So Saturn’s going away.

Saturn was supposed to be the little GM division that could. Dreamed up in the early eighties and finally launched in 1990, the Saturn brand was GM’s answer to an ever-increasing threat of small, well-made Japan-o-mobiles. Naturally, GM fucked things up.

The company was touted as being “different” from the start, and that meant different things to different people. The company had its own cars and its own distribution system, outside of GM’s existing structure. I remember Saturn’s “no-haggle” policy from back in the day — apparently you wouldn’t be ambushed by hungry salesmen whilst trolling a Saturn lot.

Somewhere along the way, things got muddled. Their cars were fine, but they didn’t really stand above and beyond other GM cars. They began selling re-branded and slightly tweaked variations of other GM cars, put out their performance-oriented “Red Line” stuff for the boy racers and their earth-lovin’ “Green Line” stuff for the hippies.

Their slogan changed from “A Different Kind of Car Company” (the one I remember most, from the halcyon days) to “Like Always. Like Never Before” in the mid-oughts, to the recent, and super-desperate “We’re Still Here.”

Their logo hasn’t changed much, other than the 2.0 bling it received in the last few years.

It’s always been a pretty simple red and black affair. The letters are all futuristic (the “A” is missing its crossbars, like it’s out of “Total Recall” or something, and the “U” runs into the stem of the “R”).

The mark itself is simple and iconic, but it doesn’t bring to mind speed or sex appeal, two things I’d look for on the hoods of even the dowdiest cars. Maybe it’s the squareness. Red’s a solid color choice though.

Anyway, another one bites the dust. R.I.P.

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Yeah, yeah… all the photo-heads are gushing about it (including Lee). But it is beautiful. And compact. Time to trade in the clunky ol’ SLR.

E-P1

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GM contains multitudes: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer, Saab and Saturn here in the states (and Pontiac until recently; Hummer and Saturn are next to go).

GM is probably about to declare bankruptcy, so I thought I’d take a quick look at their lousy branding.

Established way back in 1908, GM was always more of a manufacturing umbrella than a vehicle make itself — a step removed from the actual cars people were driving. Once they’d hit their stride and built up a stable of cars, they were all about putting out different brands for different classes and demographics, which they did well for many years. They claimed the “world’s largest automaker” title for 77 years (until 2008, when Toyota finally beat ‘em).

Some variation of “GM in a box” has been the main logo since the 1920s, with some font changes along the way. The most recent version is pretty plain and serif-less, although kinda blinged out with that sassy reflection. Meh.

Goodwrench is GM’s national repair service, debuting in 1977 (originally “Mr. Goodwrench”). This sub-brand has gone through some changes. I’m partial to the scripty original logo, as well as the current homoerotic treatment.

Apple would probably be in the right if they complained about the main “G” device looking like QuickTime’s upended brother:

GM has had lots of other little sub-brands and offshoots (they even owned Frigidaire for a while). Everything looked better before the late seventies:

Check the new 2.0-ish clean air/alternative fuel logos. These actually aren’t bad looking, with the exception of the “H-with-an-X-in-it” hybrid badge. I could see any of these on the chest of a super-hero:

GM has occasionally put their own brand on cars, most notably the EV1 (the car from “who killed the electric car?“):

They’ve also used a GM mark to debut concept cars (although the GM Sequel concept vehicle behind these badges has since become the Chevrolet Sequel concept vehicle).

Here’s the front of a bus from back in the day:

General Motors has most recently been slapping a small silver embossed GM badge on both sides of every vehicle they make (from Hummers to lowly Chevy Aveos):

They did something similar back in the late sixties, with a blue GM “Mark of Excellence” decal on the driver side. This has mostly been met with confusion. Check out the vitriol this guy gets for complaining.

Finally, here’s a little collection of GM’s ugliest designs. Enjoy!

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Holy crap, the twentieth century produced some beautiful tools. The inner handyman in me wants to start collecting, although the practical side of me says I’d never touch the things.

The site itself is nothing to write home about, but the pictures are large and plentiful. Lots of logos and photos of hand tools from different obsolete manufacturers. Total tool porn.

