Art Center College of Design likes to highlight the fact that many, if not most, of the cars in the world right now were designed by its graduates. Certainly most of the cool cars. So when it came time for this year’s 70th anniversary of the iconic California design school’s Car Classic car show, the theme was easy: Line up 70 or so cars on the lawn that were designed by distinguished alums. Hence, you had everything from a Ford Galaxie Starliner coupe to the one-off Pete Brock-designed P70.
With the California drought at least in remission, Art Center finally reseeded the grass on its Sculpture Garden lawn, giving the about 75 cars something green to park on. Previous years had been something of a Dust Bowl. So that was nice.
Then there were the cars: hoo lawdy. Now, they weren’t all designed by Art Center alums. Just the ones from the basketball court south, which was still a pretty good gathering. There were two concepts by Chrysler’s Bob Hubbock, who penned the 1995 Chrysler Atlantic and 1998 Chronos concepts, built in the days when Chrysler had enough money to do such things.
Pete Brock brought one of his Superformance Cobra Daytona Coupes along with his own P70 supercar. Henrik Fisker brought an EMotion and opened the wild doors on one side. Genesis loaned the 2018 Essentia concept, and Hyundai brought the Le Fil Rouge design exercise. Art Center benefactor Peter Mullin loaned his Pebble-winning Voisin C27 Aerosport. And the work of Art Center’s Strother MacMinn was on display in the form of the 1957 Le Mans coupe, of which a body was shown.
It’s always a fun show, and this year was one of the most fun. The Friday before the Car Classic, Art Center officially opened up the Mullin Gallery in the new Transportation Design building, downhill from the Hillside campus. That’ll have a regular rotation of cool cars. Get your kids started drawing at an early age so they can go to Art Center (or CCS in Detroit, or Academy of Art in SF) and study transportation design. Keep cars cool!