Articles on Cars | Topics: cars, car, vehicles, vehicle
by Nelson Irwin
I have wanted to design my own car ever since I was very little. At the age of eight, I raced my first soapbox derby car. It was pretty awesome. Of course, designing a derby car racer is a little bit different than going to a car design school, but nevertheless I felt ready for it even at that tender age. My car would have been the fastest on the track if I had not ran over a stick and got it jammed in my wheels soon after starting. I just knew that, given another chance, my car design would be king.
In high school, I began to become obsessed with designing my own car. I actually downloaded some illegally pirated car design software and played with it for hours. It was some serious professional grade stuff – it would barely run on my computer at the time. I didn't know what half of the functions were for, but I knew that I loved computer-aided design. Getting to play with that design software added yet another dimension to my fascination with cars. Not only was I an avid reader of car magazines, but now I felt that I had an inside track. I actually had the software used to make the cars that I drooled over so much. Even the mechanics who worked on my mom's car didn't have that much.
| Bit of History |
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
| —Roland Barthes (1915–1980) |
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Of course, there is a lot between dreaming about becoming a car designer, and actually learning how to design cars. It takes a tremendous amount of work to get to that level. For while, I wasn't really sure that I was up to it. My parents were pretty skeptical about the idea. They wanted me to go to a normal college instead of one that specialized in car designs. They figured that, if in a few years I wanted to go into automotive design, I could always switch programs. I actually started off doing things their way, but immediately I realized that it was the wrong decision. I did not want to be behind books, I wanted to be behind engines.
As soon as I transferred to the car design program, things looked up for me. The program I went to was one of the top ones in the country, and I knew that I had career prospects once I got out of it. It was a pretty high stress, high intensity situation, but also of the most rewarding and challenging times in my life. Just getting through that program made me a better man.
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