I consider myself a fan of industrial designer Raymond Loewy. He basically created the modern concept of an industrial designer. He would drive a dune buggy in an ascot. And he designed some great-looking cars, like the Studebaker Avanti. He also did some pretty horrific things to some lovely Jaguars, too.
Raymond Loewy was an legendary industrial designer, one of the few who have had great successes in industrial design, graphic design and automotive design. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t occasionally phone in an effort, like this wonderfully half-assed redesign of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle.
Today, as you hopped onto Google to find out what those pills you took were, you may have noticed the doodle was of a sepia-toned streamliner locomotive. That locomotive is referencing the work of Raymond Loewy (it's his 120th birthday), who, among his many other achievements, designed some remarkable cars.
If you missed your chance to purchase the personal Studebaker Avanti of the famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy last December 11th, you'll have another chance next month. It's not the same car, but it is another Avanti owned by the man who designed Studebaker's automotive swan song.
Raymond Loewy must be the most prolific industrial designer who’s ever lived. After the Coke bottle, the Greyhound Scenicruiser and the interior of Howard Hughes’s Boeing 307, he designed the coolest American sports coupé. Loewy’s Avanti is a 1963 model and here is how it’s described by Los Angeles Modern Auctions:
Raymond Loewy was the industrial designer Studebaker employed to create their sporty Avanti model. At the time it was the last ditch effort of a failing company to stay relevant in an automotive market that had already passed them by.
Raymond Loewy is one of those industrial design legends who has no problem maintaining a spot in the pantheon of automotive history. The design lead for Studebaker during the post war years, Loewy and Virgil Exner, another luminary, were responsible for some of the most forward thinking and trend setting designs of…
One can't help but back Raymond Loewy. Being bloggers, we're generally polarized types this good, that bad, ad infinitum and/or end of story. And while Loewy deserves a more serious critique than we can offer here, the man designed things that inspire us to this day. From cola bottles to the Studes that dominated the…
