Keep Your Meathooks Off Mr. Loewy's Airplane, Mr. President

[EasyAce]

Donald Trump wants to fix something that isn't broken---the iconic, subtly powerful look of Air Force One
By Yours Truly
https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/community/keep-your-meathooks-off-mr-loewy-s-airplane-mr-president-4xqiwmsQ-kiOf5gnlzAxBQ/

You might think an American president has a few more important matters to ponder than his ride, but Donald Trump is not exactly an ordinary American president. The word coming forth now is that he is not happy with the skin of his airplane, which bears one of the most elegant evocations of its country's formidability but which he wishes to shed in favour of something more . . . "patriotic."

The President is reported to prefer some kind of red, white, and blue paint scheme for Air Force One and its companion decoy, as opposed to the two-tone blue, gold, and white trim the presidential aircraft have worn with only minor modifications since 1962. Whether he means the next best thing to a flying American flag or some other kind of bunting, Trump is quoted by Axios as saying the incumbent colours are "Jackie Kennedy colours" not to his taste. Which shows what he knows about who designed it.

The skin in which which Air Force One has flown since entering the jet age was the creation of perhaps America's most aesthetically gifted industrial designer, a man who could (and did) pay as much attention to designing a beast of a locomotive as he did to re-designing a electric mixer. When America and her people seemed wedded irrevocably to industrial designs that looked only too industrial, Raymond Loewy made them look user friendly outside the factory, the warehouse, or the yard.

"Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black, and the aesthete unoffended," said Loewy, who actually did design what Trump only thinks Mrs. Kennedy finally conjured up. He may or may not have originated America's streamlining but he did become the nation's most fabled among such fellow designers as Henry Dreyfuss and Ludwig Kocsi. Loewy and his breed brought art to utility and compromised neither while elevating both.

Born a Frenchman and making himself an American citizen in 1938, Loewy died two decades before Trump won the White House. It's not exactly a stretch to suggest Trump's aesthetic senses would have provided an evening's worth of comedy in Loewy's living room.

Loewy first arrived in America just in time to witness the Chicago White Sox tank the 1919 World Series. He found work as a fashion designer for such department stores as Macy*s and magazines as Harper's Bazaar. His first industrial commission was to design a copy machine by Gestetner, leading to his engagement to design for Westinghouse, Hupp Motors (the 1933 Hupmobile), and Sears & Roebuck. (The once-legendary Coldspot refrigerator.)

That last especially helped secure Loewy's reputation, which caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for whom he designed some of 20th Century America's most iconic locomotives, including a beast of a 6-8-6 (six small wheels, eight large, and six more small behind the large, for those scoring at home) known as the S1 which pulled the Broadway Limited. Never devoid of good humour, Loewy in due course designed a small desk mounted pencil sharpener based on an airplane's engine but which looked a tiny bit like the S1's nose in the bargain.

Studebaker (their gold-on-red, slim curved S logo; and, several of their cars, including the Starlight coupe and the Avanti sports car), Hoover (the vacuum cleaner maker's logo), Lincoln (their 1940s Continentals), Lucky Strike (the red-circle packs), Coca-Cola (their iconic red, rounded soda fountain dispensers), Schick (the 1941 electric razor), TWA (the once-famous twin-globe logo), General Motors (the legendary Scenicruiser bus), Skylab (the interior), and Sunbeam (the T-9 "tombstone" toaster; the Models 10 and 11 Mixmaster food mixers)---were a mere few of the companies who wore Loewy's gifts proudly and profitably. So did the Coast Guard, for whom Loewy designed the blue-and-orange racing-stripe logo that premiered in 1964.

When he was presented the commission to design the first jet (a Boeing 707) that would serve as the presidential ride, Loewy presented a sketch that included red on the tail's abstract in-flight bird trim and swerving around the cockpit beneath the blue crown. John F. Kennedy asked for only one modification---make the tail trim and the full cockpit crown the darker of the two blues applied to the livery. And thus the livery has remained from the 707 flown from Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to the 747 flown since the first George Bush.

