Today I finally got to see Jaguar’s controversial concept car, the Type 00, in the metal-flesh, and it was, if nothing else, interesting. I think the car’s odd, Autobrutalist aesthetic works better when seen in person than in pictures, though I’m still not exactly sure what I think of it. The bold blue color was doing a lot of heavy lifting, too.
Just a four-or-so hour drive north of here, in Crewe, another concept was shown to some select journalists by Bentley (but not me; I guess Bentley does background checks, and, for the record, that guy from the liquor store is a liar) and that concept, the EXP 15, seems perhaps oddly similar to the Jaguar Type 00.
Do these two cars suggest that a new automotive design trend, which we may as well keep calling Autobrutalism, is starting? Is two enough to be a trend, or do we have time to nip this shit in the bud? Also, do we count the Cybertruck in this category?
I do think we should count the Cybertruck here, if only because then it’s three cars, and three I can definitely say is a trend.
Just in case you forgot about/blocked from your memory the Jaguar Type 00 concept, you can see it here as automotive designer Adrian Clarke and I scrutinize the car:
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The Jag has a striking quality in person, and certainly commands attention, though as I said, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It’s not what I would call beautiful, or elegant or sleek or any of the other adjectives I’ve thought for classic Jaguars. That may be fine, if it’s bringing something else to the table, but at the moment I’m not sure if it’s bringing something novel and delicious or a cake made with pumice and chunks of lead, all covered in saffron.
The new Bentley concept is interesting for a few reasons, not the least of it is how it was teased just last week with this video:
…right before Goodwood, where you’d think they’d be actually showing it. But they didn’t; instead they invited a few journalists to see it at their headquarters, released some pictures, and that’s it. Why isn’t it at their huge booth at Goodwood? One Bentley rep told us it’s on a boat to America, which it really does not seem to be. What’s going on here?
The Bentley EXP 15 concept shares a lot of common general traits with the Jag, the slab-like, mostly unadorned sides, the bulky, blunt proportions and considerable sense of mass, the strange packaging, the expensive materials, use of repeating simple patterns for detailing that replaces areas that would formerly have had elements like a more traditional grille, gigantic wheels and tires, and so on.
The whole thing seems to exude a sense of wealth, but in a sort of aloof and mistrustful way. It’s a vault, and that feeling is further emphasized by the very luxurious interior:
The packaging is novel, a three-door (one suicide door on the passenger side), three seat, along with a sort of tailgate there with seats on it, which I’m not sure you count as seats. I do like the odd little lantern between the rear seats, and, of course, the massive amount of room Bentley has devoted to your dachshund needs:
I think that dog bed pops up from the floor? That must be a very important dog.
This ornate interior is encapsulated and hidden from the outside world by that imposing exterior, and I think this is approaching one of the crucial tenants of Autobrutalism: a protective, mistrustful quality.
Luxury cars have always sought to telegraph and broadcast the ideas of wealth and privilege, but in doing so they used to also at least try to give something back to the world by being lovely things to look at.
Take the Jaguar Mark X from 1961-1970; this car absolutely projected ideas of money and power and taste and an idea that the people inside were, well, better than you, but at least they were incredible to watch gliding down the streets.
You’d see these drive past, and you’d be momentarily in awe of the graceful look, the impossibly wide proportions, and even as the chauffeur callously drove it over your foot, you’d feel a bit enriched by the whole experience, because it’s just such an ethereal, lovely machine.
Then security guards would drag you away before the people inside had to look at you, you filthy peasant.
But the Autobrutalist cars seem loathe to actually give anything back to the world, aesthetically. I think they were inspired by genuine artworks like Joey Ruiter’s Consumer Car:
…or Rem Koolhaus’ (not the architect, but related) Lo Res Car, shown here by our pal Doug:
…so I think the initial concepts and visual vocabulary came from some quite interesting sources, but I feel like the message of them has been distilled down to some pretty unpleasant qualities. All of these recent Autobrutalist designs feel like machines whose primary goals are to be imposing and quietly menacing, suggesting power and wealth but in a sort of paranoid way, fearful of the world around them.
The whole Cybertruck notion of being “apocalypse proof” feeds into this idea completely. If we consider the Cybertruck as the first production Autobrutalist car/truck, then I think we have to take this whole paranoid, panic-room-on-wheels idea as core to the Autobrutalist ethos.
