Electel Blogspot

Time for another change of pace.  In my possession is the July 1955 issue of Road & Track magazine -- cover below: Note that one of the featured items is a "Styling Critique."  It occupied nine pages: an introduction; two pages devoted to "Classic Styling" (1928-1941); two pages to "Modern Styling" (1935-1951); and the rest to "Contemporary Styling (1951-1955). The styling evaluators were Strother MacMinn (a well-respected instructor at the [then] Los Angeles Art Center School and former General Motors stylist), and Bob Gurr , who worked at Ford before becoming a designer for Disney.  He wrote the classic, early styling book " Automobile Design ."  Some additional comments were by John Bond, the magazine's editor. Below are three scanned pages that might provide some flavor of the critique.  Click on them to enlarge. Gallery Gurr thought "Frankly, the Continental is an over-rated piece of Styling."  Fortunately, both like...

This is a twist from my usual street scene photo galleries of cars. Part of my Army enlistment involved a tour of duty in Korea, 1963-64.  Thanks to my specialty of public relations and my organization (7th Logistical Command) that had facilities from Pusan to Inchon, I was able to travel in more parts of South Korea than many GIs stationed near the Demilitarized Zone up north could. Nowadays Korea is a major producer of automobiles.  Back then, so far as I know, most domestically sourced vehicles were modified versions of American trucks and jeeps. Below are some photos I took during my stay.  I haven't visited the county since then, though I suspect the place might have changed a little. Gallery Looking down towards Seoul's South Gate.  Almost no vehicles in view. Looking towards Seoul's main railroad station.  More traffic, mostly Japanese-made taxis. View from the train station the day I arrived on my way south to 7th Log headquarters in Taegu.  Vehicle...

An illustrator who had a pen-and-ink touch I greatly admire was Jeffrey I. Godshall (1941-2019) who was a stylist at Chrysler and in his spare time an automobile historian. A series of "Car Spotter" illustrations appeared in the late, lamented (by me, at least) "Special-Interest Autos" magazine in the late 1970s.    Here , for example, is a link to contents of all its issues. For some reason I assumed that Godshall simply drew those car pictures freehand, using some reference material.  But that is a lot more difficult than it might seem.  Recently it occurred to me that the most efficient way to do the work would be to trace reference photos and then do the inking with perhaps some adjustments to the references. It seems that's just what he did. Below are examples of those fine drawings along with likely reference photos that I found on my image reference database.  Click on images to enlarge. Gallery Note the Ford coupe in the middle of the page. This was prob...