The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-31
FIGuREHEADs FOR MOTOR CARS.
one Suggestion for Improving Ap-
 pearanco of the Autos

one Suggestion for Improving Ap-
 pearanco of the Autos.
 Can the artist ever make anything of motors? The attempt in this years academy is not encouraging. That there really is deficiency on the beau ty side motorists are all of them Iuneasily conscious, In point of beauty the foreclosures is all lost They have |always felt this At the beginning they meet one in the frankest way. Show us any other form the motor can fake that would look better than the carri- age" And boat shapes were suggested and swan motors and fishes, But fishes and goats on land would be as bizarre as the self-moving coach; and swans ashore are not graceful any way. It could not be done; the horseless car riage had to be, And it remains; not funny, nor foolish, nor necessarily ug- ly, but certainly no beauty.
 Can nothing be done for it? Why not q figure head? Why not have some- thing pretty something that at any rate represents something, in the place where the beauty of the thing the horse used to be? What good would it be-? We'll, no good, to man who has no l eye. What good was tigurehead to a ship? Yet for appearance sake a car wants flgurehead more than a ship, for the ship from naturally converges | in from to a beautiful finish. The clum- | siest ship, even the homely fishing smack, has none of the unpleasant ef- | feet produced by the abrupt, cutoff, straight line that makes motor s front. A motor suffers from having no physiognomy. But every ship, as every locomotive engine, has a distinct physiognomy, And q figurehead would make up for this deficiency in the mo- tor, But flgureheads, somebody may say, were not merely ornamental in ships-t they helped description and iden- titieation, Precisely, and they would do the same for motors q consideration which will perhaps appeal more to the lpublic than to the m0rtorist
 But think what a field this opens up for feraldry Arms and crests, which now have none but antiquarian signi- ldcance, becomes alive; they might almost be useful There would be quite good sense in a mans motor carrying his crest as tlgurehead, What an opening for the new snob, What glory to be able to mount life sized gelden eagle contemplating the sun, or rather the clouds in England. Or a golden lion erect, rampaging fiercely in the air, lThere is the danger. The rich cad would so Haunt his hgurehead that gentle- men would be shy of showing one. But for once let the decent people hold their own and decline to be pushed off the road by the vulgar hustler. A standard of good taste would grow up and es-
 tablished
 From the point of view of appear ance figureheads, artistically wrought and fitted, would be capable of great
 things. An eagle, wings full spread, a
 brilliant butterfly, a winged griffin, par Iadise bird, valkyrie-there is room for lendless variety of design. The emu- llation among motorists would be great
 We could have shows of tigureheads.
 Think of the work for artists to design
 them, and the industry their making
 would stimulate. Would they interfere
 with speed? That should depend on
 their fitting to the car; they should not
 Of course, if a man in his zeal to be
 conspicuous puts on colossal golden
 elephant his speed will be retarded;
 but a reasonable Pegasus, say, with
 wing drawn back at right angle to
 cut the air, would be no eneumbrance I-Saturday Review.