A simple shape, almost more a geometric concept than a style model, which has become one of the milestones of design: the wedge configuration has revolutionized the way of conceiving sports cars since the end of the 1960s and precisely from the 1968 Paris Motor Show, where the Alfa Romeo Carabo concept made its appearance, designed by Marcello Gandini, who would later be celebrated as one of the major pioneers of this stylistic inspiration together with Giorgetto Giugiaro. It is fitting, then, that the Carabo should be the one to stand out on the cover, green and orange like the car, of the new impressive work created by the journalist and design expert Gautam Sen, which takes the form of a 480-page volume richly illustrated with over 650 photographs. The author naturally takes this opportunity to propose an excursus on the entire history of automotive design, from steam carriages to the first automobiles, told in a never predictable and always compelling way in a series of chapters preceded by two prefaces between past and future that bear the signatures of Gautam Sen himself and designer Mike Robinson.
The origin, evolution and benefits that the “wedge-shape” brought to the development of sports cars, also in terms of aerodynamics and construction architecture, are addressed in the remaining 400 pages, which also tell the story of pre-war examples, of cars such as the Bugatti “Tank” victorious in competitions, whose wing profile shape anticipates the idea of a low and pointed silhouette that will still prove to be bold and “breakthrough” even thirty years later, and gradually approaching the boom period of wedge-shaped lines.
From here begins a series of tributes to the icons of this movement, which include among others the Lamborghini Marzal, the Carabo itself, the Ferrari Modulo, the Lancia “Strato’s Zero”, the Maserati Boomerang and so on, up to the production cars and examples of today. The twentieth and final chapter closes with a brief but significant overview of the masters of design who have given the most important contribution to this movement, from the already mentioned Gandini and Giugiaro to Ercole Spada, Tom Tjaarda, William Towns and Oliver Winterbottom.
Preview of the flippable volume here.
Datasheet
“When wedge had the edge”
Publisher: Dalton Watson Fine Book
Author: Gautam Sen
Size: bound volume measuring 21,9 x 30,4 x 3,5 cm with hard cover
Pages: 480
Text: English
Photographs: 653 in color and b/w
Price: 150 euros
