Car Week Kickoff At Motorlux — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 201

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We have sunglasses. We both have sunglasses. Our future is so bright. And we normally don't wear sunglasses on a Carmage and show. Usually it's very dark in the studio. But today it's not a studio. Today we're doing Carmage and Alfresco. We have a... It's not that Fresco is. You have to have a carburetor stuff there's random people walking through. We are at Motorlux, one of the kickoff events of the... Sorry. The kickoff event of Monterey Car Week. Yes. Coming to you live, somewhat live.

We're not dead. To the Carmage and show. We're going to talk about Bruno Saco this week because he is... There's a display of Saco cars at Motorlux here. So we'll talk about Bruno Saco. Jason has just come fresh off a bunch of research. He'll get some insights about how he worked and what his role was, what he did, and what he didn't do. Jason is... Bruno Saco didn't design any cars. Amazing. Wow. They're talking about bearing lead. That's Jason Camisa. I'm Derek Tam Scott.

We are sponsored by Ferdinand Tires. Yes. Some more on that in a moment. No, we're right now. Right this second. Because Ferdinand Tires tells you to tell us to... We have to something, something, demand better tires. Demand, Ferdinand Stein. You just wanted to say that. It's funny when I watch it back. Last week or two weeks ago. Some point in the previous couple of weeks. There was an insertion editing club and we inserted a whole thing. We're sitting there in shorts and t-shirts.

We're recording the episode and it cuts away to a previous thing. Is it getting snowy outside? The roads are bound to be slippery. You should take the time right now before they get really bad. In the month of August. Yes, sorry about that. I mean, I laughed. I don't know. There weren't that many comments on YouTube about it. Yes, Ferdinand is back as a sponsor which makes us full of happy. Because we're both really pleased with their tires. We are high NPS score users.

We use the products and use them widely ourselves. Do not use abbreviations like NPS without telling you. Net promoter score. Net promoter score. Which means we like them and we rate them highly and favorably. I have now eight sets of Ferdinand tires on my car. Congratulations. It's a bit ridiculous. But you demanded better tires. And they sent them to me to test. I'm not going to like, oh, I really like these tires. So I'm going to take them off and put the shitty ones back on that I didn't like. Oh, a Yokohama that can't...

Somehow ever be round. I'm like, you're not going back on my tag. I love the people who are just in the background. Sorry about the people in the background who are filming us and cars. That concludes our introductory remarks. Yes, I'll do the class. There will be many, I think. Because we are in Monterey at an airport trying to record a podcast.

Which is a really brilliant idea. Jason's actually talking right now, and you just can't hear him on account of the jet. Yes, so we only found something that's louder than me that they have yet. A twin engine jet. Yes, that's true. Okay. So we are coming to you live. We're alive anyway. We're motorlux during the Monterey cart week. This is basically the big kickoff event from my perspective for Monterey. And it hasn't started yet. So we haven't started partying. We haven't started drinking.

I don't drink. You don't really drink. But maybe you'll get hammered tonight and embarrass yourself. You know what else will be hammering? Broad arrow. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I'll see myself out. So it is not brought to you by a broad arrow. Well, it's all part is hackily. Yes. So we are coming to you live for us, but not perhaps for you for Monterey car week to discuss a certain individual Bruno Saco. Yes. I think this was... there are several displays in Monterey.

The motorlux, one of them is a Saco display. And obviously we volunteered our cars that are in the background here. My buddy owns those two. I don't know who owns those, but they're amazing. One of our other friends owns the other C126 over there. I don't even know which one that the 560 SEC. Oh, yes. Actually, he also has a 500D that I've used on a CUDA video. The drag race. Yes, not an only span video. But yeah. So I have a bit of a revelation to use a word. Oh, it's a good thing you have a show about that.

Yeah, but it is. And I did actually recently do just film, which finished filming a revelations episode on the R129. And so I don't want to get into that. I'll let that sort of speak for itself. But the timing was perfect on this for a Saco thing because in the course of my research, which included a book that I stole from you. And you might often does. Yes, because the library of Derek is vast. I'm potentially even useful for at least one person on the planet. I save you guys.

