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Robert Cumberford

Robert Wayne Cumberford
Born (1935-08-04) August 4, 1935 (age 89)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationDesign Editor Automobile
Editor Auto & Design
Editor Air Progress
Automotive stylist
Writer
Editor
Design Critic
GenreAutomotive journalism

the Jaguar E-Type is elegant, extremely phallic and a great middle-aged man's compensation[1]... the ultimate automotive expression of phalliform perfection.

Robert Cumberford[2][3]

GM's Road Not Taken

In his award-winning 2013 article, Cumberford reviewed the restoration of GM's 1955 Motorama LaSalle II Roadster, a concept car scheduled to be destroyed but which survived until its restoration began in 1990.[4]

Cumberford likened the Roadster to a harbinger of GM's future. While the Roadster concept showcased important new technology – including an aluminum block, double overhead cam, fuel-injected V6 – the technology went unrealized. GM instead emphasized styling over engineering advancement for the decades that followed – and didn't bring "an aluminum block, fuel-injected, overhead-cam V-6 into production until 2004."[5]

Cumberford described the Roadster as "a signpost to the many wrong turns that led to the bankruptcy of what was in 1955 the largest business entity in the entire world (GM)."[5]

Robert Wayne Cumberford (born August 4, 1935) is a former automotive designer for General Motors, author and design critic – widely known as Automotive Design Editor and outspoken columnist for Automobile magazine.

Examples of Cumberford's critiques:

  • The Dream cars of the 50s: "myths created to make people dream about the future."[6]
  • The $2,500 Tata Nano: "perhaps the most significant car since the Ford Model T was introduced 100 years ago."[7]
  • The Jeep Cherokee: "One of the 20 greatest cars of all time."[8]
  • the NSU Ro80: “A handsome, modern-looking car with much cleaner lines than anything of the time.”[9]
  • The Jaguar E-Type "Elegant, extremely phallic and a great middle-aged man's compensation,"[1] and "the ultimate automotive expression of phalliform perfection."[2][3]
  • The Ford Five Hundred:"It's a pretty good trick to make a brand-new car look old, bland and boring right out of the box. No doubt it's a good car, but one fundamentally uninteresting visually."[10]
  • The 2016 Acura NSX: It's "very hard to mess up the styling of a mid-engine sports car... but Acura has managed it."[11]
  • The Tesla Model S: "I would happily own one."[12]
  • The Tesla Model 3: "It is an excellent design."[13]

On the automotive industry, Cumberford wrote in 1998 that "a lot of automotive enthusiasm is based on what is undoubtedly immature excitement over excess."[14] In 2014 he wrote that there is "no foreseeable future for the Italian coachbuilding firms,"[15] referring to the storied design houses of Bertone, Zagato, Ghia, Pininfarina and Giugiaro.

On prominent automotive figures, Cumberford described Alec Issigonis, who received a knighthood "in recognition of his engineering genius,"[16] as "not terribly innovative in a mechanical sense."[17] He wrote in 2004 that intensely controversial car designer Chris Bangle is "a man with the courage of his convictions and of solid character, and he is worthy of our admiration for that alone."[18]

Noted automotive cartoonist Stan Mott described Cumberford as "an intellectual automotive enthusiast."[19] Automobile editor Jean Lindamood Jennings said Cumberford "is highly opinionated, as every working car designer in the world today knows, sometimes painfully," adding that his design reviews have become "wildly popular."[1] At the 2013 LA Auto Show, Jennings said Cumberford "tends toward a certain cantankerous crustyness just shy of curmudgeonly."[20]

Cumberford won the 2013 Best Article of the Year Award from the Motor Press Guild for his article, "GM's Road Not Taken" about the LaSalle II Roadster, published in Automobile magazine in March 2013.[21]

  1. ^ a b c "Robert Cumberford discusses design". 2009 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, Car designers, Manufacturers, Podcasts, Video, August 19th, 2007. 2007-08-20.
  2. ^ a b "The Jaguar E-Type Is Still an Object of Desire". The New York Times, PHIL PATTON. March 4, 2011.
  3. ^ a b "50 years of the Jaguar E-Type". Globe and Mail. September 10, 2012.
  4. ^ "Joe Bortz and the 1955 LaSalle II Roadster Dream Car". Chubb Collector Car Insurance, December 19, 2012, Jeff Walker.
  5. ^ a b "GM's Road Not Taken: La Salle II Roadster". Automobile Magazine, Robert Cumberford, March 1, 2013. March 2013.
  6. ^ Man and Machine: The Best of Stephan Wilkinson b Stephan Wilkinson. Lyons Press. December 1, 2005. p. 87. ISBN 9781599216799.
  7. ^ Million Cars for Billion People by Gautam Sen. Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd. October 11, 2014. ISBN 9789384027742.
  8. ^ Cumberford, Robert (April 2009). "20 greatest cars". Automobile Magazine. Retrieved 19 June 2014. Great designs never grow old, a truth no better confirmed than by designer Dick Teague's masterpiece, the Jeep Cherokee. Possibly the best SUV shape of all time, it is the paradigmatic model to which other designers have since aspired.
  9. ^ "Claus Luthe, Car Design Innovator, Is Dead at 75". The New York Times, DENNIS HEVESI. April 10, 2008.
  10. ^ "Ford Five Hundred called roomy inside, dull outside". Automotive News, Richard Truett, October 2, 2004.
  11. ^ "By Design: 2016 Acura NSX". Automobile Magazine, Robert Cumberford, January 26, 2016. 2015-01-26.
  12. ^ "Tesla Motors Model S…Armored?". Armormax.com. 2012-11-06.
  13. ^ "Tesla Model 3's design praised by famed car design critic Robert Cumberford". Electrek. 2016-09-06.
  14. ^ Forward Drive: The Race to Build the Clean Car of the Future (First Trade Paper ed.). Sierra Club Books. June 26, 2001. p. 192. ISBN 9781136534102.
  15. ^ Robert Cumberford (March 28, 2014). "R.I.P., Carrozzerie Italiane: Why the great coachbuilders of Italy mattered, and why their era is over". Jean Knows Cars. Archived from the original on February 27, 2015.
  16. ^ "Sir Alec Issigonis". Automotive Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 2015-12-11.
  17. ^ "Car and Man". Motorsport Magazine. January 1996. p. 73.
  18. ^ Driven: Inside BMW. Wiley. April 2, 2004. p. 193. ISBN 9780471269205.
  19. ^ "Profile: Automotive Design Editor Robert Cumberford". Automobile Magazine, David Zenlea, March 30, 2011. 2011-03-30.
  20. ^ "BMW i8 Wins Automobile Magazine Design Award". BMWCCA. Automobile Magazine's Jean Jennings was on hand at the LA Auto Show to deliver the Automobile Design Of The Year award for 2014, handing the crystal trophy to BMW design chief Adrian Hooydonk next to the production i8 hybrid. As Jennings pointed out, Automobile's design editor, Robert Cumberford, tends toward a certain cantankerous crustyness just shy of curmudgeonly, but in citing the i8 as the magazine's design-winner, he wrote, "BMW's extreme expression of a possible and probable future for the automobile is a brilliant reality."
  21. ^ "Peter Brock captures the 2013 Dean Batchelor Award". MPG (Motor Press Guild), January 2014. Archived from the original on 2015-02-27.
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