“Create your own visual style…let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” Orson Welles was referring to the visual arts, but could have equally been talking about branding and product imaging.
We all work in a business that epitomizes the importance of style and memorable features; after all, if two cars did exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way, at exactly the same cost, you’d buy the better-looking of the two. To your eyes, that is. Thank goodness we all see things differently.
I remember, as a kid in the fifties, being stultified by my father’s ability to name the make and model of every car that passed. He even knew the sound they made. Eventually, when I got into the car business I could echo his talent.
Thinking back, it wasn’t such a gift. If you had the vaguest interest in cars you could identify a car by the sound its starter motor made. And a Vauxhall Viva could not have been more different than an Austin Mini in looks, style or utility. Here, Mustangs stirred the senses in the same way as Corvettes, but the differences were endless. One man’s meat, another man’s poison…
I rejoice every day at being involved in a business which results from so much genius. From an initial vehicle concept, designing the machines and spaces to build the vehicles, planning their interiors to accommodate so many considerations, using new, fabulous technologies, finally to the genius of marketing and distributing the product by businessmen and women who take it personally, putting everything they own behind the idea selling something that came from the mind of someone else. I know of no other business that demands so much talent from start to finish and to do it every day. Think of the dealer –
architect, lawyer, accountant, advertising maven,
marketing guru, engineer, inventory manager, human resources specialist, deluxe salesman, charity donor,
community leader, copywriter and fashionister and fortune-teller! And that just gets him to Monday lunchtime. This is not just a talent – it’s pure genius and these people are in every Main Street in America.
We have the pleasure in dealing with products that range from the utilitarian to the downright sexy. Although I have to say that some of the designs we see today are pap for the masses, hardly promoting the classics of the future. Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a classic but the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia is exhibiting The Allure of the Automobile, hinged around eighteen of the world’s absolutely finest cars from the Golden Age of automobile design. Art Moderne-spawned cars from the thirties are on display like a 1937 Hispano-Suiza and a Bugatti Type 57S which, to me, is as sensual as a reclining nude!
Also showcased are cars from the fifties and sixties like the understated elegance of a 1961 Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato in contrast to the classic clarion call to luxury provided by the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. This is a must-see exhibition if one bone in your body has any predilection for cars.
I was fortunate to have been invited to a preview of what the show was to be and how it was to be laid out in the museum and was witness to the stunning amount of work that goes into mounting such an exquisite undertaking. And we have one of our own to thank for sponsoring and underwriting the endeavor – Manheim Auctions, under the tutelage of Dean and Christine Eisner, is the main promoter.
Dean’s an interesting character. In a well-earned, privileged place as Manheim’s CEO, he wears his position with understated (a Cox trait) sensitivity. He lets others take the spotlight, but they move at his persuasion. He’s a dexterous and talented leader. On top of that, he’s a decent chap and nice to be around.
While I was there, an exhibition of works by Leonardo Davinci was on display but it had closed – a situation that I bemoaned to one of the museum’s curators. He quietly showed me to a private door and said, “It’s all yours!!” There I was to see art and engineering at its zenith. Pure genius.