TLC has a show on called "Rides"...it's like a car design reality show.....This episode is about the design of the NAIAS Ford Cobra Concept...

They had all the designers talking about the design...and J May's was like....
J Mays letting a modern looking design out...just imagine!

 

Just finished watching the show.

The car looks awesome and has a great sound, but I think your right that guy does come off as a bit of an a$$.

What do you guys think of the car?

 

No worse than Chuck Jordan's constant phrase of "more reach".

Speaking of Jordan, it's interesting that both are extreme opposites in design direction. Jordan (by all accounts, no joy to work with) wasn't afraid to take designs to the futuristic extreme (just look at the extreme glass angles on the F-body & GM's mini-vans of just over a decade ago), that perhaps bordered on good taste.

Mays on the other hand (to date, seeming an OK guy to work under), tends to be more conservative & traditional in design, but does it in a very modern and generally tasteful way.

It's rare to get both a great design & one that looks forward. Ford managed to do it in the 80s & Chrysler in the 90s. I haven't seen anything by anyone yet that seems to point a new direction outside of interiors. The 300C & Magnum, Mustang & Fivehundred, Solstice, G6, & Colbalt while all good looking to varying degrees, none can possibly be considered a breakout design the way the 83 Thunderbird, the Chrysler LHs, or even the Cadillac CTS is, without looking bizzare or downright ugly.

Just a thought I was carrying around since last week's LA preview that this thread brought out.

 

I think that car is downright ugly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I think the grille on the car is wrong...it almost looks depressed!

 

Yeah I agree the front was just all wrong for me, but I did like the rear view of the car. I thought the show was pretty good. It was a fuel injected engine right? I couldn't believe how long those guys were cranking it before they stopped to see what was the problem!

 

J Mays sucks. Every car he's done has all the WRONG retro cues, and also the WRONG modern cues. DAMN his cars (Audi TT, VW New Beetle, Thunderbird, new Mustang) are hard to look at. So many flat planes, developable surfaces, constant-radius curves, THICK wheelwell opening flanges, flares that meet the body in a perfectly circular arc, yadda yadda yadda. His stuff looks like it was made by a 2nd year CAD jockey. Extremely heavy-handed. ZERO art. So many people are taken by his stuff simply because it's different. But the shapes are just awful. My '95 Z28 is a fricking SCULPTURE in comparison.

IMO.

 

But they have got to at least keep trying. If someone didn't take a decently daring step sooner or later, we'd all be driving derivatives of a Model A or something!

C2 Corvette was radically different and is probably still considered the pinnacle of Corvette design. Second Gen F-bodies deviated quite dramatically from the Mustang-like 60's models and were pretty darn successful. These are just 2 GM designs off the top of my head....

 

I agree guion. It's been a long time since I can remember any breakthrough designs.

The '85 Taurus certainly made an impact as well as Chrysler's "cab forward" design of the nineties.

But it just seems that over the past few years...designer's are struggling. It's like they don't know where to go or what to do.....and they end up resorting to retro.

I just hope the Camaro looks good.