DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Not having seen a rear 3/4 view, but from the photos posted, I think you are very nearly there, so if I can make a suggestion before you do anything too major.....

Looking at the profile, you might try bringing the highest point of the arch slightly further forward, towards the C pillar (and ahead of the wheel centre line). This will both visually lengthen the tail and give the rear a more 'poised /hunched stance. Moving the high point of the curve forward in this way should also pull together the complex shapes into one area at the base of the C pilar, rather than having the various transitions between the strong profiles (roof and wheel arch / waistline) being a little apart as they are at the moment. a little seperation of forms like this can be quite distracting on the eye, and ruin the 'flow' of the form.

As an aside....

I recall you saying there would be paint on the car - have you considered door or bonnet gumballs / stripe / scallops masked out to leave a highly polished bare finish and then perhaps with a pinstriped outline?

Ritchie King has done it to great effect on a couple of cars before

steve wright wrote:Tried to mock up the rear today and got thwarted by the silencer. tried to remove it, cursed a lot, gave up and went and tinkered wih the bus instead.... will try that another day!

One word: Grinder (One of mine is still up there isn't it? If not let me know, and I'll drop one up).

I looked through my pictures, and I didn't take one of the rear I'm afraid.

I'm rather afraid that we might have misled our DDK chums somewhat, because although there are some tweaks needed to the rear, as in side view (very useful picture, Andy), it's the actual rear view where we're really struggling on. I suspect that if we could get that right, the last foot or so of the side view will more or less be dicated by the shape / width / angle of the rear panelling. I don't know if you could post up some i-Phone pics Steve? I'd really love to see some other cars from the period from the rear to see what sort of things they were doing.

Much of the issue is that many of the cars are tempted to use for ideas run flying buttresses, which obviously are a different kettle of fish.

Bootsy wrote:As an aside....

I recall you saying there would be paint on the car - have you considered door or bonnet gumballs / stripe / scallops masked out to leave a highly polished bare finish and then perhaps with a pinstriped outline?

Ritchie King has done it to great effect on a couple of cars before

Very nice: I know that if paint goes on the car, Steve has always said it would be like sponsor paint: i.e. right on the outside of the panels, so nothing in doorshuts, headlight areas, undersides of opening panels etc. This would be the same sort of thing, although suspect that Steve would want a natural, rather than polished finish.

Macaulay wrote:Great work guys!
It's looking like a realy mean little runner.

As you remember (Steve/Barry) I was not supporting the short tail when we first started to get the design down, but slowly got into the idea that it could work.
For a while I thought it actually looked great with the short tail and in a way I think it still does, it's a brutal abrupt cut on the car wich it can have
beacause of the mid mounted engine. I like that because it gives a race feel, one off not beauty, but more "let's not drag around more metal than we need" design.
Wich makes for realistic thinking for a race car.
I don't know but I think it's a fine line between "hard core race car" and "sports car" that you are looking for in the design.
Looking at history I think race cars that have been designed for racing and then modified for road use looks much better than the once designed to look like racers but
realy are just road cars.
I donno why I said that... hope I'm not talking gibberish.

I did not see an image straight from the back as you say is the worst looking side, but from the side veiw I agree it could do with maybe 20cm more metal starting
from the bottom back wheel arch in a nearly horizontal line before going up towards the cam tail top.
I wish I was nearby so I could pop over and join in on the brainstorming, it would be much easier to give a sensible input when seeing the car in the flesh.

Keep jabbing at it.

Cor yes, that would be brilliant wouldn't it: it would be wonderful to meet you at last, and actually have your 'eye' to hand. It would be just what we need.

As for the length behind the arch, yes you did draw it quite a bit longer, and as I said before, when Steve and I wheeled it out, we kept blacking out more and more of it, exactly for the reasons you say above (that whole agressive race car thing). In retrospect, we've obviously taken a wrong turn there, although, as I say above, I suspect that if we can sort the actual rear (backend), the rear side view is more likely to fall into place.

All best wishes for now .

Trying to see if making the backend lower will help it a bit, and I think it does.
Could possibly make the part behind the back wheelarch a little longer aswell.

So the bottom is the original and top is modified, guess you can see what I've done.

The deeper valance does make a big difference, still feel it needs to be a touch longer too.

Beauty is in the Eyes of the Beholder!

Still having issues with the look of the rear end? I just placed your tech drawing over the top off a tech drawing of an RSK. The wheel base and nose match very well but the rear end... the lid is higher and the end is shorter.

Hope this info helps.

Thanks for the tips guys, I think Steve realy wants opinions on what you guys think needs tweeking.
It's allways usefull with different opinions, makes you realize something you've overseen or it gives birth to new ideas.
So keep'em comming.

I've changed some things on the backend of the special, it's a fraction longer but I've also done a bit of shape changing.
If you compair the top veiw (wich is unaltered) and trace the line from the far back up to the side veiw you can see it's not much longer but I think it has helped
the rest of the backend.
On the back veiw you can see it's a bit lower, not many changes here since the previous image.
The swage line (going from front wheelarch to back) is slightly changed aswell to fit better with the new backend.
Again, any suggestions/tips are welcome.
Thanks.

Pandora wrote:Not having seen a rear 3/4 view, but from the photos posted, I think you are very nearly there, so if I can make a suggestion before you do anything too major.....

Looking at the profile, you might try bringing the highest point of the arch slightly further forward, towards the C pillar (and ahead of the wheel centre line). This will both visually lengthen the tail and give the rear a more 'poised /hunched stance. Moving the high point of the curve forward in this way should also pull together the complex shapes into one area at the base of the C pilar, rather than having the various transitions between the strong profiles (roof and wheel arch / waistline) being a little apart as they are at the moment. a little seperation of forms like this can be quite distracting on the eye, and ruin the 'flow' of the form.