It's the stress of having to read a book and instead read it all and summarize it for you and act it out in my little pantomime pantomime thing. But I some of the cross something that I think is is something I had never realized Saco, Saco made a statement. And he talked about the R129 as being, you know, his the most perfect car of his career and bubble blah blah. But we give design credit to Bruno Saco for these cars. We call him the designer of the entire

era of Saco era cars, right? And he came across something that just didn't sit well with me. He said, and I'm sorry, I'm unprepared scrolling. I'm scrolling. A lot of scrolling. A lot of scrolling.

Well, this is my notes from the script. And the script is twice as long as, sorry, the notes are twice as long as the script was. And the script was your longest one ever, longest, longest revelations ever. So anyway, I don't have in front of me.

But he said, from the moment I became the chief of design, I put down my pen and became a manager of minds. Yeah. And I read that. And then I read it at his retirement, the COL. Sorry about the back end of this guys.

Yurgen Schremp, which was a president of Mercedes Benz at June 99 when Saco went to go retire, he said, quote, Bruno Saco's cars make up an entirely separate period in our legendary history of making motor vehicles without your contribution as an artist car maker and manager.

Mercedes Benz would certainly not be this rich in meaning or as unique in the marketplace.

I thought, OK, I got me thinking there are two times I've heard the word manager in rapid succession in research.

And I thought we don't often, other than the sort of bangle era at BMW, we don't really talk about a designer as having, we don't give credit for an entire car to the designer.

That is a Saco car, that is a Saco car, that is a Saco car, but really there was a lot more to car than just design.

So I started looking and I thought manager of minds, he said he put his pencil down. So I started looking, I started looking for sketches from Saco to see what he had designed.

And I came up empty handed and I came up with a lot of documents that show other people having designed your 129, for example, with their sketches and their names on it.

And I realized Saco didn't design a single fucking car, that is my revelation.

And to prove such a thing, I found one precisely in this book, one sketch of what Bruno Saco's design slash sketches look like, I'm going to show it to you.

You post that the right response, I'm going to show it to the camera right now.

I burst out laughing.

This is, I think I'm pretty sure this sketch was a city car that will ultimately want to become become the A class.

But when I saw this, I thought, well, it's a good goddamn thing, you put down your pencil or your pen when you and became a manager of minds because you sure as hell weren't an artist.

I think that there's this tendency for us to want to attribute achievements to single individuals as a specifically an American achievement and we do this all over the place.

We talk about Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong or there's always this focus on the individual who actually does the achievement because we want to say that the individual is the person who is responsible when in fact the reality of any big organizations achievement is that there are thousands, hundreds or thousands of people who contribute to making something like that possible.

And then I think as a reflection of the nature of human achievement is that it's so complex to make a human object, whatever the thing is whether it's a space shuttle or some piece of nanotechnology or software or anything that you can't attribute it to a single person.

The most you can do is say someone like Bruno Saco who is responsible for like being the right manager who makes sure that the ideas, the right ideas, sort of make it through and they go through the right processes of vetting and then everything.

This is called design by committee, but it is the reality of making just about everything, you know, maybe someone like Gordon Murray could be an exception, but by and large almost everything that we make is so complex now that you need to design with an entire team of people and we just want to put one heroic name on it because that's ecosystem.

Yeah, it's consistent with our vision of what human achievement is is there some guy who's just sitting there and some brilliant idea comes to him and he makes it reality when in fact the truth is that you need entire teams of hundreds or thousands of people to make almost anything a reality now.

That was why I found the Ferdinand P.H. episode so refreshing to write because here was somebody who influenced he was a manager of people and influenced so many different interdisciplinary teams of people to create these magical cars that we love and got no credit for it.

His name was never on anything and he sort of stayed behind at the moment at the time he did it.

