Feb 10, 2010 3
Quick Thoughts: Death of the Plunging Shoulder
About 7 years ago, if my recollection is correct, we saw the beginnings of a design trend that would take the automotive industry by storm. The progenitor was the Mercedes Vision CLS Concept and the feature was a dramatic, plunging shoulder line that caused some to comment, unfairly in my opinion, that the car looked like a pressed steel banana.
Despite the common name that would be ascribed to the feature, it was actually an ascending shoulder that whipped from the from wheel arch and arced gracefully rearwards. Did it have it’s genesis in the Triumph TR-7? Thankfully, we’ll probably never know and in any case only the most ardent – and odd – automotive design watchers would ever try to make the link…