Missed this when you posted, sorry . Very interesting, and very much something where 'your' black tape will come in handy.

Ren wrote:Still having issues with the look of the rear end? I just placed your tech drawing over the top off a tech drawing of an RSK. The wheel base and nose match very well but the rear end... the lid is higher and the end is shorter.

Hope this info helps.

Thanks, we did start off with the rear lower, but it had a rather 'broken back' look to it, which probably wasn't just down to the height, just that changing the height on it's own seemed to help.

I think overall the conclusion about more length back behind the rear wheels has been pretty much confirmed. I do have a concern about the top lid being very much longer though, as the view from above (mezzanine) looks perfect, although of course it would be no trouble just to slide the lid back and see if there's a point at which it starts to look wrong. It may be the case that actually, we can slide it back further than we thought, and it would still look O.K.

Macaulay hit the nail on the head before though, in that Steve (and I) very much wanted to underline the min-engine-ness of the thing, almost in a hill-climber, aggressive sort of way.

Macaulay wrote:Trying to see if making the backend lower will help it a bit, and I think it does.
Could possibly make the part behind the back wheelarch a little longer aswell.

So the bottom is the original and top is modified, guess you can see what I've done.

Actually, that rear view is very interesting: makes a big difference.

My main concern by far is the very rear view: when we started, I always had the impression that we were doing a Kamm tail, just based on side rendering:



This is the one picture that I've been working from, so everything else has been either from me (no wonder we're in trouble!), or by thrashing various ideas around between Steve, me and DDK, often by building something, not liking it, stripping it, building something else, strip that etc etc.

As I've said before, the actual side view is quite satisfying, and as ever, it's the very rear. Frankly it still looks similar to this ....



.... which doesn't look too bad, but actually still has similar issues to this picture (much earlier) ....



.... where the whole rear just looks wrong for the car: too small, and almost broken backed somehow. It's very difficult to describe, and hard to get across in photo's.

Anyway, we've got another load of wire coming on monday, so we're due some real idea bashing. I have to say that I find this element very challenging: I can deal with the metal side (or at least don't mind how many attempts / tweaks / fettles it takes), but it's very hard to find a route through trying to make a rendering work with the actual car in a way that stacks up as you walk round it. In turn, you tend to end up making panels that you know are almost certainly going to head binwards, which then means the panels you are then trying are mock-up quality, which means the mock-up doesn't look as good, which means it's more likely to look wrong, which means it's more likely that the panels really will end up in the bin .

In short, what I'm saying is that actual design is bloody hard, and much, much harder than the actual tin-bashing, esp. when it's not your car: i.e. you're trying to get to the route of what the client wants, and both Steve and I agree, it's a fairly straightforward thing to see if something's wrong, but a very different matter to come up with the ideas to correct it. We all have music we like, that not say we can all make music we like .

To conclude, I'm sure we'll get there, and I'm happy to keep battling on with the actual shape (I'm fairly relaxed on the build itself), and think that Macaulay's design is breathtaking. We just need that last breakthrough, and ideally be at the stage of the basic shape mocked up before we head off to CLM ( ). As I said to Steve, it would be lovely to go there knowing we can enjoy looking at details rather than the broader brushstrokes of what shape we're doing.

Thanks for all of the ideas and support: much appreciated .

"Design is difficult" - you should try it with a less understanding client and a 'commercial' deadline! There is several reasons I'm no longer a designer, but those are probably 2 of them

keep at it though, and don't think too hard - all you've got to do is make something that looks right........ keep it simple, functional and curvy, it's the Porsche way!

Shame you are so far away, or I'd gladly come and spend a day pottering with you, playing with ideas.

Al

I see what you mean by chopped off on the rear but I actually think (from that photo) that it looks great,
yes it has got a chopped off look but... it is short and with a cam tail so I guess thats unavoidable.

I just tried to make a line drawing with the cam tail, it's actually not far from what you've done so far but then we can work from this if needed.
I made it a bit lower behind the rear wheel (side veiw) to fit the lower back but don't think it fits the cam tail so much.
And some air vents to break up the big expance of metal.



Edit: Did some work on the photo to see how it possibly could look with a lower back.

Guys, I might be pointing out something you already know, but in the picture below the "top" of the tail is flatter, longer and with less of a slope than all the other images. I think that might be why it works better?..

Yes, I don't realy think this image should be used, it is out off proportion and it was decided that it needed more curves a long time ago.
But off course I could make one with less curve on the tail to represent this version better if Steve and Barry would like to to go that way.

It may have been discussed so apologies if so.

I would consider keeping the side views as now discussed, but drop the rear lip to just the deck lid down.

By this I mean angle the deck lid from the bottom of the rear screen downwards more, so its at more of an angle and the opening is lower to the floor, and creating more of a fin shape to the edge of the wings. Think along the lines of a type 3 rear:



I think the visual stumble is coming from the straight lines of the rear and the lovely curves everywhere else.

Lovely car though, and so tiny

Macaulay wrote:Yes, I don't realy think this image should be used, it is out off proportion and it was decided that it needed more curves a long time ago.
But off course I could make one with less curve on the tail to represent this version better if Steve and Barry would like to to go that way.

Ooh, that's a worry: that's the image that's up on the wall that I've been following

Thanks for the photoshopped version of the outside shot, really helps .

Hopefully Steve and I can have a bit of a experiment at some point this coming week, and see if we can't make some progress on the actual car.

Thanks for all the ideas: oh yes, Mr Rustbucket, I'm getting you: so the side view would stay almost the same, but the rear lid would nestle down in-between the rear wings a little more, giving a bit more shape / interest in this area?