The Washington times., 1920-03-20
SEEK MORE BEAUTY
IN LATEST MODELS
Producers of New Cars Aim to
Eliminate Awkward Combi-
nations of Lines.
ny c. w. CHURCHILL.
General Manager the Wiatea Cen

ny c. w. CHURCHILL,
General Manager the Wistea Cen
| paay.
In time past when a motor car
maker occasionally eliminated from
his body lines an awkward angle or q
fussy curve his car was judged to be
more beautiful than before. And OF
course, IL did become, by this cleans
ing process. more agreeable to the
eye. and therefore more beautiful.
But there Is a positive in beauty as
| we'll as a negative. and the mere
eliminating OF jarring lines never ac-
complishes as much toward produce
ing artistically beautiful cars as can
be accomplished when the maker gets
the right point OF view.
That point OF view must recognize
that the motor car Is not a horse
drawn buggy or a marine vessel or
an aeroplane, but Is an entity Of it.
self, with peculiar necessities and
possibilities. Until a car builder gets
that idea and pursues 1t. he will con-
tinue to build cars having n make
SHIFT look.
Early Cars Makeshifts-
All early cars were max eshifts
emphatically. The first cars were
necessarily "horseless vehicles" diff
ering from other road vehicles of
the time in appearance only because
no horses drew them along. Motor
car inventors were so busy getting
their engines to run and to keep run
ming that they had no time to invent
complete vehicles.
Nor was that even desirable. A
carriage running along the streets
without horses was strange enough
In itself. So the early motor car men
took carriage construction much as
they found 1t, neatly concealed"
their engines under the carriage body
and let 1t go at that. The makeshift
served for a time.
But gradually, when horses scared
less at motor vehicles. il began to
dawn on car makers that the engine
did not belong under the body. be-
cause thus placed it was inaccessi-
BILE.
The first big change. therefore. was
that of putting the engine in front
of the drivers seat. This gave the
desired accessibility. and also 1t gave
the car a new balance that made
driving safer by reducing the danger
of skidding.
Then when engines began to de-
velop real power and speed. cars need
ed something that slow-moving horse
vehicles had not acquired-the glass
front. or windshield. which ranks As
the first real invention in the prog
ress of body making.
But in addition to that distinction.
and besides protecting the faces of
driver and passengers from wind and
weather, the glass front did some
thing else. 1t was a distinct line of
demarcation between that part of the
vehicle devoted to the power plant
and that part provided for passen-
gers.
Effect Not Beautiful.
The motor car was then more than
ever before a two-piece construction.
with an engine under a low bonnet
out in front and a section with high
backed seats for passengers behind.
Between these two sections stood the
glass front, pointing skyward at
right angles to the inevitable hori-
zontal lines of bonnet and body. And
that was decidedly a not beautiful
effect
To get away from this awkward
combination of lines car makers in
serted at the junction of bonnet and
glass front various makeshifts-
bumps, humps and whatnot, curves,
convex and concave, but without ac-
complishing much that could be called
beautiful.
Along about the same time bodies