The easy question would be: Do You Love Or Hate The Cybertruck? But we’re too high-minded to succumb to that; right? So how about we consider the CT in its historical context, as to whether it is the most radically different mass production vehicle design ever? It absolutely shatters the paradigm for pickup trucks; there’s no doubt in my mind regarding that category. I’ve been struggling to come up with production automobiles that had such a radically different shape, proportions and design. I’ve got one or two candidates and a couple of other considerations, but I’m not too confident that they were quite as unique and radically different in their time as the CT.
Here’s a pretty easy one, but to wasn’t exactly a mass-production vehicle (15 were made). It’s the 1968 Quasar Unipower. Obviously, it was a radical idea in terms of it being a glass cube on wheels, with even transparent inflatable seats. It just goes to show you how we’ve changed; once we wanted to be seen, fully so; now we hide behind tinted windows in our rolling bunkers. It’s essentially the polar opposite of the bullet-proof Cybertruck in just about every way.
My best shot in terms of a genuine production car is the 1955 Citroen DS. It was radically different and a pretty serious mind-blower when it arrived, given what cars looked like at the time, especially in Europe. Its unusual shape and proportions, with a long, wide and low front end and a narrow short rear end with the rear wheels way out in back were the result of an unwillingness to compromise its aerodynamic and packaging ideals to the popular standards of automotive design at the time. Those were mostly going in the exact opposite direction, increasingly favoring large and blunt chromed front ends, boxy bodies and long tails with fins.
The DS wowed the crowds at auto shows, and it was all over the popular press and media at the times, not unlike the attention the CT is getting.
What’s interesting about the DS is that it wasn’t really ever copied, probably in part because it was so radical and also because its shape and proportions were heavily influenced by its FWD power train. It will be interesting to see if the CT spawns imitators or whether it will stay as unique as the DS did over its almost 20 year lifespan.
I suppose the Messerschmidt Kabinenroller deserves serious consideration.
And that applies to the Isetta, as well as perhaps a few other creative and unusual micro-cars of that era (1950s).
One might well be tempted to nominate the 1933 Tatra T77. It was the first streamliner built in some degree of quantities, although that was still very limited, so it’s a bit marginal in that respect. And there were already some other streamliner concepts around before it was built.
For that matter, the T77 was anything but original, as its patent drawing (bottom) is virtually identical to Tom Tjaarda’s “revolutionary” aerodynamic car concept of 1931 (top). But nevertheless, the T77 deserves an honorable mention for putting the aerodynamic principles of Jaray into a production car.
As to other pre-war cars, there were of course many radical experiments and concepts, and some were built in very limited quantities, but that’s a bit out of our current perspective, so I would suggest we focus mainly on post-war cars. So what are your nominations?
One car that always springs first to mind when you say “paradigm shift” is the Lamborghini Miura. Man what a beautiful and just wild looking machine. Under the skin, the transverse mid engine v12 was a real game changer. Most exotic cars since then adopted the mid engine layout.
What is clear from this discussion is that the CT is certainly the most radically different mass produced vehicle in my lifetime. Whether the previous record-holder is the Citroen DS or the Tatra, we are reaching back to almost 70 years, minimum, on those designs.
I am still trying to work out my opinion on the CT. My visceral reaction is that I find it the opposite of beautiful – it is like the worst of the brutalist architecture from the middle of the last century. However, I can appreciate the attempt to present a radically different view of how a truck should work and look. Tesla has certainly done that.
If nothing else, Elon Musk has proved once again that he does not think in the same ways that most others do, and even more rare is that he is willing to act on those thoughts.
I think it is. People get too hung up on whether it’s a good pickup or not (see above), who cares, those same people usually get all hung up on whether pickup owners actually are doing pickup things with their pickups 100% of the time which they obviously aren’t all doing so there’s a market outside of the Farmer/Rancher/Construction worker/Bro. It was the right concept to explore four years ago, and now that the traditional makers who beat it to EV-market are realizing the market for electric “normal” pickups is limited, something radical may well be attractive to many, or at least enough.
More interesting may be the obvious brand extension that can easily be created by taking the roofline aft of the driver’s head, making it horizontal from the peak to the tail with a vertical drop down at the end and all of a sudden there’s the 8 passenger three row SUV that prints money in the US, second only (perhaps) to pickup trucks. The Cyber-X that makes the Rivian SUV look like a 2008 Honda Pilot.
