I think it’s safe to say that our brains process the front ends of cars in the same way we process faces. This isn’t just me being a goofball, professional academic goofballs have done studies that seem to prove that this is how it works. Because our brains have such specialized hardware for facial recognition, that may be why many of us can sometimes identify a car so quickly and rapidly. It’s pretty amazing! It also means that when we see “faces” in cars, that recognition spectrum can take a lot of forms. Like how sometimes, instead of anthropomorphizing the front of a car, we anachropomorphize it, as in the case of this 1951 Lotus Mark III, which seems to have a spider’s face.
The Mark III was a really interesting car; it was the first car that Colin Chapman built that was actually called a “Lotus,” for one thing, and what’s also incredible is that this car, designed for racing under the Motor Club 750 formula, had to be Austin 7 based. That means it had to use an Austin 7 chassis and drivetrain. Remember, an Austin 7 looked like this:
Somehow, that spindly little economy-family car became that low, fast, sleek looking thing you see up there. The aluminum body only weighed 65 pounds! And look at that weird little half-dome for the carb!
The shocked-spider face is unusual, but has made a bit of a legacy. Remember the new Morgan Three-Wheeler that’s coming out?
That’s basically the same face! Close-set shocked eyes, open mouth. That’s it. Weirdly, it’s also this, too:
It’s a strange face, but I like it. It looks appropriate to the task of driving like a maniac on a track.
Considering my yard is full of wolf spiders, and it’s a full time conscious effort to keep them out of the house…. That thing scared the shit outta me as I lay me down to sleep.
Slap an antenna on it as a good ornament and that’s Bender Bending Rodriguez right there.
Bite my shiny metal ass
I love cookie monster!
having just discovered them, i love peacock spiders. who knew?
Remind me of Rosie, the Jetson’s robot maid.
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I want to live in the Spider-Verse where everyone drives a Lotus.
Fun add to those studies about car/facial recognition: car people tend to be worse at recognizing people, presumably because that part of their brain has been reorganized to favor car recognition over human. For myself, I’ve definitely found that to be true, though I’m also a misanthrope, so it might be more attributable to that, IDK.
I just realised the same about me while reading the article: I’m basically face blind, but I have recognized different cars as long as I can remember.
Meanwhile my non-car friends I don’t recognize have the most difficulty recognizing cars and it baffles me. Like how can you not tell a your Mazda 3 from a Toyota Corolla, they are very different, whoever you are.
That Morgan is trying hard to remind me of some robot from pop culture, but i can’t place it.
I could almost see Johnny 5 if you put some kind of shields on top of the headlights that look like his robot eyebrows. The mouth would be completely wrong, however. The Mahindra Jeep that they can’t call a Jeep even though they’ve had a production license for the original Jeep since WWII does look like Johnny 5 after they changed the grill to appease the lawyers.
https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Futurama-Bender.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1
The eyes are definitely similar… But i swear there’s something with that square mouth… right on the edge of my memory.
Paint it yellow and you have Bob the minion.
Great. Now I can’t unsee it.
You’re welcome!
I believe that would be “arachnomorphize”.
But 1951 was a long time ago and so the Mark III would now be something of an anachronism, so maybe we arachno-anachro-morphize it.
Fun fact: seeing patterns or images (e.g. faces) in random stuff is called pareidolia.
Is it some weird perspective trick, or is the front track a lot wider than the rear on that thing?
The high mounted forward facing eyes suggest it’s a submerged ambush predator
Even with the shocked spider expression it’s got a friendlier face than today’s overly aggressive stylings. I miss friendly cars.
So much
Yeah, but like, my compact crossover has to be angry looking so it can properly express my dissatisfaction that my life hasn’t turned out like I’ve wanted it to!
I’m not saying there can’t be some angry cars, I’m just saying they don’t all have to be angry! I mean, even the damn Miatas look suspiciously agro now!
There’s a picture of the new 3 wheeler driving in the desert at sunset, where the headlights and front look like an old man without his dentures.