Chances are you have enjoyed a great cold bottle of Coke, or Coca Cola.  Chances are you have seen, or maybe even driven, one of those funny- or strange-looking automobiles from the 60’s.  Chances are you have no idea who designed them both, the Coca Cola bottle (not the drink’s formula), and the unique, head-turning automobile?

Raymond Loewy was an industrial designer who made his mark in the world of design with hundreds of greatly influential logos and designs who still remain eye-catching brands in all places and at all levels of society.

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The Studebaker was a particularly distinct vehicle, with a design that broke with tradition in many senses.  Pictured above, the designer Raymond Loewy with Studebaker President Sherwood Egberd.  My favorite model of the 60’s is the 1964 Studebaker Avanti, oh, lovely!

Oh, Lord, this is a TV commercial from 1963, showing and promoting the 1964 Studebaker Avanti.  Go figure, many of us were not been born yet.

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Loewy was a pioneer of great influence in the second half of the 20th century.  Born in Paris, France, and later naturalized an American citizen, he had been schooled and trained at the Université de Paris, and exposed to diverse environments in Europe and America, with a great variety of design trends and movements.  In the 1930’s he dreamed of the “paperless office” and became the vanguard of trends to come in the world of business and technology.

This great inventor not only had the futuristic dream of a modern society in which the “paper office” was the rule, but also, imagined that machines, step by step, little by little, would be substituting the presence and the role of humans in the modern industry, from vehicle manufacturing to large-scale industrial operations where robotics became the standard, decades later.  Today, most households in the US are well connected to the Internet or the world wide web (www), by a wireless network, and most, don’t even use a printer anymore.

If you have a wireless telephone service or a US-based bank account (checking, savings, investments, etc.), chances are you no longer receive paper statements.  Talk about a paperless office.  Hey, it’s all about email and “texting” these days.  And Facebook, and Twitter, and Pinterest, and Flickr, and Tumblr, and what not.   Well, then, it does look like we have arrived in the future, haven’t we?

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Well, if you like cars like this one, you probably can find a bunch of them in Cuba, where there are hundreds and hundreds of these old American cars still running in every city, still rolling up and down the highways.

But hold on, there are also hundreds of them here in the US itself.  In California, Florida, New York, all over the northeast, there are many official and also many informal gatherings of automobile enthusiasts who showcase their jewels in the parking lot of shopping malls and large fairs.  Check out these beauties:

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And since we are talking about great designs, why don’t I keep quiet now, and we all sit back and enjoy these gorgeous cars.  Good idea.  I will leave you now with a little bit of the great design of the 1950 Studebaker.  Enjoy this car show!

In some old shoebox I must have some of those old pictures in Cuba by an old American car.  Sure, these days it’s all digital photography, but way back then, when I was a kid, my father had a gorgeous 1955 Plymouth Belvedere, with a mighty and nasty engine.  I know that baby, I learned driving a car with a clutch in that beautiful machine.  Brings me so many beautiful memories.  And his old 1959 Chevrolet Impala, or his 1957 Oldsmobile, oh, that was a mean machine.  V8, nasty, oh, yeah, it roared like a bunch of hungry lions.  Or my grandpa’s 1953 Plymouth.  Oh, nice machines.

It’s still fun to drive those ‘babies’ down there in Cuba.  They’re all beat up, though, and they can not find replacement parts.  Oh, well, it’s Socialist Cuba, you have to INVENT.  So for decades, Cuban mechanics have found a way to adapt parts from Russian war tank, heavy trucks, and SUVs, or Jeep-like vehicles, and replaced the broken or worn out original parts in these American cars running in the island.  They’re noisy, but they’re fun.   It’s Cuba, man, CUBA.

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Did you hear how much cars cost back then, 60 years ago?   Yes, you heard right.  100 to 300 hundred dollars.  Wow!   Things have changed!   This peculiar design with the wind-wheel in the front grill was revolutionary in the sense that it helped dramatically improve wind resistance (drag), and gain in vehicle speed and fuel economy.   Although, I have to say, this obsession with fuel economy we have today was non-existent in the 1950’s.

So go now.  Go for a cold bottle of Coke and a merry Studebaker ride.   What I mean is, get out there, drive, walk, run, sail, fly, travel, enjoy Life!   On this November 5, Happy 120th Birthday to Mr. Loewy, you, crazy creative little Scorpion!

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Ricardo Trelles