Check it: Alloy Artifacts

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I’ll keep this short — figured Chrysler merited a post though, since they’re changing their stripes again.

Chrysler’s made the rounds, shacking up with all sorts of suitors. They were recently dumped by Daimler, and now they’ve declared bankruptcy and are actively courting Fiat.

Their original medallion logo was designed in 1925, the year the company came about. It looks like a blue ribbon you’d see at a county fair:

Kinda reminds me of the Stater Bros grocery store logo:

Chrysler’s next logo was designed by Virgil Exner, freshly hired from Studebaker. The mid fifties through the early sixties was known as the “Forward Look” era at Chrysler, with Exner’s space-age, aerodynamic cues (inspired by Cadillac) surfacing on all cars and advertising:

That logo was replaced by the ubiquitous “pentastar” mark in 1963. It was designed by Robert Stanley, at the design firm Lippincott & Marguiles:

Says Stanley, “We were looking for something that would not be too complicated for people to remember and still have a very strong, engineered look to it.”

Until the early seventies, the pentastar showed up on the bottom passenger-side fender of all Chrysler automobiles (Dodge, Jeep, Chrysler, Plymouth), similar to what GM currently does. Chrysler currently has Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler brands in its portfolio (Eagle, part of the AMC acquisition of the late eighties, went away less than ten years after its creation, and Plymouth died in ‘01).

By the time Chrysler merged with Daimler in the late nineties, the pentastar had been mostly phased out.

Chrysler got on a serious retro kick and started branding their cars with a wide-winged variation of the medallion first used back in the twenties:

A revised, more dimensional pentastar was back in 2007 though (when Daimler gave up most of Chrysler to Cerberus), at least as a high level company logomark (the wings are still on the cars themselves).

Chrysler’s model marks run the gamut from plain, italicized letters to, more recently, ornate, glossy, dimensional designs:

Curious to see what happens to ‘em.

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I’ve never cared for Pontiac’s tall triangle logo, any more than I care for the trademark Pontiac double air intake device (which lately looks like a cheap take on a BMW). The sleek logomark is meant to invoke an arrowhead (which I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out). Pontiac has moved away from its more obvious original Native American imagery:

The cars themselves always seem to have bulbous protuberances and cheap textures (e.g. the oversized foglights you see on the Grand Prix, or the wacky black honeycomb meshes on the aforementioned air intakes). You can see it starting back in the day:

In the GM family, Pontiac was always supposed to be a step up from standard Chevys and a step down from Buicks and (now also defunct) Oldsmobiles, and they definitely used to be. Check some of their early models — “Wide-Track” wheels were differentiators for Pontiac; their cornering abilities were touted, which helped establish their performance pedigree that really took off later with the GTO:

Now when I think Pontiac, I think of Trans Am product placement — the late seventies brought us Smokey and the Bandit and the early eighties gave us K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider:

Pontiac has had some cool bird decals though:

And their “Judge” branding (from 1969) is rad:

The Pontiac name also reminds me of the recently released (then yanked) GTO (a re-badged Australian Holden Monaro), which looks utterly boring compared to the original (but is probably still fun to drive):

And then there’s the Fiero — the less said about it, the better, although it was a huge seller. Rock. On.

As ugly as it was, it doesn’t scrape the aesthetic depths of the Aztek (or “Ass-Tech,” as I call it). You couldn’t plan a vehicle that ugly — some theorize that two aesthetically challenged teams created it, each starting at one end, and met in the middle:

The Solstice convertible (and recently released hard-top) are interesting looking, although I think Saturn did a better execution with their Sky — it’s built on the same platform, but it looks less like something that’s melted in the sun:

The sub-brand logos all look firmly stuck in the 1980s - loaded with cheesy heavy-metal-band angles and chest-beating, fist-pumping bravado (okay, not so much the Bonneville). There’s little subtlety here:

Rest in peace, sweet Pontiac.

