This is technically the first issue of Vintage Roadcar as an online-only periodical. While many of us will miss the paper magazine, I felt it was important to take a moment to recognize the significance of this transition both in how cars are talked about, perceived by the public, and how they are designed and developed.
Early 2-Rotor Corvette design sketch.
When I graduated from Art Center College of Design in 1987, there was one computer on campus. It was called the “Aesthedes” and it was enormous. This leviathan looked more like a recording studio deck, taking up an entire room. Dimly lit and assigned to only the blessed few, it was capable of astonishing feats of computerized rendering. It probably had the computing power of an ipod shuffle and the memory capacity of a throwaway thumb drive, but it had an impact on us all. Car companies were already experimenting with the use of CAD software to generate drawings and work on engineering plans. But it would take much longer for computing and rendering power to catch up to the ambitions and ideation flow in order to effectively enter the design studios where sculpting was still “felt” in the clay and rendering was done with markers and chalk over pencil sketches.
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