Trump's reported preference for scrapping Mr. Loewy's art on behalf of patriotic chintz (would you expect any man who could have presided over the garish Trump Tower in Las Vegas to develop anything more than chintz?) has one kind-of precedent. When Harry Truman received a military variant of the Douglas DC-6 for his presidential flights, the silver propliner had a blue with white trim, stylised impression of a bird's wing on the tail, and a bald eagle's white beak on the nose, with eagle eyes around the cockpit side windows and two-tone blue wing feathers behind it, with The Independence emblazoned on the darker blue of the feathers.

The Independence didn't exactly reek of understatement, even as Mr. Truman was about as understated as a mid-air collision, but neither would the most mortified of eyes gazing upon it call it chintz, even if the temptation to greet The Independence upon arrival might have been to holler, a la, Porky Pig, eba-dee, eba-dee, eba-dee, eba-that's all, folks! The splashiest touch to be found on Dwight Eisenhower's two successor silver Lockheed Constellations, other than the appearance of a columbine flower beneath Columbine I and Columbine II under the cockpit, were red-white-and-blue painted propeller tips on the planes' four engines.

Jacqueline Kennedy pressed her husband to bring Loewy aboard to redesign what Boeing first submitted for a presidential jet because she shared Loewy's opinion that the Air Force's original design for that original 707 was a red, white, gray, and silver creature Loewy called amateurish and the president himself may have called hideous. Kennedy asked for two shades of blue, slate and cyan, and Loewy went to work. Da Vinci himself would have applauded.

The result has been received and admired around the world since for its projection of American surety in a world often uncertain. Along comes a president who sees something that isn't broken and decides it's time to call in a repairman to make Air Force One great again. (Mr. Trump may or may not be unaware that Air Force One's tail from the outset displays an American flag properly proportioned.) Whether you love or loathe Mr. Trump one braces hard. One artist's conception shows something you'd sooner expect on a blimp hovering over a too-typically decadent presentation, halftime at a football game.

Axios speculates that Mr. Trump's plans for Air Force One's makeover may depend upon whether he's re-elected in 2020, since the new Air Force One jets won't be ready for presidential travels in time for a second Trump term. And whether he gets one depends in large portion upon how he handles the serious business of things that may yet turn up broken---his gamesmanship with his new BFF in North Korea, an economy once booming but now at the mercy of his trade war, a second Supreme Court nominee but one who seems at once more and less than advertised, to name three.

The Air Force is said to be none too thrilled about his intentions for the big bird as it is. And guess what might be the single most popular non-political object to attract attention at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library? Easy---a former Air Force One, SAM 27000, aboard which Mr. Reagan flew more miles than his five immediate predecessors.

"Anyone who doubts how strongly Americans feel about the way Air Force One looks should go to the Reagan Library," says historian Michael Beschloss, "and see how many people go there to look at the plane that Ronald Reagan flew on while he was President." Which seems like the most polite way to advise Mr. Trump to keep his meathooks off Mr. Loewy's masterpiece.


Raymond Loewy with a model of his Air Force One.

[Frank Cannon]

Oh wow. Loewy is so indispensable that he designed a car so awesome that it saved a car company. I better run down to the local Studebaker Agency and see what the 2018 models look like.....what? The Avanti drove the company into bankruptcy? So much for that argument.

I'll also point out that most of the companies Loewy dazzled with his brilliance 50 years ago are either out of business or on their way. Times change. Styles change. I don't know anyone who is married to the look of AF1.

BTW to Beschlops point, the only reason that people flock to the Reagan plane is because its a plane in a building. I've seen people crawl all over a Cesna because it was there.

[EasyAce]

Oh wow. Loewy is so indispensable that he designed a car so awesome that it saved a car company. I better run down to the local Studebaker Agency and see what the 2018 models look like.....what? The Avanti drove the company into bankruptcy? So much for that argument.

Neither Loewy's designs nor the Avanti drove Studebaker to bankruptcy and death. What did kill Studebaker? Easy enough to learn if you know where to look:

* The company's postwar management team, the strongest Studebaker ever had, was purged after 1949, and the new management failed to keep enough funds to act as a cushion against any industry or Studebaker downturn. When the company first ran into big trouble in 1953, they didn't have enough funds to ride it out.

* Studebaker's unions were known as the most aggressive in the business even with the company already being one of the most generous when it came to paying their workers. By 1953 Studebaker had the highest labour costs in the auto business, and when that's married to shortsighted management unable to keep itself cushioned against downturns as it was, the marriage can and does kill.