Now I think especially thanks to you that didn't help her, I guess.

But yeah, we all want to put one person's name on it, but I realized that Sako actually didn't design any of these cars.

What he did do, he architected the philosophy exactly.

And so what I wanted to talk about was two things, his journey within Mercedes Benz and then also his vertical horizontal architecture of design which is really fascinating to me.

Have you ever heard that?

Yes.

Have you read this book?

No.

Damn it, but I do own it.

But you should read it when I, if I give it back to you because it's interesting.

So his Sako started out as a mechanical engineer which I find very interesting.

Study engineering went to school.

He tried to get a design a couple design houses within Italy.

Didn't work and then wound up at Mercedes Benz.

He met someone, he had a great interview and he basically insulted Mercedes sedans and said they were boring.

What year was this?

19 oh my god.

Give me an approximate era.

I just want to know what cars he's talking about.

And he's describing them as boring.

He said this was 50 Geiger era.

58, yes.

Okay.

In 1958, he started, January of 1958, started in Mercedes design department which is very interesting to note that there was no design department within Mercedes.

Mercedes design was a subsidiary department within body engineering.

Okay.

Very Mercedes.

Very chairman.

Exactly.

He started there and worked from 58 through 63 in styling under Paul Brock.

But Paul Brock was very much a control freak from what I understood from, anyway from, from this book.

And he wanted to be leaving to get out of the shadow of Brock because he knew that he would never have a chance of growing.

And Brock we understand is being responsible for the car like a pagoda.

Yes.

The two thirty two fifty two eighty.

So the whole sixties, I guess, you know, 50 late fifties and early sixties era.

Yeah.

It's 300 SCL 6.9 108 109 as a, for example.

And so he wound up moving to safety engineering.

And this is really important because he worked with Bella Rainey.

Bella Rainey who came up with the crumple zone.

I mean, the amount of, first of all, but then he came up with a Volkswagen Beetle.

That's certainly seems before Portia did.

I mean, his sketches predate Portia sketches of a, of a people car.

But he came up with the idea of a crumple zone plus a rigid, non deformable passenger safety cell, collapsible steering column.

He was just a safety obsessed engineer who worked with Mercedes.

And, and Saco worked with him in the engineering department having nothing to do with, with design from 63 to 67,

but four years.

And then in 67, Brock went back to France.

He retired.

He quit and went back to France.

He didn't, he mustn't have completely retired because he's also known for having designed the interior of the Pugeot 505.

Right.

The first one, the early ones.

The early ones down.

But I find that interesting that he, so I think he wanted, it was, had enough with the Germans, was the sort of sense that I got.

But he goes back to France and Saco didn't come into design, go to design.

He stayed in the safety department, but he was promoted to run, he asked, and then was given the job,

to run the experimental safety vehicle department.

And these were not, had nothing to do with, with design.

They were, they were pioneering technologies, right?

Yeah.

Like ABS, for example, and impact bumpers and, you know, the deformable plastic bumpers and all that stuff.

There were all these ESVs that they did, like, I don't know, at least a 15 of them probably.

Well, so the ESV program resulted in 1978 anti-lock breaks, 1981 airbag plus seat belt pretensioners,

1995 belt force limiters inside airbags.

And in that department, they tested and, and it's ready for production, ABS, hydraulic impacts absorbing bumpers,

laminated bonded wind screens, pneumatic leveling headlights, headlamp wipers, padded interior impact areas,

fire safety concerns, like putting the fuel tank over the rear axle, fuel pump disabled with an oil pressure interlock.

These are all things that they were just, think tanking basically, how do we make the car more safe?

And they were obsessed, obsessed with offset frontal collisions.

To the point where Mercedes have the battery when possible in the right rear of the car,

because the front left is the most likely to become involved in an accident, right?

In a right hand traffic company.

In a right hand drive country to hell with the Brits.

Yes, let's be honest.

But anyway, so he, so he wanted to be the first time Germans said that.

I'm sorry.

That's too soon.

