In past questions of the day we’ve gotten fairly granular about car design, asking you to talk about things like your favorite wings, steering wheels and exhausts. Today, though, I’m gonna focus on a more frequently overlooked but extremely important element of car design: side-view mirrors. The first rear-view mirror was implemented by Indy 500 race car driver Ray Harroun in 1911, and they became popularized after the Federal Highway Act of 1956. These days federal regulations require an interior rear-view mirror and at least a drivers-side external mirror, though every car on sale has a passenger mirror as well. The U.S. hasn’t yet evolved to allow cameras instead of side mirrors like in other countries.
Despite side-view mirrors being on every single car from the past half-century at least, they are mainly an afterthought when it comes to a car’s design — basically every car designer won’t include them on their sketches, usually. But just because these typically large and kinda clunky safety features are usually pretty boring doesn’t mean they all are. Some cars have fantastic side-view mirror designs, and I want to know which ones are your favorites.
My choice
I have a feeling that many of your picks will be supercars, as their outrageous designs and bad outward visibility typically lend themselves to more interesting mirror designs, and that’s where my mind went too. But I’m not thinking of obvious answers like the LaFerrari or Pagani Huayra, or the single-mirror versions of the Ferrari Testarossa and McLaren F1. No, my brain instantly thought of the Spyker C8. These spectacular Dutch supercars have sculptural single-piece wing mirrors made from aluminum. As the C8’s designers described them in period:
Designing is about manipulating volumes to create lines, not creating lines that make up volumes. Take, for instance, the mirrors of the Spyker. Rather than shaping a block of clay in which any line could be the line, we took a bent tube of aluminium. One side was squashed to create an oval where it is attached to the door skin. The other end was sliced at an angle which resulted in another oval: this became the mirror side. The lines resulting from working with bespoke material like these are a natural consequence.
They really do look beautiful, and fit Spyker’s overall design language extremely well. If I had to pick an honorable mention, I think it would be the Mercedes-McLaren SLR. Or maybe the Toyota 2000GT‘s fender-mounted mirrors. OK, I gotta stop giving you free suggestions. Head down to the comments to let me know what your favorite side-view mirror design is, and I’ll round up the best answers later this week.
