Great architects and cars. When?

The temptation to design cars is quite frequent among famous architects but has never really led to anything extraordinary. Why is that? Because cars are very different to buildings and you have to be very specialized to make one successfully (there are many architects among car designers, but they make cars and not buildings). In last year’s TCCT yearbook, The Key 2019, we published a wonderful story by an architect who is also a car designer, Roberto Giolito, the man who created today’s 500 and the Fiat Multipla, about the car designed by the legendary Gio Ponti. So many ideas, and admiration, but nothing ever produced.

The 1:1 scale wooden model of the car idea by the most famous: Le Corbusier. We are in the 1930s and the vision was one of an economical and functional car for everyone. It would inspire the Citroën 2CV.

The story is similar for Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School, with his attempt at the Adler Standard 6 and Buckminster Fuller with his three-wheeled Dymaxion from 1933. We should also mention the most famous, Le Corbusier, who in the 1930s sketched a very functional car which, many years later, the Italian Flaminio Bertoni would use to create the Citroën 2CV. Even Frank Lloyd Wright tried to make a Lincoln Continental, but his flair only made it slightly more extravagant and very little else.