DESIGN
DYNAMICS
tech, using the Sync system to
connect with smartphones and
iPods, and allowing drivers to
talk to their cars. They’re also
working on making seats more
comfortable, dashboards and
other parts feel more expensive
to the touch, and making
the technology systems less
distracting.
Mood lighting helps, too.
Chrysler, Ford and GM are all
working on ways to light up little
nooks and crannies in the car,
because it makes the inside feel
more like a living room than a
car. The colors are changeable,
so drivers who get bored of blue
accent lights can change it to pink
or white or red.
THE EMOTIONAL SIDE
Welburn is sitting in the back
of Nicola Bulgari’s 1932 Cadillac
Fleetwood limousine, showing off
the spacious interior. The car is
on loan from Bulgari, the scion of
the Bulgari luxury goods company,
who recently awarded Welburn the
inaugural Bulgari award for people
who have made a contribution to
automotive heritage.
The car feels like it’s as big as
a modern day minivan. The seats
feel like a wide, soft couch. On the
HUFFINGTON
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outside, the running boards rise
up over the wheels, making the
car look like a piece of art.
He’s raving about the
proportions of the car —
proportions are something
automotive designers like to
talk about, but few people really
understand.
“It’s how the car works
together, the relationship of the
body of the vehicle to the curve of
the bumpers to the placement of
the wheels,” he says. “Sometimes
it all works together just right,
and the proportions just sing.
When you don’t have great
proportions, you can tell.”
Yet over the past century or
so, what appears in retrospect
to be elegant or daring design
was either standard procedure
at the time the car was built or
was something that got adopted
and assimilated so rapidly that it
became commonplace.
In the 1930s, when Bulgari’s
limousine was built, the
proportions may have been
exquisite but it looked a lot
like other cars on the road. The
bumper curving up over the front
tire was standard practice. The
shiny black paint and chrome
bumpers seemed somewhat
conventional, too. In the ‘50s,
once tailfins and multi-colored
cars became popular, that style