Del Coates

Description

One critic summed up the Gallardo’s design as “too pure.” Since that would be high praise in almost any other quarter, I will concentrate on the concept of purity in my assessment of the Gallardo’s design. The design of any car begins and ends in a quest for just the right blend of refined purity and an emotionally charged diabolic impression (“diabolic” happens to be an antonyms of “pure”). Purity leads to a sense of neatness, harmony, and elegance, which I refer to simply as concinnity. While a car’s diabolic essence is responsible for its visual energy, vitality and soul, some degree of concinnity is essential if a car is ever to become a timeless classic. A designer has considerable latitude, however, in the relative mixture. On a pure-diabolic scale, the relatively refined Lamborghini Miura would lie near the pure end, for example, while the more energetic Lamborghini Diablo would lie, fittingly so, near the diabolic end . The Gallardo’s supercar cues—an extremely low, sweeping, cab-forward profile dominated by a windshield more horizontal than vertical and a high, blunt tail; a wide, agile stance; robust wheels and tires; scoops and vents for handling gobs of air—provide plenty of diabolic character. Rather than embellishing it with noisy Diablo-like details, design chief Luc Donckerwolke favored such classic Lambos as the Miura that lay nearer to the pure end of the scale. He and his staff struck a beautiful balance in my opinion, in creating the most beautiful Lamborghini ever. But some enthusiasts who identify Lamborghini primarily with more ornery models like the Countach and Diablo were bound to think the former Audi designer had pushed matters too far, with a critical loss of Italian character. The car certainly brings to mind notions of purity: “unadulterated”; “free of inappropriate or extraneous elements”; “free from discordant qualities.” Specifically, any of the following attributes, orientations, and relationships among design elements contribute to a sense of purity: • attributes of continuity, repetition, simplicity, symmetry, and unity; • orientations that are horizontal, and vertical. • relationships that are aligned, concentric, contiguous, flush, intersecting (of more than two lines or of a line and center of a circle), orthogonal (perpendicular), and parallel. These properties are associated with the more general concept I call objective concinnity. Many seem redundant because they stem from common roots. Symmetry (literally “same measure”) is a special kind of repetition. The Gallardo’s flush headlight covers are also aligned and continuous with the hood’s surface. Integrated, body-colored bumpers unify its design and make it seem simpler than if it had distinct black or chrome bumpers. The virtually concentric circles of its wheels and their body openings are essentially parallel. In a nutshell, these properties yield discernible patterns that decrease the mental effort required to perceive the design and file it in memory. The ease of the process feels good for the same reason that a flash of insight does. You don’t have to be conscious of the patterns to reap their rewards. Neither did the designers.

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