Topic: Car worship and design

[piersdad]

Car worship and design

Some years back a near neighbor was a doctor  and we met socially from time to time.
I found out that he also was an electrical fitter as well as a MD and to cap it off he held a doctorate in ergonomics and the fitting of humans to motor cars, a very interesting person.
As we discussed cars over the odd cup of coffee I found out that he was on the design team for the Morris mini car now one of the worlds best designed cars.
 Sir Alec Issigonis was the chief designer and he started with the A30 car size as this size was the accepted small car type.
He then said we need a box with 4 wheels on each corner and with the right team here, go for it.
My friend’s job was to fit humans to the inside of the car.
He was also a hypnotist, so his approach, was to get some capable motorists and put them in different types of cars and then afterwards he would get them into a hypnotic trance and get the real feeling of what was right and wrong.
One trial he told me about, was to try his test people in a jaguar car with bucket seats, and then try them out in a similar powered car with bench type seats.
Under hypnosis he found out that they all thought the jaguar was much more powerful, although the two test cars had the same power, he then probed further and found out that the bucket seats were the reason.
In the jaguar they said they felt as if they were part of the car and the road, whereas the bench seat did not grip you so much and you felt the car was less powerful.
So now we know why the famous mini had bucket seats instead of the A30 cars bench seat.
Another part he designed was the pedal lay out.
He setup pedals in different positions and researched the best spaces and heights between the controls.
So using an electronic timer he would test the different configurations till he got the fastest time between accelerator / brake and clutch movements.
Then he combined this with the best average for different sized people.
When the mini prototype was finished they were proudly looking at the car when the chief designer said “that car looks too skinny”
So next day the team cut right down the middle and added 6 inches to its width.
So that was how some of the design of the mini was decided
One of the things he mentioned that people actually worship their cars, which become a sort of pseudo religion to them.
Today’s manufacturers know this well, and so we get a vehicle that on the inside, is perfectly adapted to the human to drive, but with 4 wheel drive, and wheels more suited to tractors than suburban use.
 The people who use these vehicles have all sorts of weak excuses for their use, it all boils down, that they are too lazy to walk to a good picnic spot, or they want a 10 minute thrill once a year.
Even the farmers who use the 4 wheel drives are using them where they would once be using a tractor.
They then drive them for 90% of the time on the open road with an extra 1000 lbs of steel and mechanics as well as an extra liter of motor size just so that for a few miles on the farm they have just a little more luxury.