Cars are the sculptures of our everyday lives. For me, they are fascinating objects: I love the way in which sheet metal can turn light into a liquid, play with it, and let it run off. Every time I walk by a row of parked cars, I force myself to look beyond the color of the metal and see only light, dark, and the millions of increments in between. Even on the most mundane of car bodies, the surfaces are meticulously controlled – it is not easy to make light do your bidding.
The 1985 Ferrari Testarossa is a car design icon. This is not a contentious statement: unlike my column last week extolling the virtues of the FIAT Ritmo, I am not being deliberately provocative when I say the Testarossa was an important design. However, I think the Testarossa is written off by many car design enthusiasts as one of the flamboyant excesses of the 1980s. Worse still, the car is often reduced to the five iconic strakes that grace its flanks, as if they were the only reason the Testarossa became famous. Like any iconic element that fixes itself in the popular consciousness, there is a tendency to overlook its technical function and oversimplify its artistic merits. For me, the strakes are an interesting contribution to an artistic debate that has been going on since the early years of the 20th century: the graphic representation of speed.
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