Headlights
in the American Darkness

Tragedies dot the American landscape, from the trivial (Fox News) to the unnecessary (millions of 10 m.p.g. family behemoths) to the unavoiadable (Katrina) to the to the greed-driven (inept and corrupt governance) to the imperial (the war in Iraq).

With little relief in sight (in 2008 we’re going to get to choose between Hillary and Condi? Al Gore and Rick Santorum?? Howard Dean and Jeb Bush???), it is time to grasp after straws.

Long-time readers of Magellan’s Log will be aware of my quirky, old suggestion that if you’re looking for a medium-term crystal ball, car design is a good bet.

That idea is so outrageous that you can be sure we just lost most of our audience. If you’re still reading, you can go back to my first piece here in 2000 to get the details of why I think a study of the look of personal vehicles can yield a surprisingly accurate picture of the probable future (Desperate for hope, I also did a second piece here in 2001, and yet again here in 2003).

Though I continue to study these four-wheel objects of desire closely, I hadn’t seen anything in the past couple of years to indicate any reason for hope, no hints of a coming cultural change for the better.

Car-makers around the world were going off in all directions and coming back with either distressing, predictable blandness (the Toyota Corolla, Camry, and Avalon: Do you want your astonishingly reliable but wholly bland Japanese Buick in small, medium, or large?) or pervertedly bastard combinations (anyone for a hybrid Ford Explorer?). Of course there was the occasional oddity (what in genetics is called a "sport", I believe) such as the neo-Chicago gangsta look out of DaimlerChrysler which first appeared in the low-slung, slit-windowed 300M and quickly—and startlingly—morphed into the flagship Mercedes 500S.

About the only conclusion you could draw from this esthetic chaos was that the present was a mess and the future, unknown and probably fearful. It seemed that an automotive design studio was the last place you’d want your artistically gifted kid to wind up working.

But, lo! In recent months a couple of unexpected blips of light appeared on my dark radar screen, from that most unlikely of sources, General Motors.

Yes, General Motors. Junk-bond GM. The firm that had recently given us such masterpieces as the clumsily-carved-from-a-block of balsa-wood Pontiac Aztek (!), an endless series of designed-by-committee Saturns, and paper-cut-inflicting Cadillacs. (Not to pick just on GM: You could, with little effort of wit, be equally—and just as accurately—bitchy about products from Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc., etc.)

First came the sixth-generation Corvette, the C6, which put near-supercar styling and performance on the world market at very close to an everyman-price. Then, against all odds, GM upped the ante, way up, and brought out an enthusiast’s model, the Z06, which blipped the styling in some subtle but wholly beguiling ways and amplified the performance right into Porsche and Ferrari territory. Suddenly we were a long, long way from the simple, oh-so-wholesome Corvette 1.0 that had appeared way back when (1954).

Even as its stock plunged and its financial future darkened, General Motors rocketed us into the third millennium in the grandest, most beautiful style imaginable, and at a price that allowed even members of the beleaguered middle-class to dream.

And realizable dreams are surely what the 21st century needs most right now.

But the old gray lady of Detroit wasn’t through.

Seven liters of high-tech power linked to an AI suspension beneath a svelte skin too much of a wet dream for you?

Well, GM said, how about a bit of irresistibly erotic whimsy then, at a price anyone can afford? And out rolled the Solstice, the Pontiac that thinks it’s a Porsche for (ready?) $19,995.

This ain’t no pretty face that looks great on the showroom floor and that’s about it. The reviewers have been unanimous in their (astonished) praise for the engineering under that lovely skin that makes the Solstice a joy to drive. And drive. And drive.

Not one dream, but two.