And, of course, from there, we have to ask ourselves, do we want this? Do we want luxury cars to become these slab-sided cocoons of decadence that shield the fancy people inside from everything around them? Do we want cars that just take and hoarde and don’t give anything back to the visual world other than a strange sense of dread?
I’m not sure I want that. But I also don’t think anyone who will buy cars like these cares.
I actually think “monumentalism” is a pretty good term for this current design trend. The three examples shown here don’t feel like vehicles as much as rolling monuments to the owner, largely devoid of the practical considerations that afflict the poors.
I feel they are both evolutions of the 6000 SUX – seriously!
Their principal design inspiration appears to be the boot stomping on a human face forever.
I just realized that these automobiles are following yacht design trends. The slab-sided styling works differently on yachts, making 70 foot vessels loom like 40 foot boats. On a car, these things seem bigger than they probably are or would be if they existed.
It’s appropriate to follow those trends (even a decade late) for Bentley. I’m not sure if Jaguar has the brand cache to capitalize on it unless they are the first to market by at least a 6 month gap.
They are hideous monstrosities.
Looking at this isolating bunker on wheels reminds of an earl oughts concept by I think Ford that looked like a bank vault. Post 9/11, there was a bit of a trend towards car as fortress, most notably the,Hummer H2. Just compare one with a contemporary Tahoe.
I don’t like these low polygon cars, although at least the Jag is less annoying than a wank panzer
The more I see the Bentley, the more it looks like a poshed-up Buick Envista.
Chrysler 300
It looks like DLC for Cyberpunk 2077. An asymmetric front end was too much (I’m sure there’s an obscure EU law about headlight symmetry), so they settled for doing it with the doors.
“Cyberpunk DLC” is scarily accurate.
I had hoped going EV would allow for more freedom in automotive design, but not like this…not this at all. Hoping more Local Motors Strati, less the car, from the film, “The Car”.
My conjecture: The industry is desperately trying to preserve planned obsolescence, something EV tech is a threat to. They’re never going to give us a timeless, beautiful design that also approaches the theoretical limit on drag reduction and maximizes range per dollar spent on batteries. If they do, they won’t be able to sell us all sorts of iterations in between. So they invent things no one asked for to stave off doing the right thing, and can probably kick that can around until future resource depletion makes mass producing cars no longer possible.
Nobody buys a car like this because of its aerodynamic efficiency. Design is more than just maximizing range, otherwise all those things would be the same. Look at the public’s perception to Mercedes’ EQ range. Part of the process is finding something new and original to distinguish the brand. What is a ‘timeless’ design to you? It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it even mean? Every car looks of its time, there’s no old car which you can fool people into thinking it’s brand new. Fashion, tastes, technology have changed since then and always have.
People use ‘timeless’ for old cars they like, but they don’t really mean it. For me that term neglects the ability of the car to reflect contemporary society of the era it was built in. A nicely made screwdriver can be timeless, not a complex aesthetic object like a car.
The Jaguar or Bentley would at least look perfect rolling slowly through an urban dystopia to a coldly luxurious apartment in Battersea Power Station with “The Court of the Crimson King” playing.
Possible design inspiration?
The Cybertruck, however, looks ridiculous in absolutely any setting and may descend from a very old videogame.
With credit to Star Trek: “I’m not saying that the Cybertruck should be hauling garbage…. I’m saying the Cybertruck should be hauled away AS garbage”.
Aye
The owners may or may not be Denebian slime devils…
Children of Men was exactly what I was thinking as well as its set in 2026 and I could imagine reshooting that scene as the Bentley wafts past the poors on the way through the gated enclave of the wealthy onto the power station.
The film has so many automotive moments. especially how they shot the long take of the car being ambushed it deserves an Autopian article.
I bet they split auto journalists into 2 groups. One could see the Jag, the other the Bentley. No one could see both so they can’t report they are the same car. As for if we should/can stop it? I’m pretty sure the sales figures will take care of stopping it they are hideous.
Eh, it’s a fad. With more obtainable cars, we’re also seeing a transition away from more aerodynamic curvy forms to more blocky ‘rugged’ aesthetics too.
I’m honestly surprised by the Bentley EXP 15 concept. Cover the badge, and I would guessed it’s another bucktooth BMW, not a VW group product. Beaver nose aside, I actually like the design. Reminds me more of contemporary yachts than a subset of modernist architecture.