So from 67 through 74, he ran that.

And that period is when the C11 happened.

And the C111 tested the front suspension of the one.

C111's.

Z.

Yes.

Pioneered the suspension, the 5.0 versus suspension that won up in the debut.

101.

You're 201.90.

Some front suspension that wound up somewhere out in the 116.

So they were really doing cool shit.

74, he gets promoted to chief engineer.

Nothing to do with design at all.

And then a year later, boom, design chief.

But remember, design chief was a part of engineering.

And it wasn't until he was design chief that designed then eventually became its own department within Mercedes Benz.

And I think that's a really huge structural change to recognize that.

The way a car looks is just as important as the way it's engineered.

And it's given as much substance.

And this is so German, because if you think about the approach in Italy at the time,

there were just celebrity designers who had, you know,

were certainly a thing in the 50s and 60s.

You know, you think about Gergero, Gergero and Marcelo Gandini and Spada,

Hercules Spada, speaking of which just a momentary sidebar I learned this recently

and was very delighted to learn that Gergero, Gergero,

in addition to having designed a number of cars also designed other items,

one of which was a pasta.

That was, so there's like blueprint designs of pasta

with like sort of schematics of what the pasta would be shaped like.

I think it came out in 1982, 83.

It was made by Voyello, I think.

And it's called a Mariele.

Anyway, you have to look at it.

It's an industrially designed new pasta invented.

Basically, new pasta just dropped in 1983 by Gergero.

Anyway, but I mean, he just, his, his,

a towel design does sidewalls on Gergero.

A non-fresan tires, for example.

I mean, industrial design.

Industrial design, including pasta.

He also did, what was it?

Soko?

Soko did a bunch of bathroom faucets.

Like, there's a lot, a whole line of like bathroom stuff in the gorgeous stuff.

It's all stuff we've seen.

But Soko, when he left Mercedes wanted to do that.

Sorry about the background noise guys.

We have people who don't apparently realize that two people are recording a podcast.

And two people are recording a podcast.

Well, there are a lot of people here doing a lot of things.

Sorry.

Anyway, sorry for the background noise.

So what happens when you're, you know, among the jets set.

I'm among jets.

On jet.

And you're set.

I'm not currently setting it.

Yeah, so I, I found it so fascinating that, that Soko's entire early career at Mercedes

from for what was 11 years total and safety before he ever started working design.

And really starts to make sense why the tail lights are ribbed.

The corner markers are ribbed.

That's the, you know, this is obsession with safety that permeated all of the design of these cars.

Until people all the time when you're looking at Soko era car,

you're not looking at styling for the sake of styling.

You're looking at engineering and safety.

And, and then, you know, as combined, safety engineering first, primarily.

And then how do you make that aesthetically pleasing?

Yeah.

Well, this is very German, the form, you know, follows function, philosophy,

which, you know, wouldn't necessarily be the...

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Case in a lot of other design firms or countries or car makers.

I'm not sure it's true of any modern car company.

Yeah.

Even then it was unique.

I think somewhat, in a period, and it will sob.

Sure.

I mean, I feel like sob was very safety obsessed.

From get goes, it was Volvo.

Yeah.

I have a lot of scent.

But I'm not sure that that safety permeated the design.

The efficiency was a big player also.

But all of these functional concerns about the car needs to meet certain performance targets,

whether that's for the pedestrians that they are impacting,

the occupants inside they are protecting,

or for the fuel consumption that just, you know, generate for the end user.

A little, I mean, it's amazing when you start looking at these cars.

You know, the asymmetrical mirrors that we see on 201s and 204s.

It's done for fuel economy because someone calculated out that you don't need that big of a mirror across the car.

The angle, your angle of motion for the seat is small enough that you can get away with a shorter mirror.

And that will help the arrow, which helps fuel economy and also top speed.

And this is the permeated every part of these cars to the wiper.

Yeah.

I mean, the wiper alone.

Have we done a car imagine episode on the mono wiper?

