9 Strother MacMinn Strother MacMinn predicted the rise of wedge car design in the February 1957 edition of Road & Track entitled Driving the Wedge or, after 1960, What? 5 MacMinn was the head of ArtCenter College of Design’s transportation department for many years. His students went on to become leading automotive designers around the world. Michael Lamm, writer and publisher of articles about cars, said, "If you are in a car today, Mac probably influenced its design." Chuck Jordan, VP of Design for GM 1986-1982, said about Mac... "No one influenced car design more than he did." In the Road & Track article, MacMinn (simply Mac, to his students, friends and colleagues) noted that an assumed value has been placed on wedge shapes and wedge themes since the origin of the motor car. He used the 1899 Vallee Racing Slipper as an early example of a wedge-shaped nose assisting the car to cut through the air more efficiently. MacMinn explains that wedge elements may be horizontal and vertical; in part, or approaching the whole cars overall shape. Seagraves’s Sunbeam, first to reach 200 mph on land, was a “blunt-nose horizontal wedge envelope body”. MacMinn’s Le Mans Coupe design employed what he termed an “oval bullet or rounded wedge” design. Peter Brock, a student of MacMinn, also used elements of the “oval bullet-rounded wedge” in his Cobra Daytona Coupé. In the 1957 Road & Track article, MacMinn predicted that entering the 1960’s wedge design will appear more frequently in cars manufactured for the general public. It was logical, and if not what, as his article prompts. In reality, the wedge car movement, that did begin in the 1960’s, did not influence the large auto manufacturers. However, the use of front or rear mounted mid-engine placement allowed mainly sports cars to explore wedge shape design that led to numerous examples that were embraced by the public for their sheer exotic excitement. Ray Cannara designed and built his own wedge car in 1966. Cannara worked with MacMinn while a student at ArtCenter. The Cannara is featured later in this book along with period photos taken of Ray Cannara’s car by Strother MacMinn. The Cannara has very pure wedge design elements satisfying Strother MacMinn’s design requirements as to what qualified as a pure wedge car. Strother MacMinn Ray Cannara and His Car: ArtCenter College of Design 1968
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