I'll set the alarm for 6...

Most people do not have a specific concept of automobiles and yet everyone in most cases do have a general concept about automobiles. Look at my Friend Stephanie; she knows that automobiles get her from point A to point B and possesses a small degree of knowledge of how they do it. What she does know in great length, however, is how they look. If we were to come across a S2000 ( http://automobiles.honda.com/s2000/ ) as we do on our walks around her block she will proclaim exuberantly on its "Cuteness."

I, of course, am more interested in its 110 bhp/L figure.


But so what?


I'll tell you.


Stephanie represents your average young adult female who does not harbor an exceptional admiration to all things CAR. She likes make-up, synth-pop, and gothic maternity fashion design. I, for sake of this argument, type cast her as your average non car lover.


Now I ask you: name a cute car...


If you responded to that Q with an A along the lines of "VW Beetle" or "Mini" you, infact, are a car person and likley don't know it yet. That is the answer us car people would give. That is the result of the word "cute." Cute does not imply sexy, powerful, viscious, or profound. Cute implies small, deminutive, youthful, and wholesom. That is exactly what the beetle and mini are.

Now I will ask you to pass judgement on the folowing peice of Italian automotive design:





This is the Alfa Romeo Brera. It is the most one of the most radicaly styled mass produced automobiles currently on sale now. If you think this car is cute, you are not a car person.

This car is not cute. This car is viscious and clean, think edge of a razor cutting through milan. It has chiseled features with an organic shaped profile. Dramatic front facia work including 3 resecced headlights in a deep bevel focus you eye on the dynamic trademark triangular grill that overflowes into the "Bottom Feeder" air dam. The stark crevaces of the hood streak back to the side mirrors where the rest of the car disappears in this photograph.

Every designer knows the back of a car is the hardest to nail. This is even more difficult if the car happens to be a hatchback, as is the Brera. The fender flares are modest by sports car standards, but combined with a vetical pinched waist 'sill' that runs from the center of the back above that tailights around the side and into the front fenders a la Volvo S80 from days of yore give it a muscular stance and a very good example of 'looking fast while standing still'. Even more striking is the upside down soft pentagon rear windscreen. It is eccentric by almost all standars, despite hatchbacks having decidedly greater freedom in that catergory [Remember the Honda CRX and its bi-level rear windscreen that spanned from the hatch into the rear panel seperated by a peice of the frame? And if that is too before your time it's also on the second generation Toyota Prius.]

Design is the first thing that hits you when you see anything. In this case, it's in car form and extraordinarly well executed. All of this and I havent even scratched on the car's performance prowess...