We talk about it often, certainly.

But I mean, do you know why it was so bright?

Well, it covers the driver's view first.

It covers a large percentage of the windscreen.

It's 86 or 87 percent of the windscreen.

It also, the wind flow is always parallel to the wiper travel.

Is that the one you're looking for?

As I get it.

So, I mean, but you're totally right about all of them.

But, you know, we think, oh, how cool.

This is an extending articulating wiper on this crazy cam that has never been done since.

And people have done mono wipers, but it's just, and Mercedes did first.

Also, before they invented this, it was just a regular sort of sweeping wiper.

But the brilliance of this is something that we don't really need that much here in America.

Is that when, if you look at the airflow across a windshield, radio, radio pattern, right?

So, if you put little pieces of tape and string on it, you'll see that all of the airflow sort of emanates from the center and just moves out at a radio pattern.

And a mono wiper that's hinged in the center or the passenger side wiper on a traditional car is always parallel to that line, which means there's no wind trying to get underneath.

The way our drivers wipers are, it's always, it's always some level of perpendicular to that airflow, which means that high speed on an autobahn, for example,

your wiper blade is going to try to lift off the windscreen, which is a safety concern.

And conventional manufacturers would solve this by putting a down force wing, basically a little mini down force wing on the wiper.

And you see this high speed car, yes, on the driver side, I guess it is usually a driver side.

Because the passenger side is hinged in the middle, and thus is always parallel to the airflow.

And so I've seen people put, you know, I don't know why my car only came with one, and they'll put us that this driver side spoiler on the passenger side as well, which doesn't need it.

But Mercedes got around that whole problem by making this probably very expensive to build.

Well, and they sort of originated this before they came up with the one wiper solution, they had a two wiper solution that functionally did the same thing.

And this was used on the 107 and the 126 and the 116, which is these two wipers that move in concert, and Porsche did this on the 993 also.

But, you know, the goal, I guess was probably the same was to ensure that you got full coverage of the windshield.

And then the brilliance of the eccentric system was that you could do the same thing with one wiper instead of two wipers.

And, you know, again, we don't, you know, 80 miles an hour, it's not really a big deal.

But you drive in some, some rain at 140 miles an hour, 130 miles an hour, and you notice the difference between number 80s wiper and anyone else's engineered like no other car in the world.

This is why historically German cars have been sort of an unusual class by themselves, because they were had to be able to do what they did on the Autobahn, which, you know, was just not even a consideration in the United States, for example.

I mean, imagine if I can tell a story in 1987, Chevy Cavalier.

Yeah, sure.

German Brothers car 52,000 miles on it made it 50 minutes at the at the hand of a German who popped the motor.

I mean, just the, he and I kept telling him this is not an Opel.

It's a Chevy.

There's a big difference.

You cannot run this thing at red line on the entire way up a hill like and it's on a rod.

It's on a rod bearing.

I mean, it's just the, you know, his car was a 1.2 liter Opel cadet with 60 horsepower that sat at red line for three hours at a

300,000 kilometers.

It didn't make that.

That was the, that was the thing is all the German stuff like, you know, Germans come here to America and they're like, what do you mean these cars last 400,000 miles?

We can't get 200,000 kilometers out of them before rebuilt?

Well, we're not sitting at 7,000 RPM for hours on end in top gear at full load.

I know how much you dislike David Davis, but there's this wonderful quote at the beginning of the 1990s.

I know you just find him pompous, which is fair.

There's this wonderful quote at the beginning of the 1990s Porsche promotional video that he did for the 993.

And he said, the difference between a Porsche and any other car and by extension, you mean that the German car and kind of any other car

is that a Porsche will undoubtedly be driven as hard as it possibly can be, as fast as it possibly can for the entire duration of a tank of gas.

And with a Porsche, that's just a given.

And as Americans, we have a hard time imagining a car that would even survive that.

Yeah.

And that's really like highlights the fundamental difference in philosophy between and this certainly was historically true 20, 30 years ago to, you know, deeper into the past.