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Mazda’s brand is kind of all over the place. When I think Mazda, I think either of suburban minivan drivers, Miata fans or mid-90s RX-7 racer-boys (like my annoying neighbors). But there’s some goodness to be found if you look.

Mazda has redesigned the logo several times, and even went without an official mark for almost two decades. My favorite Mazda logomark of recent years spans from 1992 to 1997, and was actually a hasty reworking of their just-unveiled 1991 mark (it’s a more rounded version; the ‘91 mark was immediately and justifiably compared to Renault’s):

Mazda toyed with the idea of a luxury brand, much like Toyota has Lexus, Honda has Acura, Nissan has Infiniti, etc. Set to be called “Amati,” the marque was killed off before it was born. The logo reminds me a little of Maybach:

Mazda’s current logo is a stylized “M,” which is kind of predictable. It also apparently represents wings in flight, and to some, a tulip — the picture of masculinity.

I kind of dig on the primitive look of their early logos — I see hints of the Miata logo here. And their color scheme from the mid-60s data booklet is super-pretty:

Their circle-m logo was used on and off through 1975, which I kind of dig, although it looks a little too much like an “h” has found its way in there:

Mazda has a performance division, Mazdaspeed, with an italicized, no-nonsense logotype and no mark. I prefer the Mazdaspeed type to the normal Mazda type. (The straight-up Mazda logo has always struck me as kind of squat and industrial, while Mazdaspeed is more assertive.)

I couldn’t see a Mazdaspeed logo on a minivan though (and Mazda makes one of the ugliest: the Mazda 5).

Getting back to the normal, non-zippy Mazda brand, the logotype’s disconnected “Z” gives the whole word a stenciled feel, and the casing is inconsistent: besides an ambiguously cased “Z,” every letter appears to be lowercase, with the exception of the uppercase “D” — makes me wonder if they just got lazy and didn’t feel like addressing the ascender:

I’d love to see Mazda refine their logotype a little; they haven’t changed it in years, even as the mark itself has evolved. Maybe it’s time to try something more fluid, to better complement their more rounded logomark.

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This’ll (hopefully) be the first of several posts to look at car logos. I thought I’d do a series of little examinations of the marks you see on cars every day, so I’m avoiding the super-exotics and stuff you can only buy in other countries.

I thought I’d start on a negative — one of my least favorite logos — Chevrolet.

A little background: Chevrolet is a sub-brand of GM (most car companies have merged, split and had drunken relations with other car companies at some point; we’ll look at GM in another post).

Simply put, the Chevrolet logo is ugly. The shape is fine (although the asymmetry bugs me a little and the integrated bevel is anything but subtle), and the logotype is fine. What kills me is the color. For some reason, Chevrolet uses gold as its standard color, which lends a garish, costume-jewelry feel to the front and back of every car it adorns.

Chevrolet designs some interesting looking cars too — I’ve seen plenty of dramatic, swooping forms and rich, beautiful colors. And then I get to the hateful gold bits on each end and I cringe. Most auto companies offer the “gold trim package” on cars as an option, and I usually see folks like my insecure aunt spring for it in hopes of appearing more on par with her well-to-do neighbors. But to make that the standard?

Chevrolet has done some decent sub-brands: witness the lovely Impala:

… the über-manly Corvette (which is actually its own marque in some other countries):

… and some ugly, like the ill-fated Geo:

If I were king of Chevrolet, I’d look at the current auto industry clusterfuck as an opportunity to play a little fast and loose with identity, and explore some color variations (including plain ol’ silver), and maybe evolve the form a little.

Any thoughts?

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…but I’m not sure I want to do the free 30 day demo, fall in love with it and have to part with 250 bones. Has anyone else tried it? Is it as rad as everyone says it is? Will it install a bunch of low-level system extensions that make my Mac implode?

Flow

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Toto took a lesson from the original Apple iMac playbook here, with a nice, fully saturated color for everyone. And seriously, shouldn’t toilets be more colorful? The current white or beige color-scheme is kind of equivalent to beige pre-iMac cases. This could be a revolution.

C’mon, lemme see your favorites. I know there are some amazing toilets out there, both design- and feature-wise.

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