Page 24 - Motor Trend (February 2020)

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Mark Rechtin

Reference Mark @markrechtin

Tesla’s Retro-Futuristic Cybertruck:

Pickup, stealth fighter, or Mars rover?

hen Tesla Motors rolled out its original Model In purely automotive terms, the Cybertruck may
S sedan in fall 2011, some folks (self included) pay homage to exotic ’70s concepts like the Maserati
were a bit underwhelmed by the rather Boomerang, Ferrari Modulo, and Lancia Stratos Zero,
restrained styling of Elon Musk’s opening but that’s where the disco-era tribalism ends. Line it
Wsalvo in the electric vehicle wars. up against all the trucks currently on sale, and they all
To me, it looked like a next-gen Mazda6, which wouldn’t look ancient. Forget the 2002 Thunderbird, this is what
have been a reach—given that Musk had poached Mazda J Mays was searching for when he dropped the term
U.S. chief designer Franz von Holzhausen with barely “retro-futurism” a few years back.
enough time to pull out his sketch pad before needing To the unpracticed eye, the lines of a Cybertruck may
to design Tesla’s franchise sedan. look basic, like a kid’s Tangram puzzle spilt on the dining
When I asked Franz about the Model S styling, he room table. But it actually owes more to very complicated
patiently swept aside my thinly veiled critique about his modern-era military design—from the F-22 stealth
design and said the conservative approach was intentional. fighter to the Zumwalt-class destroyer.
“People need to think really hard about taking this leap “People will argue that this is overly simplistic. I call
into uncharted territory,” he said at the time. “I didn’t it un-design,” Franz said in a recent interview. “Erasing
want to alienate people by creating a vehicle that was the normalizing of design out of our heads was a long,
awkward and weird. We wanted to create the cornerstone drawn-out process. We started out with a shape like this,
from where the brand is going to build.” then we had to go all around the world to come back again
In other words: One thing at a time. Make the transition to this. It’s so foreign from what we’ve done.”
from gasoline to electric as seamless as possible. Don’t Let’s get to the construction: Seriously, 3mm-thick
make it hard on early adopters by making stainless steel as the body panels? The last
them explain to their neighbors not only their stainless steel car was the DeLorean (although
decision to go electric but also why they were Ford and Allegheny Ludlum steel conspired on
driving some goofy-looking vehicle. a limited promotional run back in the 1930s
Then Franz added a kicker: Expect tradi- and again in the ’60s). But the Cybertruck
tional styling for the first generation of cars. reimagines its use in the pickup truck domain.
Let Tesla get established. Then look out. . Another cool thing about stainless steel: It
Guess the second generation has arrived. gets stronger as the temperatures drop. You
The Cybertruck concept that Elon rolled out in the know the average temperature on Mars? Minus-80 Fahr-
wake of the L.A. Auto Show is anything but goofy looking. enheit. Talk about protecting your design for the future.
It is seriously radical, like something Arnold Schwarz- In the 1990s, when Nissan rolled out its first lozenge-
enegger will emerge from in the next Terminator movie. shaped vehicles like the Altima and Infiniti J30, the late
No one will look at a pickup truck the same way again. Jerry Hirshberg, then-head of Nissan Design Interna-
In silhouette, the Cybertruck looks like the collision of tional, referred to his new design as breaking from “the
two doorstops (thanks, Ed Loh, for that vivid description). tyranny of the wedge.” Not long after, the entire industry
Head on, or from an offset perspective, it’s all hard angles followed suit with their own slippery suppositories.
and aggression. The testosterone levels are off the charts. With the Cybertruck, Franz von Holzhausen has
Musk already (jokingly?) tweeted about a “pressurized broken Tesla away from the tyranny of the lozenge. The
version” for when he and his crew of interplanetary wedge is back. Q
voyagers need transport on Mars.

24 MOTORTREND.COM FEBRUARY 2020