s. But in the forties one began to see the advent of the aerodynamic look so that  space inside the vehicle no longer conformed to the needs of the driver or the passengers.

 3181. But still, although cars began to look a little like rocket ships, the design concepts seemed to arise from the minds of the designers themselves, and not from somewhere else. But, you ask, where but in the minds of the designers could one look for the inspiration for car designs?

3182. To answer this question you have to image the upper management of a car company meeting with the designers. The designers all have drawings of their concept cars to present for the coming year. All of the drawings they have worked so hard to create have been rejected. The management is asking them to come up with something unexpected and unheard of.

 

3183. The management makes this request, “We want you to come up with drawings of cars that look like what our customers want a car to look like. We are not interested in what you designers think cars should look like. And when you do these drawings, keep in mind that we do not want to see what the most sophisticated and aware buyers want cars to look like, we are more interested in the design that will appeal to the most ordinary, even the most stupid of our future clients.”