Toymaker by Tom Karen

Author:Tom Karen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blink Publishing

14

TANGERINE DREAM

THE LOW table in my front room is actually a display cabinet. Its glass top covers a whole car park of model cars. There are nearly 40 of them. Most are die-cast, but some are clay models made by me. Few are bigger than a matchbox. All are based on actual cars with a special place in my life – which usually means that I designed them. In most cases, each design features just once – but there are three Bond Bugs. That’s a fair reflection of what it means to me.

It’s always the Bugs that claim your attention. That’s partly because two of them are orange (the third is pewter); but it’s mainly because of their distinctive form. The wedge-shaped car is instantly recognisable, even in miniature, and its deceptively simple form repays close attention.

I love it. Look more closely at those two orange Bugs (which are worth about £200 each), and you’ll notice how the paint has been rubbed away in places by repeated handling. Much of the wear and tear has been inflicted by enthusiastic visitors, who like to open the canopies by pressing the button at the back, but much has been inflicted by me. I never tire of handling them. Commercially, the Bond Bug was a commercial flop, but it came from my heart, and I think of it as one of my biggest achievements.

It was the fruit of a dream-like episode, right in the middle of a creative purple patch, when I was, in effect, commissioned to design the car I had always wanted to make. Most car designers dream of creating a high-performance sports car. My dream was to make a fun vehicle that I could imagine driving as a child. Most designers never get a chance to make their dream a reality. I did. I realised what a privilege this was and relished every moment.

I was given the commission in 1969. The vision with which I fulfilled it was years older than that. Ever since my first attempts at car design, I had wanted to create a sporty, two-seater, three-wheeler that applied top-of-the-range design values to a minimalist vehicle. Even my humble Vimp was inspired by this vision; so, more loosely, was my (four-wheeled) Rascal that won the IBCAM prize in 1958. Then the vision evolved: my sporty two-seater was also a three-wheeler. Go back through my sketchbooks for the 1960s and you’ll find very few in which there isn’t at least a sketch or two in which that basic concept can be discerned – usually in the form of a three-wheeler. Many are little more than doodles when I was supposed to be working on something else; some had a more specific purpose. Between them they meant that, when my big chance came, I was ready.

The crucial development came in February 1969 when Reliant took over Bond Cars Ltd, makers of a series of three-wheeled Minicars and Reliant’s chief rival in the microcar market. A few months later, Ray Wiggin told Ogle that Reliant needed a new product with which they could make their mark on Bond.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.