Future Retro
by Frederic A. Sharf, Richard Arbib, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Category: Transportation

From preliminary sketches to carefully drafted renderings, these drawings showcase the beauty and ingenuity of automobile design in the heyday of American manufacture. Whether used to float innovations, showcase new developments, or promote the latest models, they are, first and foremost, examples of graphic art. Future Retro looks at cars from a landmark period in American automobile design, the 1940s through the 1960s, providing a rare glimpse into the thinking of premier Detroit car builders. The text discusses such matters as the role of the designer in auto styling, the influence of emerging technologies on postwar car design, and the ways in which these drawings depict a particularly resonant segment of the American dream. Over 50 color illustrations, many never before published, introduce us to cars that are both futuristic and retro, sometimes decidedly wacky (several were too outlandish to build), and always very, very, cool. Future retro offers a lesson in car creation and history to practitioners and students of graphic and industrial design - as well as to anyone who has ever felt the allure of the great American automobile.