The hardest thing to adjust to when I moved to Germany in 1990 was the idea that you would be at 5,6,7,000 RPM for hours on end on a rottabund.

You know, you just, you know, as Americans were like, oh my god, 3,500, the engine screaming, I need a sixth gear.

I mean, seventh gear and eighth gear, whatever it is, just bring the revs down, bring the revs down.

And these cars are just flat out.

I mean, they were at the time, especially with four and five speed transmissions were always geared so that they would hit their top speed at the horsepower peak in fifth in top gear.

So if that horsepower peak is 62 and the 236, for example, 143 miles an hour is 6,200 RPM, because that's where the power peak is.

And so you drive that thing at 130, which is not very stressful for the engine, but you're in the fives.

You know, you're screaming along for 100,000 miles.

When I did the research on the 300S, I'll go wing for that revelations episode.

That engine was designed to make X amount of power or whatever.

I don't have the figures in front of me.

Quote indefinitely.

So they had talked about different power levels and different peak speeds.

And while it can last, you know, it will last X amount of time at this speed or X amount of time at this speed, but it would do

230 kilometers an hour indefinitely.

Yeah.

And so in the world of airplanes, they have the same thing, right?

Because in an airplane, you can set the RPM at whatever level you want it to be as opposed to a car where that's dependent on road speed.

And in an airplane, the horsepower rating is one number, which is called maximum continuous.

And then you also have another number, which will be like take off power maximum two minutes, but they'll specify that it will make a certain amount of power.

But you shouldn't leave it at that state for more than two minutes or however long it is to get off the ground and get fine.

Presumably because then durability or heat.

Like thermal, right?

Yeah, ability to reject the heat generated when you're making that level of power.

I mean, German cars will do this often.

BMW does this with a half red line and a full red line.

And other companies will do it with like a, you know, either yellow or red.

But BMW's half, it's afterying the yellow red.

And full thickness red, half is continual and full is peak.

So you could rev to 6200, for example, on one of the engines.

But if the red, the half red line started 6,000, you could stay 6,000 forever, but not 6200.

Yeah, sure.

And if, or sorry, you could, you know, you could say 5,900, but it's 6,000.

That's like the ultimate limit is 6,200, but the continual limit would be 6,000, for example.

And I can only assume that's for thermal or something.

Didn't pass whatever stress test.

But it's, you know, German driving, especially back when cars struggled to reach their top speed.

Right now you have traffic was lighter also traffic was lighter.

But also you just have at this point everything, you know, you need 200 and something horsepower to do 150 miles an hour.

Like figure, you know, depending on the frontal area and and so CDA coefficient drag times air.

You're somewhere in the 200s to get 250 miles an hour.

And anything past that is gravy.

And now with so many cars at 3, 4, 5, 600,000 horsepower, these cars are not stressed at 150 miles an hour.

So they can be geared down, down, down, down, down.

And so they'll hit.

And they are on an 8 feet automatic.

They'll hit top speed at, you know, 5th gear.

And then have three years passed out to bring the revs down.

Cruising is quieter.

But that was not the case when either of these two or any of these SOCO cars were made.

It was just a very different, different world.

But it was, it was fast.

I really recommend anyone to do some research on SOCO and help me find any evidence that he drove, drove a car.

I mean, it doesn't seem like, you know, we have all these pictures of him sort of in front of every, you know, in the car and his beautiful suits.

And he's just tailored in these, you know, he's the perfect figurehead.

But I don't think he actually put pen to paper for anything.

Oh, well, you heard it here first.

Unless the other episode dropped first.

In which case you heard it there first.

No, it'll be here first.

But I, you know, I didn't really, I didn't really talk too much about it.

But I genuinely don't think he drew the cars, which is kind of a big deal.

You know, when we have this whole era of cars, the designs of Bruno SOCO on that beautiful thing,

legendary Mercedes designer, leading Mercedes Benz design.

