Top 3 - 70's Nose Jobs
I'm no cosmetic surgeon, but I nose what I likes.
We all have them. Noses. Some are long, some are short, big, dainty. You have Nubians, Romans, Greeks, Hawks, Rumpoles, and for some reason, a Christian nose, which may look like any of the others, the difference is that it often can't be kept out of other peoples private business.
Unfortunately you are born with the nose you get. And you don't get to pick it.
Not so with cars. It is an important decision really because when you walk up to someone with the silly looking face ornament your parents gave you, they would sympathise. If you make a poor nose choice with a car, they'd call you a pratt.
Now the biggest problem with opinion pieces is that everybody has them and they all differ, and for this reason I'm not going to talk about the silliest looking car noses and therefore not mention the AU Falcon series I in all of its moustachy triangular glory, or its earlier US cousin the Edsel and speculate on whatever it was that possessed Ford to place Edsel's girly bits on his face.
Vehicle design is always subjective of course, and I'm sure there genuinely were people at Ford HQ who thought it would be a radical and wonderful design feature, but I can't help but get the feeling a disgruntled designer in Detroit found out Edsel Ford was going to put his name on the car, and decided to design in what he thought of Edsel in such a place where everyone could see it.
Nose Pick number 1 The 3rd gen Buick Riviera. They will see the nose long before they see the rest of the car. Note - if I ever write an article on arses; and that is possible, this car will get a mention there too.
1. third generation buick riviera
Down here in the arse end of the South Pacific, you don't often get to see the great faces of automotive history. There are, of course various places that house vintage and classic car collections, such as Southward Museum, near Wellington, New Zealand, and I recall there was another one over there called Monterey Park just out of Auckland which may or may not have closed down since my last visit there.
Other places to see them are classic car gatherings, and by crikey, Australia is full of them. As many of you know I do shoot at many of them, and post through my facebook page, so from time to time I do find something that stands out from the pack from the ruggedly handsome face that an artisan has applied to his work. And the first is the Buick Riviera, 3rd generation. Seriously this is a car that looks like someone put the light assembly from the Vauxhall Victor, but pulled and tweaked and adjusted until it actually looked good. Its back end looks even better, although as previously noted, that might be covered in a future article about arses.
A variation of this profile, but seems to apply too much focus to the grille and detracts from the overall aesthetics of the front end of this car. Sandown Raceway, Melbourne, Australia.
2. ford falcon 500 - xa
Years back I had one of those. Hate to think what it would be worth now but I consigned it to the scrap heap 3 years before it was due to become a vintage classic. This is one of the Australian designed variants, and in my opinion the last of the artisan's Falcons. The XB/C would "modernise" things like the lights and the XD would be designed with a ruler. That was when the Falcon lost its mojo.
Nose Pick number 2. Ford's Falcon XA 500 turned simplicity into art with its understatement.
It was very much understated as a vehicle design of its time.
It didn't shout out "I'm From Broad-fucken-meadows" like the locals there do. It did not seem to be the sort that would play Goon Of Fortune on a Hills Hoist with its mates. It would not have been in the streets, loudly barracking for the Richmond Tigers at 3am on a Sunday, still trying to get home from the MCG after the game the day before. Not even the Phase 4 GTHO did things like that. And that was what I liked most about it.
Far removed from their American cousins and their three foot long nosecones and audacious sculptures mounted on two railway tracks with wheels and 1850s era leaf springs, the Australians had suddenly discovered they could build a muscle car which liked tea and could play backgammon.
3. subaru leone hardtop - gft hardtop 1st generation
The 1976 Colt Lancer in a era defined by the Datsun 120Y, the Mazda Familia 808 and the Toyota KE20 Corolla. This is a very young author "rallying" it up in the Kaueranga Valley, New Zealand in 1991. Photo credit Len Wood.
So in the US they were making nosecones that could travel interstate. In the Antipodes, Holden, Ford and Chrysler were developing refined chassis to conquer the mountain, but world events would eventually hand the crown of automotive genius to the Japanese. Their cars would start out as dull and ordinary boxes, loosely based on the Kei cars of their domestic markets. The KE20 Corolla, the Datsun 1200, and the Mazda Familia all resembled each other. But car geeks existed in Japan too and they came up with some cracking designs
My favourites of this era included the Toyota Celica and the Mazda RX4 Savannah, based loosely on the Familia/808 coupe. While Mazda played around with the Wankel engines, Toyota would be putting 1.6l 4 pot engines which would produce around the 70bhp mark. Perhaps they were quick in Japan.
A rare example in Israel I think. Photo credit would be given but I couldn't work out the shooters name.
But the one that stood out was the Subaru Leone. The DL1400 variant was another of those dull boxes. The GSR was a curvy and more attractive looking coupe, but the GFT was an eyepopper.
It was still an underpowered Japanese car, but with the right exhaust, who cared if it couldn't go really fast?
It was in those days that the Japanese proved they could design cars that looked the part, they were certainly better looking than the British offerings, more economical than the Australian offerings and more reliable than anything on the market.
Join In
Comments (0)