Obviously these takes are ridiculous in hindsight. It makes you wonder what opinions on driving that people hold today will sound just as ridiculous 60 years from now.

Lucid

What he said had little to do with the Cybertruck specifically. He defended avant-garde design as a concept, which is to say he said something valuable but hardly controversial. The avant-garde is meant to challenge the status quo - often aggressively - and for that reason will always be polarizing. But that’s its purpose, to challenge and propose new ways of considering or approaching or viewing a topic; in this case the notion of what a vehicle should look like and whether the vehicle and those who design it have a duty to the public regarding aesthetics (this is a popular debate in architecture, for example).

Car enthusiasts in particular are extremely conservative when it comes to design, so anything markedly different is usually received negatively, and only through the lens of nostalgia are many challenging designs viewed positively. The article even says the DeLorean falls in that category. But it’s important that design not stagnate because that limits innovation in other areas since in cars design is meant to interface with other aspects of the vehicle and all of that as a package is meant to interact intimately with the consumer. So designers should be encouraged to try new things. Some will flop and be forgotten, some will flop and be enshrined in ridicule, some will flop and be adored after they’re gone, and one or two special ones will have both critical and commercial success.

This isn’t specific to cars. Wordpress style forums have seen vastly decreased user engagement all across the board regardless of hobby or focus since the rise of platforms meant to engage with users through smartphones. Instagram in particular has been the death knell for the old forum format, particularly if the activity has a strong visual component. Smartphones are not great for long-form reading and typing, and they seem to be the primary means by which people casually interact with the internet these days. Additionally, car enthusiasm is in a precarious moment due to a number of factors. As a result, old-school forums continue to see decreased user engagement and a general loss of users over time.

There are metrics out there that show the trend, but tbh it’s been a long time since I’ve bothered to look at them.

“Whatever you can get a deal on. I can drive anything.”

BMW XM Label Red it is.

This is the kind of comment that makes me consider trading in my 6 series every time I pass the one GranTurismo convertible on my dog’s walking route.

Calling u/verdegrrl. I know she loves her Maserati.

surgeon_michael about to perform surgery on the kids’ soccer balls now.