Leading Mercedes Benz design, right?

That is the mind's managing minds and implied in that.

But I mean, it is just a reflection of how we make things nowadays.

So would we think, would should, can, would, are you going to think less of him knowing that he didn't actually design these cars?

I mean, his fingerprints are so much all over these cars in a way that sort of doesn't matter whether he actually drew them or not

because they sort of existed in a framework that he designed and that's almost not more important.

I mean, if you have a single lone wolf designing a car, which was the way that say the Mura was done, then sure that he did it directly.

Okay, so you think that it's not Gandini, that he takes credit for it, but it was happening.

Oh, I'm going to know all the other way around.

On cellar Gandini doesn't don't credit for the Mura, because he didn't start from scratch.

He started on the design that was already sketched out and he finished it and worked on the details according to him.

I do have a Gandini book and he doesn't think of the Mura as his, but he does with the Strato Zero or he did them from start to finish.

Sure.

I mean, to me, he's, Gandini is the opposite of every other designer.

Everyone's sort of the thing to do in the design communities.

Everyone takes, takes credit for, was that there's a German saying a good design has many mothers and a bad design.

So none.

And so the great design happens and everyone wants to take credit for it.

During the research of this episode, I found a bunch of people who, of the episode on 129, who say that the guy who's, oh, I don't have any research material in front of me,

the guy who is credited with the design of the car on the Wikipedia's actually didn't do it at all.

It was a different guy and this is a Facebook argument between all these guys that were there at the time saying, no, no, that guy had some ideas and he did this and whatever and brought some great shit.

I just heard another quote from Bob Lutz.

Actually, in Haggardy's driver's, a driver's club magazine, actually, we have a future story coming out about the 50 years of the BMW 3 series.

And Bob Lutz gave a great quote about the Hofmeister kink.

He said, the Hofmeister, he was a designer, he was engineer with a couple of good ideas here and yeah, okay, that was fine.

He put his fingers on it, but he wasn't a designer.

I find it so interesting that in the design community, people are so often trying to take credit for great designs.

And I don't blame them.

Look at that.

Of course, the design of that R129 behind us started in 1974.

We as humans need a hero.

You know, you just need someone to look up to to respect to say is responsible for something.

It's a proxy for the entire generation of cars.

We say Sako era cars to refer to a certain philosophy that extends well beyond the aesthetic design of the car.

Well, that's, I think that was his point.

So to answer my own question, no, of course, I don't think anything less of him.

In fact, I think more when I say that someone who was an engineer who was so safety obsessed and so concerned with, for example, 129,

being the safest convertible ever made and no less safe than a close sedan.

But managed to have that to allow that to happen while looking like that.

And doing all the internal politicking that you have to do when you're a manager of a German company and all this other shit.

You know, like he got out of there so that he could, he left because he was under the wing of Brock.

But then realized if he didn't, if he stayed there, he would have no future.

So he went to safety engineering so that one guy got retired.

He'd be able to move in as a step in.

So he was playing.

Is it fiber crackers?

Yeah, fiber crackers.

Yeah, he was playing politics.

And so what a brilliant man to be able to play politics and engineer and safety and design.

And, you know, and then be a part of an R&D department that over the course of the development of 129 ballooned by 50%

and have designed pulled out of it and made its own department.

He spanned the Mercedes architecture across all of the disciplines

to make these cars beautiful, well engineered, safe, timeless pieces of design.

He was certainly the great integrator and the cars reflect that.

Do you want to talk about vertical horizontal?

Yes.

We're going to run out of time.

This is going to be, I'm sure, like a jet taking off in the background.

Very quickly, the reason that

Soko's designs are timeless, that's a fact it's not my opinion, so don't argue with me.

I mean, I'm sorry.

These cars are almost 50 years old and I think they're stunningly beautiful to this day.

Part of that is he went into this with a two-pronged approach to design.

He thought that there was a horizontal homogeneity and a vertical affinity is what he called it.

