Part 1: Catabolizing designs, The Three Schools of Car Design, Art Deco, and the 2011 Lincoln MKX can be found here.
Locomotives trains, as a form of transport, had their glory days when my maternal grandparents were young children. Not that their jet-black hair ever rustled in the passenger train’s open window. No, they missed the steam-powered magnificence along with the rest of their youth. In Axis-controlled Romania, trains were avoided, lest they be the kind with no return trip.
Life couldn’t have been more different in the sanguine land of opportunity that was America. In the early 1930’s, the stock markets took a beating the likes of which weren’t seen again until 2008. Still, American men and women had their pride – they were still living in the greatest country on earth and making sure that everyone else knew it. This meant constructing grand physical monuments and advancing technology to its limits wherever possible. The train system was no exception. Making it from New York to Chicago in 16 hours, less than 800 miles, was a monumental accomplishment for the rail system, or any system for that matter. The car wasn’t mature enough as a technology to accomplish the trip with anything resembling reliability. The mighty steam engine, on the other hand, averaged speeds of 50 mph, or 81 kph. This was a lofty industrial design problem, to be sure.