We Need A Name For Whatever This ’80s Aesthetic In This Freightliner Brochure Is

You know this look. I know you do. You’ve seen it innumerable times in innamable places. I’m also just now realizing that “innumerable” does not have an equivalent “innamable” equivalent, and “unnamable” is not really what I’m going for here. The point is this look – the intense deep-purple-to-burning-citrus-orange sunset, the mountains, the moon, the stars, the flat, reflective ground – all of that is such a wonderful and strange ’80s visual trope. We need a name for it.

It’s an incredibly versatile design language, too, being used on everything from Trapper Keepers to the Electronic Arts poster in my childhood bedroom, to, as we see here, selling cab-over-engine Freightliner trucks.

It sure as hell is evocative of…something. Something cosmic and ethereal, something bigger than all of us, something powerful and numinous that can make us really want to buy a truck. I mean, look:

Where are we? On the surface of another planet? But that’s our moon up there? Why is the ground so smooth? Is it perpetually dusk here?

The lightning! Just when I thought that sky couldn’t get any moodier or more dramatic, blammo, here comes some purple lightning, arcing and branching through the sky like bolts from an unseen Tesla coil.

So what do we call this environment and look? Gradient Thunderscape? Planet Drama? Power World? Firehorizon? It needs something suitably intense.

You’re probably wondering if a mechanic can work in such an intense environment, with that vivid sky and those looming mountains and the ever-present danger of purple sky plasma bolts. The good news is that, yes, yes they can!

The engine access in these cabover trucks seems pretty great, though I’ve been told that truckers didn’t like having to secure all their crap when they had their trucks worked on. One mechanic told me that the danger of portable TVs flying through the windshields when the cab was tipped was very real.

Oh man, I love a good cutaway, and this one is. Look, it’s a sleeper cab, too! Here’s a closeup of the sleeping area, if you’re interested:

Looks pretty cozy. I always like sleeper cab interiors. So much wall padding! I can almost feel the texture of them from this picture. Did these things come with pillows from the factory? Was there a Freightliner factory pillow part number?

Speaking of parts, this is a very artfully-arranged collection of Freightliner parts. I could see it as a striking-looking wall hanging in some trucking executive’s swanky apartment, with lots of black leather-and-chrome furniture.

Cabover trucks like these are no longer common in America, where trucks with hoods are preferred, but in Europe and much of the rest of the world, where linear space is at a greater premium, they’re still popular. They’re roomy inside despite their compressed footprint, too.

These wraparound dashboards are pretty great, too, and if large, unbroken expanses of fake woodgrain excite you, then you’re welcome. I wonder what’s behind the huge panel at the right there? HVAC equipment?

Finally, I have to come clean with you. This diagram took me way longer than it should have to process. I was reading the brownish shape as a sort of hammer; it sort of reminds me of the hammer in the flag of North Korea:

It’s not, though. That’s an overhead diagrammatic drawing of the truck and trailer, showing its improved turning circle.

Wow, this ended up in a really weird place. I’m going to stop now, before this gets worse.

But! Feel free to help me come up with a name for that general ’80s intense-sunset-on-other-smooth-planet aesthetic!