Adding the SUV version to the Rivian truck was an obvious move for minimal additional production line expense and makes it attractive to many more people, I’ll be surprised if the Rivian SUV doesn’t end up outselling the Rivian truck actually. Tesla should be doing the same here, and the question is why hasn’t Ford made an EV-Xpedition yet? In this case, Americans love out-of-this-world stuff, the 50’s and a large chunk of the 60’s should have taught most of us that, and the CT is definitely that, looking most at home in a desert Mars-like meets Blade-Runner-esque moonscape. Perhaps with Barbarella sitting on the hood, Farrah-style. The struggle is real, this thing may perhaps be bulletproof, where better to be with the children during tomorrow’s shooting-du-jour.
If nothing else it’s resulted in an incalculable amount of free publicity for Tesla, in large part provided by those that profess to not like it or the company or the CEO, whether random individual, “journalist”, or website author, never mind website commenter.. Getting people who hate something to talk about and discuss it is a mark of genius marketing. Publicity,,,is everything. Lots of people may even be curious enough to come in to a showroom to look at a CT in person and end up driving out with an S or X or more likely a Y or 3 once they do some math, look at some examples, take a drive, judge the quality for themselves instead of what they read on the internet or what Uncle Billy said at Thanksgiving, and realize Tesla is an EV juggernaut that’s making the vaunted legacy makers look like amateurs, none of which have ever gotten this much free publicity for anything they’ve ever built. Or more accurately, for something they haven’t even really built yet en masse.
Regarding the SUV version of the Rivian it certainly is popular in my area and it wouldn’t surprise me if there are more of them than the truck version at least in my immediate area. From what I’ve read they have been prioritizing S production over T production recently.
I suspect it is likely that Tesla is working on or at least doing the initial planning for a SUV line extension.
Ford is adding a Hybrid version of the Expedition expected to drop for the 2025 MY. Presumably it will use most of the F-150 Hybrid pieces.
An EVpedition won’t be as easy. The biggest problem I see is the fact that the Expedition’s wheelbase is almost 2′ shorter. In the Lightning the pack takes up most of the space between the motors preventing reuse of the pack as is. They should be able to reuse most of the other pieces though, but I do wonder how much battery capacity they can fit in w/o any modifications to the body or the pack hanging to low.
Scout,
Could Ford or Lincoln just put a longer roof and some extra seats on the Lightning chassis rather than adapting the Lightning’s tech into the current Expedition/Navigator as your comment seem to suggest? Wouldn’t that be easier?
I don’t think Ford should call it’s big EV SUV the Expedition either. Maybe bring back the Ranchero or Freestyle nameplates or call it the Grand Explorer. I like Grand Explorer myself. But the Expedition name should die with the internal combustion engine. It always played a distant fifth fiddle behind the Tahoe, Yukon, Suburban, and it’s Navigator sibling. That’s not really a good legacy to transfer over to the electric age. The Navigator should absolutely make the transition to EV’s however.
I guess it is possible, but I don’t know if they would want to spend the money on a new body shell for what is likely to be a low volume model. Seems more likely that they would add a SUV version of the T3 pickup currently under development.
Perhaps the legacy automakers haven’t ever gotten this much free publicity for anything they’ve ever built this century. But I remember GM having huge publicity in the 1980’s for the X-Body, the Fiero, the Allante, and the Saturn brand.
The issue GM had back then wasn’t publicity, it was a failure to meet the expectations of the moment with each of these product launches and not just by a little, but by a lot.
Unless I missed it, no one apparently nominated the Toyota Prius. Second generation was radical in styling, the hybrid powertrain was perfected and entered the mainstream with that car.
The Cyber Truck clearly took some inspiration from the GM dustbuster vans.
Exactly, and a future Curbside Classic feature article:
“How Hard Can it be to Design a Pickup Truck?”
I’m surprized no one mentioned the below, perhaps because to our 2023-eyes it looks like many sedans made anythime between the late 80s to the late 00s. But this car was ushered to the market in 1967, and other than the DS – which used a very different styling language – there was nothing on the roads remotely like it. Forget the rotary dead-end, this was the prototype of all 3-box sedans until very recently – many years before such shapes became common.
Agreed the Cybertruck gets a reaction. It’s out of norm enough to cause reaction. But maybe that’s why he did it. Either way: I’m loving the specs that are being delivered. Also your humor and wit 😀
Saw this in another forum