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FA Inspiration - Magazine Article
17 years ago
General
I was replying to a journal here on FA, started typing, and this appeared. I think I have a "journalist mode" which engages, turns my personality off, and writes intriguing paragraphs which are relevant to... oh, alright, I'll shut up. This isn't polished, it's a first draft, and I've done no research yet. I was just inspired while replying to an FA journal, but I'll turn it into a proper article, and see if I can get it printed.
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I wonder if there's a connection between rubbish cars and sociopolitical disintegration. I think there could be; look at Vietnam, they've started making dreadful cars now. Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia, now making terrible cars. You mentioned Russia and Yugoslavia, they made some of the worst cars in the world. Then there's Spain, where Séat cars are made; they would love to go to war with the United Kingdom, but the Germans wont let them, in the same way that Séat would love to make shit cars, but Volkswagen wont let them - they still make bad cars, and still hate the UK a bit though. While Germany was kicking up fuck in the 1930s and 1940s, they made the Beetle, which is a truly terrible piece of shit. Now they're the most stable country in the Western World, at the heart of the European Union, and their cars reflect that. The Audi R8 is a fine piece of engineering, as is the new Porsche 911 range, which blends science and engineering to superb effect. I can only conclude that cars really do reflect the state of the the political aspects of a nation.
So where does this put the USA? Judging by the cars of the age, and of course taking into consideration the "lag time" it takes for the effects of political upheaval to really hit the car industry, and changes to be made therein...
- that's the end of the article so far. I need to do some research into new American concept cars, interview some of the design teams for Ford and GM, and generally make my article seem important. Then I'll let you all know if America is a sinking ship, or a shining statue of stability.
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I wonder if there's a connection between rubbish cars and sociopolitical disintegration. I think there could be; look at Vietnam, they've started making dreadful cars now. Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia, now making terrible cars. You mentioned Russia and Yugoslavia, they made some of the worst cars in the world. Then there's Spain, where Séat cars are made; they would love to go to war with the United Kingdom, but the Germans wont let them, in the same way that Séat would love to make shit cars, but Volkswagen wont let them - they still make bad cars, and still hate the UK a bit though. While Germany was kicking up fuck in the 1930s and 1940s, they made the Beetle, which is a truly terrible piece of shit. Now they're the most stable country in the Western World, at the heart of the European Union, and their cars reflect that. The Audi R8 is a fine piece of engineering, as is the new Porsche 911 range, which blends science and engineering to superb effect. I can only conclude that cars really do reflect the state of the the political aspects of a nation.
So where does this put the USA? Judging by the cars of the age, and of course taking into consideration the "lag time" it takes for the effects of political upheaval to really hit the car industry, and changes to be made therein...
- that's the end of the article so far. I need to do some research into new American concept cars, interview some of the design teams for Ford and GM, and generally make my article seem important. Then I'll let you all know if America is a sinking ship, or a shining statue of stability.
The trick is to put as little as possible in between your idea and your screen. It's hard to explain, but I've been doing the same kind of thing for years, in driving. When I'm driving, I don't think about what I'm doing with my fingers, or my arms. Nobody really does when they're driving, they just do it naturally. But I also don't think about what I'm doing with the controls, I don't need to think about where the gear stick is when I go to grab it, it's right where I left it. It's natural. When I'm racing, I don't even need to think about how much steering to apply, or to look at what speed I'm doing. I don't have to make myself look where the lines and the apexes are, it just happens naturally, without thinking. Everything within the car is done on auto-pilot, and my conscious mind is only really having to deal with looking out for other cars, and thinking about how lovely the clouds look. That's why I'm a good racer. That's why Micheal Schumacher is a good racer, he becomes one with the car, eliminates thinking about anything inside his car, and puts as little as possible between his mind and the road surface.
You probably do the same exact thing, maybe without realising it. Imagine yourself playing on a PlayStation, on a game that you're really familiar with. You don't have to think about holding your arms out, so you've got rid of that from between you and the screen. You don't think about gripping the controller with your hands, so that's out of the way too. When something comes up on screen that you need to react to, you just do it, you don't think about which button to press, or about moving your thumb to press it. It just happens. It's just screen reacts to brain, brain reacts to screen, and nothing in between. That's what you need to do with writing forget about your fingers, forget about the keyboard, forget you're a human, let your body deal with its own breathing etc. Just get your mind as connected as possible to your screen, and let it flow.
I was trying this for myself, as I was typing this, and look, it worked. It may be a lot of text, but I got my idea across alright (I hope) and it didn't take very long.
You're welcome.
Thanks for reading my journal.
Well the "best" of the USA's current cars are the Corvette C6, the Cadillac CTS, and the Pontiac Solstice. If this is the best the US can do, even when times are good, then if/when hard times hit, the Yugo is going to seem like a high-quality wondercar. (Have you seen the Solstice? I'm normally fairly open minded about designs, knowing that what I like isn't always what others like, or what does well in the marketplace. I've also got a strong stomach. But the Pontiac Solstice made me feel physically ill the first time I had the misfortune to have to see one. It makes the Yugo look like an erotic model by comparison.)
the USA market is incredibly hard to follow, it take 3 years before releasing a new model(design/engenering/testing/concept...) so what is released today is what peoples wanted 3 years ago(like the chevy Volt, peoples wanted fully electric cars 3 years ago) the problem is that peoples in the states wants a full size SUV a week, then wants a small compact the next week cuz the gas price went up, then they wants a luxury sedan but woops, need a minivan for the space... so they need to makes a lot of differents models to fills the costumers needs, witch mean they will spend a lot to make those model and won't really make a succes out of it since their sales are splited in 20-30 models... so lets says that a part of american car industry's problem is their clients and also their reputation... they got much better cars than 10 years ago, but they totally lost their reputation in the 90's with big reliability troubles... well... we could talk hours and hours about the car industry xD
"It takes, if you rush, a minimum of four years to design a new car, to build the tools and the robots on the production line and to make sure the seats don’t squeak if the finished product is driven over rough roads in Arizona or on a frozen lake in northern Norway. It is simply not possible to do all this in a moment. When you run a car firm, you have to anticipate a gas leak in your kitchen before the house has even been built.
Look at Jaguar, a company that has spent the past 30 years jumping over thin air and crashing through the fences. It started work in the Loadsamoney Eighties on a hypercar called the XJ220, which went on sale in 1992, just as the world went into reverse. So then it began work on a small car called the X-type, which came out when everyone was eating cash just to get rid of it. And now it is working on a new 5 litre V8, which will emerge into the marketplace in the middle of next year, when most forecasters are saying the unemployment figures will have enveloped everyone up to and including the Archbishop of Canterbury."
This is why I can't just slap together a few paragraphs, crop some nice pictures, and send it to the presses. I have to look at minute details, and broad trends. I'll have to speak to everyone from the floor sweepers in the car showrooms, to the conceptual design teams, to the money men executives that run the businesses. I'll have to study the past in great detail, not just at a single company, maybe not even at a single car, but take it right down to individual components (the gearbox in the Lotus Esprit comes to mind) and yet go to all this detail for a wide range of car makers, from the big to the small, and old to new, not just in the US, but globally. I might even have to do some proper journalism.