Simanaitis Says
On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff
ON IMAGE
BACK IN the 1980s, one of the late GM divisions—okay, it was Pontiac—asked me to speak on image enhancement. These comments continue to make sense today. To wit:
1. Drive lots of cars, your own and the other guys’. After a while, a sense of objectivity can’t help but evolve.
Alas, even now it’s said that U.S. automaker employees are still required to drive only their own cars; more’s the pity.
2. Drive them lots of places. Woodward Avenue is one of the straightest streets in the world. And, during the musclecar era, it showed.
The Stelvio Pass in the Italian Alps is an excellent automotive proving ground.
As a colleague once noted, the world’s best cars are designed within 100 miles of the Alps. One drive there, and the truth of this is revealed.
3. Don’t rest on your laurels. An automaker may do a couple things well, but as Dr. Edwards Deming showed the Japanese—and they showed us—constant improvement is essential.
4. Develop a method of measuring your laurels: Fine-tune what Ernest Hemingway called your own built-in shock-proof crap detector. Identify when its needle twitches with your own pitches as well as those of others.
5. Last, don’t call them “units.” They’re cars and trucks; collectively, vehicles. “Units” are for counting refrigerators, washing machines, maybe even computers.
Enthusiasts are passionate about their cars and trucks. Even non-enthusiasts have an emotional attachment to their vehicles. It’s demeaning to count these as mere manufactured goods.
Now I’ll get off this little box before I fall and hurt myself. ds
Simanaitis Says 
Re emotional attachment: Someone said (truthfully, IMO) that it is no coincidence that there are few refrigerator museums, but thousands of car museums.
Denise McCluggage gave me my favorite bit of Alpine influence on car design. I had noted that the class-winning SWB Berlinetta at Pebble Beach in 2010 had three dual Webers, while the write-up said these Comp/61 “SEFAC Hot Rods” had six, and larger ones at that. Her explanation was that perhaps Luigi Chinetti’s experience in the Alps influenced the choice. She said he reported that in the slow steep hairpins, the carbs would load up and he had to back down and take another run at them. The winning SWB Berlinetta was in its winning Tour de France form, which was run on public roads. If the auto race was anything like the ones on bicycles, that means Alps!