* Ford's aggressive sales blitz of 1954 hammered all the independent automakers including Studebaker.

* The merger with Packard in the mid-1950s proved fatal to Packard and a bigger headache to Studebaker---whose brilliant management wasn't candid enough to inform Packard of just how deep a financial hole Studebaker was in when they merged. The merger ended up killing Packard first.

* In 1956, Studebaker signed a deal with the Curtiss-Wright aviation people to manage the company when Studebaker's cash flow became crisis level. This was something like bringing in a shot put thrower to solve a baseball team's pitching problems.

* In 1959, Studebaker got only a temporary reprieve when its new compact, the Lark, proved a hit. It was temporary enough before the Big Three began rolling out a mass of compact models with publicity that strapped Studebaker couldn't hope to match.

* The Avanti looked like a hit to be but with one foot already in the grave Studebaker ran into another issue---the supplier responsible for much of the Avanti's parts ran into its own issues and couldn't possibly supply enough to make more than a thousand or two Avantis. The car itself didn't kill the company; when the early word came forth about the Avanti, buyers looking for sporty personal coupes wanted the car. (The one thing Studebaker never had trouble with was people liking their cars.) Studebaker was simply left unprepared to produce and sell the car beyond that small number despite demand for it (what else do you expect from a company that purges its best management and brings in the kind that would ask an airplane maker to operate a carmaker?); in turn, orders for the car got canceled fast out of fear the buyers would end up with orphaned cars in light of a rumour that proved to be true in due course: Studebaker was shuttering its plants, which it did by the end of 1963.

Studebaker, in other words, was in big trouble long before Raymond Loewy designed the Avanti. Loewy's designs had nothing to do with Studebaker's death and remain regarded as some of the most arrestingly designed cars ever made.

I'll also point out that most of the companies Loewy dazzled with his brilliance 50 years ago are either out of business or on their way.

He had nothing to do with the deaths of those companies, either. And I submit a man who could design this in 1933 . . .



. . . this in 1949 . . .



. . . and this in 1962 . . .



. . . knew more than a little something about moving with and ahead of his times.

As for companies Loewy designed for, more of them remain in business than you think, including but not limited to:

Boeing (he designed several interiors of Boeing airliners)
Chubb Limited
Coca-Cola
Electrolux (the American division for which Loewy designed was re-named Aerus around 2000, after Electrolux's Swedish parent decided to pull out of the U.S. and
the American plants' management and employees together bought the two plants and continued to make both Electrolux-style machines based on the upgrades of the 1973
Model 1203 and some new designs using the classic Electrolux way of inner works)
Exxon (Loewy designed the double-X logo)
Frigidaire
GM
Harley-Davidson (Loewy designed its "Knucklehead" engine)
Hillman Motor Car Company
Hoover
IBM
Le Creuset (the French cookware company whose specialty is enameled cast-iron cookware; Loewy designed its Coquelle French stovetop ovens, among other pieces)
Lincoln
Lord & Taylor
Lucky Strike (the brand survives, as does the Loewy-designed cigarette pack and circle brand logo, both owned and made today by American Brands)
Sears (they may be on the way out of business, but they've been known to surprise people before)
Sunbeam (the appliance makers, not the British car company)

Times change. Styles change.

Not always for the better.

To stick with industrial/transportation design, I don't think for one minute that this vehicle . . .



. . . is anywhere near aesthetically displeasing, especially compared to this one, which looks like a shoebox on wheels even with Greyhound's new retro livery . . .

I don't know anyone who is married to the look of AF1.

This is one artist's conception of how a Trump-redesigned Air Force One might look . . .



Those who might be "married" to the incumbent Air Force One livery might consider something like that to be equivalent to the flashy tart with whom the husband might have a one-night stand on the road.

Another artist came up with something sort of channeling Harry Truman's The Independence . . .



Organic change is one thing; change for its own sake doesn't always do the world any favours. Aesthetically, and otherwise. And there do remain such things as timeless things, designs and otherwise.

[LadyLiberty]

My late father-in-law worked for Raymond Loewy for several years.  Loewy also designed the classic coke bottle.

[EasyAce]

My late father-in-law worked for Raymond Loewy for several years.  Loewy also designed the classic coke bottle.

I thought he had only refined the design, not design the original.