Pedantic I know, but until they start making cars out of unpainted concrete, they aren’t brutalist or otherwise exposing their structure and functionality . I wish we could have a different and more descriptive word that does not conflate a bunch only coincidentally related things.
The only well known production cars that I can think of of that are actually brutalist are the Arial Atom. Maybe the original series I and II Land Rovers that expose a lot of functionality. Maybe a Citroën Méhari too?
As for the Brutalism as a signifier of being rich, that’s hysterical since it has its roots in designs for public schools and public housing blocks.
Maybe autoanchor they just look like metal blocks.
The term we used in college was Fascist Modern
I’m throwing “Monumentalism” into the mix.
New model for the ultimate soccer mom coming soon! UD-4 sold separately: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71dGuGXNXqS.jpg
Looking at the Bentley I can honestly say I like the roofline from the direct side view. That’s the part that has an organic flow. The rest is a brick.
Windows to see out of would be pretty cool. If this trend continues, the outside world will only be visible on video screens inside the car.
And the CT truly is the perfect apocalypse vehicle. When the flood hits, it will stall in place, short out, the doors would then refuse to open, you would be dead before the really bad apocalyptic stuff started.
Editor alert first: It’s Koolhaas not Coolhaus.
The trend is spot on with the current shape of society, as futurist dystopia creeps closer to our timeline. And the only thing that can stop it is wallet-voting such as dismal Cybertruck sales. Alas that yardstick won’t apply to Bentley.
And Joey’s are automotive works of minimalist art, hence an absolute exception, not a product. Nobody told whatshisface though, the head designer at Tesla in charge of cybersecurity. Cybertruck I mean.
Chris Burden‘s B-car should be mentioned.
> All of these recent Autobrutalist designs feel like machines whose primary goals are to be imposing and quietly menacing, suggesting power and wealth but in a sort of paranoid way, fearful of the world around them.
Relevant reading on the philosophy: https://bookshop.org/p/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires-douglas-rushkoff/18092436
I do think (and this is getting maybe more philosophical than warranted for a car appreciation site) that the increasing globalization of wealth and the sense of rootlessness that comes from it breeds a certain sense of paranoia – the ultrawealthy have lost their territoriality and with it the comfort of a home and a base of power, and instead find themselves with money but with no real durable power or protection or sphere of influence – no home to which they can retreat in safety, and so we get the bristling paranoia of a predator surrounded by other hostile predators, aware of how tenuous its claims to primacy really are.
The rich keep getting richer and now they want bunkers to help avoid getting eaten in a populist uprising…
They won’t get eaten. Just chewed up and spit out.
I mean … The price of groceries as they are, maybe they could be eaten? Haha I stopped myself from making tag lines of certain billionaires names with barbecue…
They are so docile and inactive I bet they taste and have the texture of veal.
And they make a stew that tastes similar to muskrat.
Because of kuru, you don’t really want to risk eating human, but there are plenty of endangered carnivores that could use the sustenance.
I haven’t thought the Jaguar is so much new design language as an attempt at a modern interpretation of the reference, their original vehicle, the SS1.
https://assets.carandclassic.com/uploads/cars/jaguar/C1842638/1934-jaguar-ss1-685c3a7a8d31a.jpg?fit=fillmax&h=1200&ixlib=php-4.1.0&q=85&w=1200&s=fbd06fd1653bdd59ddf178b81f6ee5e5
Interesting, thanks for that insight. But I will say, if that is what Jag was going for, they did it wrong, terribly wrong.
Using Stellantis as business inspiration (every model now a brand) and the Cybertruck as design inspiration, what could go wrong?
I think this brutalism is becoming a new trend, definitely started by the Cybertruck. It won’t last long, and the cars will all age just horribly. I wonder if I’ll ever see the Jag or Bentley in real life. I see Cybertrucks around town sometimes, and it’s really hard not to roll your eyes at them. They’re just very… tryhard or something?
They’re very tryhard, and when you see the people driving them it’s always some variation of real estate/crypto/Sea-Doo dealership owner asshole. I have never seen a woman driving one.
I did once! Just a few days ago! Its funny you say this because I thought the exact same thing when I saw the young black girl in the drivers seat. I was just like hmm, you NEVER see a woman driving one of these.
