13
“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.” Scott Adams
See the original image here for comparison.
UA-47906392-1
“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.” Scott Adams
See the original image here for comparison.
Who didn’t love “spot the differences” pictures as a kid?
A friend of mine recently bought a Pontiac Bonneville SSE and one of the line-drawings in the manual left us guessing which car it actually depicted. It definitely wasn’t a Bonneville, that’s for sure. But, as always, our collective car brains eventually figured out what it was: an A-body Chevrolet Celebrity. While searching our brains google I found this old ad for the aforementioned vehicle and send it to my friends. We had a good laugh, mostly because of the mentioning of advanced technology. 🙂
Anyway… being the photoshop artist I am, there was no way I could leave the picture alone. Keeping with my motto that every vehicle has at least some sort of potential to look less boring I went to work. Ten minutes later it was finished: lowered, wheels enlarged and changed from convex to concave surface, sideskirts modified and a front airdam added. Looks less forgetable now, doesn’t it?
Time and again it is basically just a matter of subtle changes like lowering the car and adding a nice(er) set of wheels to make it look better…
Original picture for reference:
“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.” Ogden Nash
It really makes me wonder what the photographer of the original picture had in mind, when he placed a rather large dog in the rear seat of the Volvo 262C? Is it possible that he wanted to illustrate that dogs are good companions and like to travel in Volvos? Good idea, but judging by the dogs’ rather sad face he might have actually prefered to ride in a 265 station wagon.
The original picture was on my hard drive for more than a decade. The first try on modifying this vehicle is just as old – and was horrible. So I saved it and forgot about it. A chance encounter with a 262C on the Autobahn last week reminded me of the old file and I openened it in Photoshop again… only to delete it minutes later. After a quick search for the same picture with better size and resolution, I started to modify it again. This time around I changed a vital part that I didn’t think about ten years ago: the rear fender. The Volvo 200-series cars have a rear fender cutout that prohibits lowering the car without looking odd, because the upper part of the wheel disappears behind the sheetmetal. Once that was fixed I selected a set of wheels with period correct design, lowered the car, modified the front spoiler and added the black stripes.
It took ten years to finally finish this one, but now I’m happy with the result. If you have any suggestions what could be done differently or better, please let me know in the comments. Thank you in advance.
“Every great inspiration is but an experiment – though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration.” Charles Ives
Inspiration comes from many sources. When it comes to cars, a friend of mine often unwittingly provides inspiration for photoshop chops. He had been looking at a car with the possible intent of buying it and sent a set of pictures to our Facebook group. None of us recognized the vehicle even after he told us what it was, but everybody came up with the same joke in return: Plymouth Reliant? Oh wait… wasn’t there a funny tricycle called Reliant Robin that kept rolling over in one of the TopGear episodes a few years ago? We had a good laugh and forgot about the malaise era car immediately afterwards. See it, turn around and the next second the memory is blank again. Not really what you would call an enthusiast car, right? Yes… but hey, I can’t help it: the pictures of the pale yellow car and the Reliant Robin jokes sparked an idea…
Here is the inspirational TopGear video mentioned above:
The Jaguar E-Type is one of the automotive icons of the 20th century, along with the Citroën DS. Most people, including most of my friends from Passau Classics, think that these iconic cars should not be messed with and any modification deviating from 100% originality is deemed evil. If you are a regular reader you already know that I created a DS Shooting Break and hence you will not be surprised about the latest creation. Unlike the DS, which is completely my idea and design, the Jaguar E-Type Mk3 V12 you see below is inspired by the current trend of bolting fender flares to cars.
As per my opinion that parts should not only be cosmetic but also serve a purpose, I choose the Jaguar as a base for this conversion. The original body of the E-Type is not designed to accomodate wide wheels due to the shape of the fenders. An update to state-of-the art coilovers along with a healthy drop in ride height and a set of larger and wider wheels necessitates the above mentioned bolt-on fenders. Oh… and of course cutting off substantial parts of the original bodywork in the process. The purists out there might not like it a tiny bit or even hate it, but like-minded enthusiasts might love it even more. 😉