Vehicles

The Nutty Bubblepunk Vehicles of Luigi Colani

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From the Department of Interestingness, Office of Wheels

Luigi Colani was a german industrial designer active from the 1950's until the 2000s. Clearly ahead of his time by pushing the boundaries of design in every project he took on. Looking at his work I feel like I'm seeing a future that never was. I had seen this guy's work for years while growing up. (I wanted to be a car designer when I was a kid) but had forgotten about him until I saw his Super Truck in my twitter feed: LINK

I found a nice online repository of all of the vehicles he designed: LINK

Here's a few of my favorites:

Dashboard Gallery

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From the Office of Wheels

Found this great gallery of old dashboards on Flickr. I'm always paying attention to this kind of stuff because A) I love industrial design and B) I never know when I might need to design a dashboard for a comic or concept art job. I love industrial design because I think it's pretty cool to see how 100 different designers decided to solve the same problem. Some of these are really spartan with just the essentials (LINK). While others have every gauge, knob, dial, and lever available at arms length (LINK).

Also find it fascinating where some car companies will spend money on interior design, and others look like the interior was an afterthought...something for the engineers to handle.

You can see many many more dashboards here: LINK​

-Jake

Cool Jets Round Up

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From the Office of Wings

I occasionally stumble on a cool photo of a jet online, and when I do I bookmark them or save them. I love seeing photos of jets from interesting angles, close up shots, even lighting, or just photos of unusual flying craft. All of these photos just "spoke" to me in someway or another and I thought I'd share them here.

I love that even though these machines are the apex of technology, even though they are the product of a century of advancements in science, physics, and engineering, you can still see the humanity in them. There's rivets and panels, grease stains, dirt, dents, scratches, and warping. These were all essentially hand made by skilled craftspeople and I love it.

-Jake

The Brubaker Box

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From the Office of Wheels

Considered the first minivan, and I do mean mini, it is built on the chassis of a Volkswagon Bug, the Brubaker Box was a futuristic car concept that drips with style.

Unfortunately it wasn't a viable business venture and its creator Curtis Brubaker ended up filing for bankruptcy after only building three of them.

I'm glad he followed his dream though because we at least get to see what an alternate present might look like had these things influenced automotive design.

Wikipedia entry: LINK​

More photos: LINK​

I wish I had an afternoon to learn more about Brubaker. He was a lear jet designer turned concept car creator. And designed a vehicle in 78 that looks like the inspiration for the cyber truck:

Deiselpunk Electric Motorcycle

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From the Office of Wheels

I think this motorcycle is pretty rad. It's electric, but instead of following the trend to make an electric vehicle look more cyber-futuristic the designer fo this bike went retro.

Pulling inspiration from the diesel age, Katalis Company designed this bike with analog instruments, exposed bolts, and bare seams.

You can see more of their motorcycles here: LINK​

I like this variant:

(via yanko design)

-Jake

Nissan's Experimental EVs from the 70's

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From the Office of Wheels

I'm always on the look out for quirky cars and these two caught my eye.

Back in the 70s Nissan made a couple experimental electric vehicles that are too cool to have just faded into the static noise of history.

I love the colors, the odd proportions, and the chunky-clunkyness of these designs. I'd drive one.

You can see the 6 page pamphlet this image came from here: LINK

-Jake

Mysterious Drone

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From the Department of Creative Bank Accounting, Office of Aerial Design

A drone washed ashore Taketomi Island . It's a US training drone called the Beechcraft MQM-107 Streaker. They launch these things from the ground, then it deploys a target that it tows behind it. Jet fighters catch up to it and practice shooting the target with missiles. Then the drone drops to the ground to be retrieved, outfitted with a new target and launched again.

I feel like this could be the first scene in a story. Some strange technology washes ashore a tiny island in the pacific. They're able to reverse engineer it, and create a weapon to help them defend themselves from some outside threat (kaiju maybe? or pirating raiders?)

Anyway, I thought it looked cool upside down.

-Jake

Insane Maneuvers by Firefighter Pilots

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From the Department of Interestingness:

This plane has a utilitarian coolness about it. It's not sleek at all, but there's an appeal to it's chunky squared off edges. And the things they are doing to get those fires out are incredible. Do you know how hard it is to fly that close to a mountain without crashing into it? Shout out to these cowboys!

Video 1: LINK

Video 2: LINK

Here's a shot from the ground: LINK

Apparently they do crash from time to time. If you scroll down you'll see one that didn't make it.

-Jake