In the history of Rock music, a few bands stand out not for their popularity, but for their influence. It’s been said that bands like The Velvet Underground, Big Star, and Uncle Tupelo didn’t sell many albums, but it’s said that the folks who bought them went on to start their own bands.
I like to use that analogy to describe the Avanti’s place in automotive design history. As a consumer product, it was a flop. As an influence on designers, it cast a long shadow. I’m willing to bet that every design team working on every pony car from the sixties and early seventies had an image of the Avanti placed prominently on their conceptual “mood boards.” History talks about the European influence on the Mustang, Camaro, and others. I think the bridge between the two was the Avanti. It certainly got Detroit and Kenosha’s attention when it was introduced in 1962.
The influence didn’t stop with pony car designs. You can see hints of the Avanti in Acura, Mazda, Nissan, and other Nineties-era compact sport coupes. You can even sense its influence in the current BRZ and 86 coupes. The influence may be a step or two removed, but it’s there. I realize that Raymond Loewy, the Avanti’s “father,” is prominent in every industrial design history book, but ghosts of that one design seem to keep showing up more than 50 years after it was introduced.
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