- Tesla's Cybertruck has provoked a polarizing reaction to its exotic design.
- The electric-car company's first pickup truck is radical, but it also signals artistic growth for the designer Franz von Holzhausen.
- Von Holzhausen has created a beautiful and durable design language for Tesla vehicles, but he was falling into an aesthetic rut.
- The Cybertruck resets the story, and even advances it. For von Holzhausen, it's a breakthrough.
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Before the reveal of Tesla's outrageous Cybertruck, the company's head designer was known for elegance and restraint.
Franz von Holzhausen's calling card was that at Tesla he hadn't created wild, futuristic vehicles that evoked spaceships or impossible constructions of curves and contorted lines. The Model S in particular was a subdued masterpiece that's held up fantastically well since its introduction in 2012. It was a perfectly normal-looking all-electric sedan that nonetheless made you want to keep looking at it. It should have been boring, but it wasn't. It was captivating.
Few car designers have achieved this: Alec Issigonis with the original Mini, Malcolm Sayer with the Jaguar E-Type, Henrik Fisker with the Aston Martin DB9.
When Tesla rolled out its new Roadster a few years ago, you could see von Holzhausen extending himself but not going crazy.
Likewise with the Model Y crossover, which very clearly represented von Holzhausen sticking to the core visual vocabulary he had made into his own language.
But the Cybertruck — wow! No one expected anything even remotely like it from the dignified von Holzhausen. Though the design is controversial, I think it's a wonderful move for Tesla and for von Holzhausen. The brand was running the risk of falling into a rut. In the car business, there's a simple dictum that says it all: "Show them the car."
What that means is that the physical fact and impression of the vehicle is the fundamental. If people don't respond to your design, positively or negatively, then you've failed.
So the Cybertruck is a breakthrough for von Holzhausen. Here's why:
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The Model S is the opposite of futuristic. Beyond that, von Holzhausen took advantage of the inherent engineering of electric cars — no gas engine, no drivetrain, no gas tank — to create a sleek sedan that has a very roomy cabin and SUV-like storage.
The Model 3 offers more of the same.
The Model Y crossover represents an evolution ...
... of von Holzhausen's vocabulary from the Model X.
Even the new Roadster makes use of von Holzhausen's familiar styling cues.
These designs have been influential in ways that more out-there styles aren't. Von Holzhausen's genius is for beauty that's tied to reality.
No one would accuse the Cybertruck of being tied to the reality of pickups.
The RAM 1500, Business Insider's 2019 Car of the Year, is tied to reality.
But this is where von Holzhausen has moved the story forward. Nobody thinks about reinventing the pickup because even tentative efforts in that direction, such as ...
... the first-generation Honda Ridgeline have been rejected by the incredibly conservative truck market.
Everything about the Cybertruck flies in the face of received pickup-truck wisdom. And that's an innovative move, because for von Holzhausen to design a Tesla-fied pickup, using his familiar language, would have been a dud.
Von Holzhausen instead decided to do what he hadn't previously done, and what Tesla had avoided, which was to blow minds rather than hew to middlebrow sensibilities.
And why not? We ask for artists to grow, so when they do, we shouldn't be freaked out by how far they go. They are, after all, THE ARTIST. Trying to control them is foolhardy.
In this sense, the Cybertruck is bold and brave. It is the design everybody is talking about, inside and outside the car business. So for von Holzhausen, it's a personal and professional triumph.
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