Pebble Beach Concours Wedge Cars | 1966 Cannara History and Preparation for the Big
Pebble Beach Concours Wedge Cars | 1966 Cannara History and Preparation for the Big Day!
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In the late 1960’s and 1970’s a design movement took place, with car styling emphasizing predominant angular silhouettes, with whole body triangulation front to rear. These cars have been collectively referred to as “wedge cars”. Interest in wedge car design resurfaced in 2019 with the unveiling of the Tesla Cybertruck. In covering the history of wedge car design, automotive journalists and historians tend to focus on the concept cars of the Italian design houses of Bertone, Pininfarina and Ital.
Frequently, the Lamborghini Marzal is often cited as the first wedge car. The thesis presented here, is that other cars, built several years earlier than the 1967 Lamborghini Marzal, should be included in any thorough review of wedge car design. We present the 1966 Cannara, by Ray Cannara and propose that the Cannara is the first car with requisite pure wedge car design elements. The Cannara is the legitimate historical anchor of wedge car design. While he was at Art Center 1964-1968, Cannara was a
student and mentee of famed auto design icon and teacher Strother MacMinn. MacMinn had prophesized a wedge car design movement in the 1960’s in his 1957 Road and Track article Driving the Wedge or, after 1960 What? While Ray Cannara choose to design and build his wedge car with independent inspiration, MacMinn was close by and personally photographed Ray’s car when completed. It is not the intention to catalog wedge cars in this review. A cataloging opportunity exists, but is beyond the scope of
this work. In reviewing our work presented here, Paul Sable pointed out that wedge elements in automobile design appeared in very early cars. He noted the Stanley Steamer, the Seagrave Golden Arrow and other cars long before the 1960’s. History has now coalesced complete “wedge car” designs as a 1960’s – 1970’s movement. Our work focuses on that period, but acknowledges the presence of earlier cars with wedge elements in their design. The 1960’s was a significant period of change in the United States
and other Western nations, with new trends in music and art, reflecting ideas within a larger cultural shift. In the decade, design changes challenged convention and this was certainly the case in the automotive arena. Applying historical perspective, “wedge” cars coalesced in the late 1960’s and is viewed as movement in automotive design. Definitions of wedge cars range from simple to complex. Definitional common themes are a car characterized by a full body treatment, completely triangulating the front of the
car to the rear. Additional features often include a low profile, pointed shape with heightened angularity, broad frontal area and conversely lower emphasis on curvature. Other cars, prior to this design movement, have had wedge elements and some elements of angularity. The wedge car movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s focused on the purity of wedge car design. Impressionism, the 19th century art movement, was characterized by certain techniques of brush strokes, light, visual angle and subject matter.
Artists prior to the impressionist period had used all these elements, but history has defined the impressionist period. In automotive history, wedge elements have appeared since the early days of the automobile. The analogy with the Impressionist period in art, underscores that wedge design elements absolutely existed prior to the 1960’s, but wedge elements alone does not mandate inclusion in a review of the wedge car design movement. We are limiting the scope of this review to cars within the primary period of
the wedge car movement: the 1960’s and 1970’s. Cars from the design houses of Bertone, Ghia, Ital and Pininfarina are typically cited by journalists and/or automotive historians as the source of historical markers for the origins of wedge cars. Many writers reference the 1967 Lamborghini Marzal as a design anchor for the wedge car movement. However, the 1966 Cannara is a pure wedge car, predating the more ubiquitous models from larger design houses and anchors the wedge car movement.