And horizontal homogeneity was when you start to look at an entire vehicle lineup,

you must know that each one of those cars is related to each other immediately.

This is a family of cars and a family of designs.

Look at 201 versus 124, immediately recognizable as the same family,

even though they're two very different cars, right?

And 129 and 126 and all of these cars that sort of happen at the same time.

He matched that with a vertical affinity, which was each one of them has to take design cues from the past,

so that not only do you have this horizontal approach where you recognize this whole thing as a family of cars that are related,

but horizontally you recognize the lineage of cars that each is related to the one that came before it

and the one that will come after it and that they must.

Hello.

Exactly, and how you did that was make sure that historical references are incorporated into all new designs.

And if you do that right, his theory was, then every car will, no car will ever be outdated,

because it's a constantly evolving thing.

201 came first in this, or I guess 126 came first in this design language, then 201 and 124.

And because they were all related to each other and the past, they didn't make their predecessor immediately obsolete

because it carried that thread through.

And so you look at 202, which was the sort of next generation of the first C class of this design language.

Yeah, it didn't make the 190 E obsolete, it just carried that all forward.

That is the most effective example, I think, of that design language.

I guess you could argue that philosophy rather.

129 to 230 sort of did that as well, I think.

A little bit less so.

140 to 220, I don't think did it particularly well at all.

No, I mean, if you had kept him around for long enough, then this probably would have happened, although he's often credited with the 230 and the 220.

I don't think, I don't think that actually when you look back at 220 now, it's beautiful.

What offended me was the interior quality of that car.

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the design philosophy.

And so I just recently saw it in a friend of ours bought one.

And for $1,300, it's a reflection of what the world thinks of 220 is.

It's gorgeous. The car, the car design is.

Yes, I remember where that car arrived and I thought it was quite striking and aesthetically pleasing.

You know, now that I know what it's what's underneath the skin, I'm dodging neon.

Yeah, so anyway, I think we should stop talking about.

Soko as a designer and more as an integrator.

Good luck, manager of mines.

No, I can't.

The nuance doesn't exist in the minds of the public.

No, does it need to?

Right? Soko Eric cars, they're beautiful.

They function.

They're sort of an automotive high point for both Mercedes and the whole industry.

As far as I'm concerned.

I thoroughly agree.

Okay.

Well, this has been the, yeah, obviously, as we're of our Soko cars here and we love them.

So, all right.

So this has been the motor lux edition of the car manager.

Thank you for joining us.

Sorry for the background noise.

Yeah.

If indeed there was any because these mics are pretty good at filtering stuff.

Yeah.

Not we'll see you next week in a considerably less.

Maybe uncontrolled environment.

Maybe there are jets over here.

There's a kuntosh right there.

There's at Ferris Manx.

We haven't even talked about car week at all.

Do you want to do a brief discussion of car week?

No, next week.

We're going to do that as a whole episode summary.

That's fair.

I think we do it afterwards because I haven't really experienced much yet.

Yeah, okay.

Although McLaren F1 drove by me today.

Yes, very upset.

I think what color was it?

Silver.

Probably 062.

I'm guessing.

And on that bombshell, we're ending this episode because I can't.

Okay.

All right.

See you next week.

See you.

See you next week.

Car Week Kickoff At Motorlux — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 201

About this episode

Plymouth Cuda

Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC

Mercedes-Benz R129

Bruno Sacco

design by committee

Ferdinand Piëch

Mercedes

Mercedes-Benz 300 SCL

crumple zone

Volkswagen Beetle

rigid safety cell

collapsible steering column

Peugeot Pugeot 505

ABS

airbag

Saab

Volvo

aerodynamics

mono wiper

windscreen

articulating wiper

downforce wing

Mercedes-Benz 126

Mercedes-Benz 116

Mercedes-Benz 107

Porsche 993

Autobahn

Chevy Cavalier

red line

horsepower peak

Chrysler 200S

Bmw 3

Lamborghini Kuntosh

Mclaren F1

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