Rob,
Was Raymond Loewy the personal trainer of Ms Coke who trimmed her proportions to render the sensuous siren with whom you currently flirt?
Possibly so.
Of course, he was also the designer of some great cars for Studebaker in a time when they produced highly distinctive mechanical lust buckets. To say nothing of some really neat Boys' Own Annual styles steam locomotives for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
From the time of the founding fathers on, it seems there is a lot of French in many a USofA icon.
Cheers,
W
Walter, my memories of Studie ended in '53 when we returned to the UK from the Indian idyll, just in time to be somewhere on the high seas when Everest was defeated and a princess became a queen. Returning to Britain was a culture shock, but it did result in my first bicycle: a red Raleigh Lenton, that I instantly personalized by doing the handlebars (why is it the convention to use the plural when, in reality, there is but a single bar?) up with white tape. That was my precursor to what became more famous as the Harley Earl fins. That every other third kid also used tape is neither here not there. Well, it was there, but made not a jot of difference to the feeling in
my head. I was easily satisfied.
Studebaker rings the bell for me as being the very first 'going both ways at once' car that I recall seeing. Prior to that, they all made distinctions between fore and aft design; perhaps the Hudson Hornet was also guilty of seductive, ambivalent sin... In Britain we had the silly little Nash Metropolitan. I passed a parked old Jaguar yesterday - a quick peek confirmed my long-held belief that Jag made the most handsome cockpits of all time.
David, any suggestive motifs are to be found within the personal psyche of the viewer; perhaps some see Marilyn with a soupçon d'art décoratif thrown in for company, and proof of the concept of diamonds being a girl's best friend? I simply toss the dice to fall where they may.
;-)
Rob C