Automobile Magazine link: What If Today’s Cars Were Designed Decades Ago? Featuring the 1977 Prius: Just a fanciful bit of automotive art. Enjoy!
I was just wondering if anyone was going to post this. I’d would rock this like there was no tomorrow.
I remember round ones being more common. I had a '78 Dodge Aspen. I remember replacing those rounds one a few times.
The rectangular sealed beams became available around 1975 but I don't think they got popular until about 1980. Fun fact: the last car to leave the factory with sealed beam headlights was a 2017 Chevrolet Express commercial van.
I've never owned a vehicle with those cantilever shades on the back. Do they work? I would think they would reduce heat, but also block a lot of view. I've been watching a lot of old programming recently from the 60's and 70's. Space 1999? If "Star Trek" get's lauded for predicting a lot of the advances in reality that have come to be? Space 1999 is nearly the converse. It's 20 years past the date, and the show managed to get almost nothing right. It is fun to watch if only because of the 70's like stylistic impression of what the future would look like. PS. With the exception of the Green striping on the side? I think I like the styling of that conception of a 70's Prius. No accordion like squeezed back end. It actually has a lot of the look that I personally liked about the Gen 2 Prius. But I think, present company possibly excluded, I was in a rare minority that has always liked the often maligned styling of the now older generation Prius.
FMVSS 108. You can use sealed beams which are made of glass, or you can do aerodynamic headlights with plastic lenses starting in 1984. Aero lenses made out of glass were outlawed from 1968 onwards.
It's like the split rear window, just got to have the mirror adjusted right. Get it right, and you are looking at the slats edge on, then they block as much view as thick defroster wires.
That's adjacent to one potentially anachronistic detail I noticed about this design. Look at the actual back window of the car in the drawing. The glass is shown to make a very sharp radius near the rear edge to follow the Kammback cut of the tail. I can't think of any 70s car that had such a hard radius in any piece of tempered glass. I don't know if they just hadn't imagined that shape yet, or if they weren't capable of manufacturing it until later. I can't think of an earlier example than the 3rd generation Honda civic, specifically the "Wagovan." Look at the rear side glass, where it follows the corner of the roof.
Never did so myself. Neither did any of the family cars. I have been behind a couple, which is how I figured it would look from inside. No idea on the washing. The slats could keep some dirt from getting on the window itself. Guess you use a sponge that fits between them.
I remember an aftermarket one that had a hinge built in so you could swing the gratework away to clean the glass. No clue if anyone did it that way on an OEM part.