I think that’s the first time I’ve even *heard* of someone seeing a woman driving one!
“I want everyone to to believe that I don’t care what they think. It’s really important to me that I project an image of total indifference. I can’t resist anything that makes me look invulnerable.” It’s amazing how folks won’t listen to themselves.
There’s also the whole crowd of rich folks who lost their minds because someone yelled at them on social media once. Some guys will spend a quarter-billion trying to overthrow a country instead of getting therapy.
“tHEarPy iz fer poor loozer betaz, You c*ck! rEel mem dozn’t need a sjW yapPing at mE abou5 fEelingz!” /s
Trying to be snarky there. I met one CT owner who was an aging hippy who wanted a Tesla electric pickup. He and his wife were pleasant to talk with. I saw another elderly man and his wife getting their CT serviced. He was yelling at the service center staff while his wife looked glad to be away from him and his (definitely not her idea) CT.
CTs are definitely not a chick, or any other feminist type vehicle
Not a truck I’ve seen any women driving so far, that’s for sure. A few of my women coworkers have customized Wranglers that go mudding.
“Machines whose primary goals are to be imposing and quietly menacing, … but in a sort of paranoid way, fearful of the world around them.”
I struggle to think of an American truck designed in the last 20 years that doesn’t lead me to the exact same inference.
For sure, “menacing” is a quality many of them are going for. Maybe not every one of them though. I was out taking a walk yesterday, and a huge GM pickup was coming toward me, and I noticed for the first time that the shape of its headlights met its grill in a way that made it look like it had a big goofy open-mouth smile. I’m not 100% sure that is what they were going for, though.
Yeah, all three are very ugly. They all share the same blocky, preschool level understanding of geometry and proportions. The Cybertruck is clearly the result of a corporate culture that is too afraid to say no to the boss and his half baked ideas. The Jaguar is an utter disappointment. Jaguars can be overpriced, Jaguars can be mechanically unreliable, and Jaguars can have underwhelming performance. Jaguars can not be ugly. Their whole brand is about making pretty cars. I actually don’t mind the Bentley though. I have never found Bentleys to be good looking cars ( at least none that have been made in my lifetime). Take the Bentayga for example. It is the embodiment of the saying, “money can’t buy taste.”
I really hope that style does not catch on, but can we please, please, please, not call this brutalism. I think that only the Cybertruck might count as brutalism. A significant amount of the aesthetic experience of the Cybertruck comes from the uses of relatively unfinished and unadorned stainless steel. The Bentley and the Jag are just like another car in this regard. Just because something is big and blocky and gives a sense of mass, doesn’t make it brutalism.
I don’t know, maybe we can call it something like duploism. As in, the fundamental aesthetic principals of duploism are that objects should be designed to appeal to toddlers and are too big and blocky to choke on them.
Jabbahutauto design?
You may recall that some sailing yachts were once made of concrete – ferrocement. I see no reason why a blocky, massive, brutalist Jag (sorry “jag”) shouldn’t be built using steel reinforced cement to emphasize its decaying inner city crime ridden dystopian hellscape alternative universe aesthetic. This is what the people are clamoring for. Just not the people it’s designed to run down in the street, leaving no survivors.
With modern safety requirements you just can’t build a good deplorables killing machine. I mean where are the front spears sticking out to impale the employee taking a smoke break, or wheel spikes to take out a row of gardeners that failed to get the hedges to look like a row of elephants trunk to tail?
That’s what the aftermarket is for.
I can’t say I’m a fan of this autobrutalist movement, but I do have to wonder if it’s just the natural extension (of both the aesthetic and to the entirety of the vehicle) of the whole ugly grill thing pushed forth by the likes of Lexus and BMW (and to some extent even the “angry face” aftermarket Jeep grills).
Cadillac has had its own take on this as well, with the chiseled features and vertical headlights on the nose, with sharp character lines continuing back onto the body (and I don’t particularly care for that either).
Autobrutalism seems to be sort of a “reduction” of the style that Cadillac has been playing with for quite a while.
But hey I’m not a designer so what do I know. I’m probably completely off base here.
Since CT is included it seems just like a bunch of flat panels, lazy and uninspired
Much of the CT was “inspired” by the difficulty in working the steel alloy used in its construction. Manufacturing concerns outweighed the aesthetic considerations. Less “lazy” and more “cheap”.