Autos

Wedge cars: the covetable and valuable icons of space-age design – The Times


Concept designs are conceived to catch the attention and test out new forms. Nowhere are these forms more futuristic than in the car world, where designers come up with ever more outlandish creations to try to grab manufacturers’ attention and persuade them to use their services.

The results, over the decades, have been some wild automobiles — particularly those “wedge” models made in the Sixties and Seventies. These sharp-edged designs, with their futuristic shapes triangulated from front to rear, were a reflection of the public optimism about space travel. Wedge elements had popped up in car design before then, but the purity of the shape at this time was fresh and exciting.

The Modulo’s fighter jet-style sliding glass canopy

The Modulo’s fighter jet-style sliding glass canopy

As with any movement, it is difficult to pinpoint its genesis. The 1966 Cannara, named after the designer Ray Cannara, was arguably the first pure “wedge car”, but it was the famous Italian car-styling studios that picked up the ball and ran with it. The Alfa Romeo Carabo of 1968 is as good a place as any to start. It was created by Marcello Gandini working for Bertone, two names that would spearhead the wedge movement. This pair would be joined by other famous car designers such as Giorgetto Giugiaro, alongside great Italian design houses including Italdesign and Pininfarina that created cars to advertise their wares. Once they had served their purpose — to bring attention to a brand — these cars were often sold by manufacturers. Today the most significant of these automotive curiosities are highly prized, commanding a premium when they come up for sale, which in itself is rare.

Pininfarina launched the Ferrari 512S Modulo at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show to gasps from a public gripped by space fever. It was designed by Paulo Martin and based on the chassis of a Ferrari 512S, featuring a fighter jet-style sliding-glass canopy for entry and exit. It was bought in 2014 by the American film director and producer James Glickenhaus, who returned it to operational condition, driving it around New York when not on display. The Modulo, space-age and striking, was joined in 1970 by one of the rock stars of wedge design: the Lancia Stratos HF Zero. Being one-off show cars, often prototypes are non-functioning, perhaps without working parts and just made of moulded body panels to indicate a new design study. However, the Zero, styled by wedge maestro Gandini at Bertone, was notable as it was presented as a fully driveable car with a running engine. At only 84cm in height, it made the Modulo look unduly tall.

The Modulo on show

The Zero requires the driver to raise the windscreen, step over the bonnet and drop into the reclined seats before folding the retractable steering wheel into position. Nuccio Bertone is rumoured to have driven the car under the security barriers (easy at this height) at the Lancia headquarters and to have left it on display in the car park for the executives to wonder at. And wonder they did — in 1970, it would have looked like an alien had landed, especially in its striking copper colours. Today the Lancia Stratos HF Zero is owned by the venture capitalist Phillip Sarofim.

His love affair with the car began, he explains, when he was a young boy. “I first opened a book of concept cars when I was about eight years old. It’s difficult to describe those initial feelings, but the refined design, the outrageousness and the originality of the concept resonated so strongly with me.”

The Zero last sold publicly at the RM Sotheby’s auction at Villa d’Este in 2011 for €761,600, and Sarofim purchased it privately seven years ago. The previous owner agreed to it only on the condition that Sarofim would “share the car with the world”. He kept his promise: the Lancia is on an almost constant world tour at various events, much to Sarofim’s delight.

The Alfa Romeo Carabo concept car, 1968

The Alfa Romeo Carabo concept car, 1968

“Nothing could have prepared me for the outpouring of respect, positivity and awe that the car receives as it passes through this world,” he says. It even made a cameo in the 1988 film Moonwalker as the car — which appears to be bulletproof and can fly — in which Michael Jackson escapes the gangsters.

The car is still relevant today because, Sarofim says, “when designers or artists achieve their moment of greatness, it stands for ever and is undiluted by the passage of time. The Zero is one of those moments — the creator’s talent, the authenticity and purity of the design, the optimism of that time as humans raced to the moon, all of these things come together and create a masterpiece.” It will, he firmly believes, still be wowing the public in another 50 years.

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The Aston Martin Bulldog is also in Sarofim’s collection. Aston Martin was a little late to the wedge party, but in 1979 William Towns created the Bulldog to showcase Aston Martin’s design and engineering. It was claimed to be a 200mph car, but while that was never verified at the time, Sarofim’s meticulously restored car posted over 205mph on a Scottish airfield in 2023.

The movement continued into the Eighties, and in the 21st century it still makes an occasional comeback — most notably in 2016 when the “Lo Res Car” was created by United Nude. The design company and footwear maker (better known for producing high heels) delivered a car created by its co-founder, Rem D Koolhaas. Possibly peak wedge, the Lo Res shape comes from a case study of redesigning the same object multiple times, continually lowering the 3D resolution each time, resulting in a simpler, abstract form. The starting point for this design was the classic Lamborghini Countach from the Seventies, styled, once again, by Gandini at Bertone. The result is somewhat unsettling, surreal and monolithic, but it is undeniably a wedge.

Even today you will see various wedge-inspired cars out on the roads — Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck undoubtedly doffs its cap to those sharp-edged forebears.

The Lancia Stratos HF Zero

The Lancia Stratos HF Zero

The Lancia Stratos HF Zero drawing attention in Milan in 1970

The Lancia Stratos HF Zero drawing attention in Milan in 1970

The 1979 Aston Martin Bulldog

The 1979 Aston Martin Bulldog

A model of the Mercedes C111 concept car, another classic wedge design

A model of the Mercedes C111 concept car, another classic wedge design

MERCEDES-BENZ AG

The Mercedes C111 on the race track

The Mercedes C111 on the race track

MERCEDES-BENZ AG



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